Selected stories on ILLUMINATION-Curated
Self-nominated Stories for ILLUMINATION-Curated
Selected stories by Karen Madej hosted on ILLUMINATION.

Thank you to ILLUMINATION founder Dr Mehmet Yildiz for his invitation to compile a collection of our stories on ILLUMINATION. It’s an honour to put together ten pieces of work from the hundreds I’ve written! They are not curated by Medium. This is Option 4 Self-nomination from the doctor's publication Highlights newsletter.
The poems and stories I’ve included here are, in my humble opinion, entertaining, meaningful, and of interest and use to readers. Some of them received many highlights and were appreciated by readers. Others, perhaps, overlooked but worth a second chance.
Also, being quite uncomfortable putting forward my precious stories (or showing off in my mind) I have been slow in presenting this collection for judgement by my peers. My peers being fellow editors who are of all ages, bright, and so very, very talented. I fear I won’t come up to the mark. I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. I am doing it regardless of my reluctance.
Feel the fear and do it anyway. ~Susan Jeffers
Fiction is at the heart of me, it’s what I long to write. In a way perhaps it’s a regression to an idyllic childhood of reading every fairytale I could get my hands on. An escape to another world, another life, another time. Three things I suspect most of the world’s population are feeling this year.
There’s not enough fiction on Medium and nor does the platform encourage it. I embrace the good Doctor’s request for more fiction from us and dream that one day there will be another publication from him called ILLUMINATION-Fiction.
I also find myself drawn to how we can live our best lives as well as supporting the vulnerable.
Here goes.
The Nightmare
#fiction #poetry
This poem started life as a rare dream (or should that be a nightmare?) which I woke up from and immediately jotted down in the notebook on my bedside table! I long for more dreams but it’s not to be.
The Fruit from the Root of the Holly Oak Tree
#poetry #relationships
This poem came out of another much darker poem about my parents' symbiotic relationship. How the tree and the truffle need each other to survive is all part of a delicate, intricate ecosystem.
If Eve Hadn’t Picked the Apple
#poetry #fiction
A lighthearted take on the world’s best-known story that rapidly descends into a controlled rant on everything that’s wrong with the world today!
Feeling Ancient This Morning
#poetry #prompt
When we get to a certain age (sure it’s different for everyone), some mornings it’s simply not possible to leap out of bed and head into the day full tilt! It comes to us all but hopefully there’ll be more feeling sprightly days.
A Land of Ice and Snow
#fiction #shortstory
The sparkles’ twinkling intensifies, throwing a glorious glow over the room. The couple part and walk around the outside of the guests and come together again in front of Primella Star, Illuminati Priestess.
Have Millennials Been Given a Raw Deal in Life?
#life #mental health
When millennials spend hours on social media and binge-watching Netflix, their ability to see their lives through a reality lens is warped.
Gen Xers tend to compare themselves with the people they hang out or work with. But there’s a darker side for Generation Y, due in the main to the rise in their social media use.
Does Having a Perfect Body Make Us Happy?
#science #life
At the age of thirty-two, I cried when my boyfriend of four years asked me to get some bacon at the local shop. Strange right?
Years of buying the best TVs, furniture, and clothes, international holidays and long weekends in Spain and Portugal, being successful and having it all had conspired to depress me. The bacon was the last straw.
I’d achieved everything I’d desired and realised it meant nothing.
Hoodwinked by Media Marketing Lies
#science #psychology
If whole countries can be hoodwinked by media marketing lies, how easy do you think it is for an advert to tempt you into buying an idea, product or service?
You and I certainly think what we know is true for much of what pops into our minds. But do we check our facts?
When You Love Yourself
#self #advice
In life, the world is as big or small as we decide. There’s no right or wrong way of spending your time here. For some, life is a sweet shop where we pick and choose sugary delights. For others, a library of knowledge ripe for learning. For many of us, an office where we pass our lives standing still or earning bigger desks and losing sight of our lives.
To conclude here is a piece on the causes I feel strongly about.
The Invisible
#politics #life lessons
In their heads, they create to the exclusion of their needs. Accepting of their unobserved being, hiding in their eyries, singling merrily. Alone, yet also with and for the world at their fingertips.
Thank you so much for reaching this sentence, your time is cherished.