Dear Reader,
As the January women’s mindfulness retreat at the Barred Owl ended, I asked, “What do you want to talk about as we close?” The youngest of us, mother to a 1.5- and 3.5-year-old suggested: Hope.
Often, when I ask my Mindful Choices students at Clark University what important topics we should cover in our seven weeks together, hope rises to the top of the list. It is always foundational, but it feels especially so in recent times. There are many folks, far more eloquent than I, who have written on hope. But, the emotion and the embodiment of the concept belong to us all.
Hope Springs - It Rises, It Sings.
Hope is both a noun and a verb, an emotion and a mindset.
Hope is not simply an optimistic wish. It includes belief and faith, yes. But it also requires agency and action—and this, I think, we sometimes forget.
My mother-in-law tuned 95 recently. On her birthday, she said, “These are the scariest times I have lived through.” My parents are almost 80. They too find the world a frightening place and seem to have lost hope in it. And so, they are currently building a new house—their escape to a mountain in Maine. They long to return to their roots and to the land where they can find solitude, pick berries, and forage for mushrooms. They will come full circle as they isolate in the woods—that’s how I was raised—off the grid.
They once had hope that they could build a life with their bare hands. Hope took action—it planted gardens, lived off the land, and built a cabin out of pine trees. My early childhood was steeped in hope, in the place where I have always found the most hope: nature.
In the natural world, hope rises daily with the sun; it lives in the shine ever present behind the clouds. Hope flies with the ducks that find their way back to the pond each spring. It hums in the quiet conversations between trees, sharing news of what’s to come and how to survive. Hope rests within the bulb and seed that look like nothing, but with the slightest care and tending, become miraculous things—things of beauty or edible and life-sustaining crops.
Rise with grace and song.
History has shown us many examples of people who, despite the unthinkable things done to them and their families, rise with courage, rise with grace and song. I am reminded of works by Anne Frank and Viktor Frankl, who, amid atrocity, still found hope and beauty all around them and in their own powerful minds. Indigenous peoples across the globe have been raped and pillaged and still rise with song and dance.
The strength of other humans is a profound source of hope. People endure unspeakable violations and still carry on giving and caring. My Aunt from Liberia told me how she and her sisters had to wear multiple pairs of pants to protect themselves from men who would harm them. My Clark University students have tales of narrowly escaping their countries, luckier than their parents and siblings. Within a few years in the United States, they drank from their deep wells of hope to make a better life for themselves and others by becoming lawyers and doctors.
We don’t all have such dramatic stories, but to be human is to suffer in myriad ways. Everyone I meet and sit down with shows me hope. Women using their voices to set boundaries for the first time. Women waking at 4 a.m. and facing long commutes to care for others and their own families. Women leaving behind babies to go to work because a spouse has lost a job. Women who have carried the weight of terrible secrets for years and still hold kindness in their hearts.
Listen to an Original POEM: Poem, Hope Endures.mp3
Your very presence gives hope for the world.
Every morning, my day starts with promise as I watch my husband dress for work at May Street elementary school where he has been making the lives of his students better and more joyful for decades. His quiet selflessness has always been a spring of hope. His sister, my sister-in-law, just received a key to the city for being a dedicated Catholic worker serving meals—and more importantly, love and hope—to those in need.
People everywhere show up. They show up. You show up. We show up… despite loss and illness and broken hearts. Isn’t this our shining display of hope?
Hope grows when shared. Hope is in the kindness of strangers, in dedicated public servants and healthcare workers, in baristas and grocery baggers. Wouldn’t it be nice if we stopped, and looked someone in the eye, and said, Thank you. You give me hope. No explanation needed. Just: You’re very presence here gives me hope for the world.
Hope is relational. We borrow it from one another all the time. When someone believes in your capacity to heal before you do, that is hope in shared form. When you sit beside someone in pain without trying to fix them, you are embodying hope—the kind that says, You are not alone.
Hope is everywhere.
Hope is everywhere we show up with awareness. When we shift our focus from hatred and misery to beauty, there is hope. When we listen to someone in need, there is hope. When we offer forgiveness, there is hope. When we speak the truth above the din of fear and lies, there is hope. When we say, “Thank you, Negativity and Uncertainty, for appearing in my life, because now I can see your brighter side—hope.”
Hope does not demand certainty—in fact, it thrives in the uncertain. It asks only for our participation.
And here, I must disagree a bit with poet Emily Dickinson, who famously wrote, “Hope is the thing with feathers/ that…never, in extremity, / asked a crumb of me.” I do think hope asks something of us: to hold on, to take some sort of action daily (no matter how small) that shows we believe in each other, believe in the bounty of nature, and in the order of the universe—whatever that means for each of us.
We must inhabit hope, as Barbara Kingsolver advises in her novel Animal Dreams: “The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”
If you feel scared—borrow hope. Borrow hope from sages, poems, and protest songs—wherever you can find it.
If despair grows in you—take any small action you can. I believe in your power to make this existence a better place for yourself and others.
I thank you for being in my world. You give me hope.
What We're Listening To:
***A 10 Minute Meditation for You: Hope 4.mp3
*Songs of Protest, Power, and Hope
Hope Means Having Something to Look Forward To
What we are looking forward to: the Barred Owls Retreats and the Inspired Life Women's Weekend of Love, Light, and Laughter in April in Quincy, MA.
Though the world can feel broken, hope exists all around us. Sending you light on your path, and seeds of hope for the fertile ground that is you,
<3 Jess
www.jessicabanerobert.com
