The Chorus: Hope
We are flooded with choices and starved for connection. Always and never alone. We change minds by sharing stories. We fight alone, together. Empathy is a victory. Seven billion solo songs, and I want to start a Chorus. - Amy Grace
I’m a moth at midnight; will find light when you blindfold me, box me in, tell me you stole the sun. This was my life, a debt paid in years. These words, wings grown from a new spine.
We find hope when we stop trusting. When we’ve screamed ourselves awake at night, legs shaking, adrenaline yet to be talked down. When it’s bound and shipped off and lost in another country, exhausted by survival and the effort it steals from joy. It finds us in the ways we are when we aren’t looking. In wounds turned to windows, bored with mirrors, forgetting our bodies except to let them do what they’ve learned. We find it when we catch a laugh escape in the face of someone who’s slapped ours. This is a hope I remember best - a literal thing, a fact, a fight. Wired to find it even in pain, unflappable. Hope is audacious. It talks back, it rises against gravity. It tears our nails and grip from what we’ve been conned into wanting, and spills white hot honey light onto the exit ramp we need.
I’ve starved it to make it holy. Almost died for it. When it’s caught in the net of every other feeling, hooked to IV’s and bleeding out for vampires, it beat thin odds when I did. I’ve run it to numbness and stress fractured fatigue; skin and bones and love and muscle. Swallowed it in pills that sat in my twisted gut, soft medicine and gunpowder, ready to explode in secret incendiary light. Hope is born in its own destruction. A new language we learn as the world burns. It cries out and takes its first breath as everything finished falls away, reset buttons covering our skin, ready to be touched and turned on like goosebumps. We find it when we give it up; it waits for us to let go. When we learn to shed the make believe who got to borrow its name. Hard won and harsh, yet requiring nothing. It can’t be muscled or bullied or forced at knifepoint. Hope is cliff diving at night.
Wisdom climbs from the rubble of earthquakes. The script we’re taught swapped with lines we improvise, terrified and alive as we’re meant to be. Answers we give without calculations, like heartbeats spoken. What we think we want and what our bravest and softest parts need, together. I’ve gotten it back choosing not to rearrange myself or the world, releasing wishes into the thin air they came from. Hope isn’t karmic parity, or drawing from a trust fund we inherit as people. There are no checks and balances to it. It’s stolen with no laws to protect us. This is where hope is truest - an epiphany, the consolation prize of new glasses and a candle, in a world gone fuzzy and black. It’s most alive when we pass it on. When we shut up and listen to a new generation know things we don’t. When our wishes turn to action and second winds. When we show up, put our kids ahead of ourselves, and make changes that break habits, bones, and hearts. We’ve forgotten how to eat but learn to grow their food. When the smiles we’ve flashed to protect ourselves, finally have a reason. When true love means a million new kinds no one talks about. Hope might be a person. It needs a host, a home. It needs a channel to play on. It isn’t the moment we break into a sprint, but when we break a sweat.
We can map out our lives in hope. Locked doors we knock on, confessions made on first sips of whiskey, “No” without explanation, hard kisses we lean into like home, handwritten pages we shred to start over, plane tickets booked on near maxed credit cards, payment plans chipping away sleep at 2am, telling someone “I’m with you”, and meaning it. It’s taking a needle and thread to all the ages we’ve been, to wear in one warm winter coat. The things we did despite and because of it. The faith we carry for the same reasons. The friction that is living, when we’re most awake to our bullshit. Electric cravings swapped for a pure hunger we honor. It is the water that leaks in when we’ve sealed ourselves into wishful thinking. The rock thrown through the glass of empty bedrooms and eggshell marriages and stories sealed in contracts gone cold. It is “I’ve had enough” and “I am enough.” The blood from the cuts we don’t even feel, while we hold what’s broken, old tears freed from the wrong kind of trying. A beautiful ‘fuck it’, starting everything over. Laughing a hundred times a day, still, always. The first lines of a new song that might as well be the first.
The essence of hope is “I’m trying”, on repeat. Flashing a smile with bared teeth, finding yourself in solutions to impossible problems, leaving fun at the shotgun alter, and running away with happiness. It changes with us, gets more real when we do, leans into meaning instead of ease when friction burns us. Flooded minds, drying out in the hot sun. Broken mirror shards cutting our bare soled feet, standing naked at the window on a full moon night. Not covering up. Never again. Singing brave and worn and secret smiling into the morning, thanking it, becoming it. It’s all the layers, and the space you’ve made for them, finally filling your lungs.
by Amy Grace
it's hard to talk about hope without telling you about sinkholes. or, how a mayan guide taught me that killing a fear means giving hope a life. how even when you don't know what's below, what’s on the other side of beady darkness, the small brave voice that has the nerve to trust, that believes the bigger stories and recognizes what’s only thought, that moves us toward believing, can so disrupt despair.
by Amy McMullen
My hope is sometimes covered by a basket. Hidden beneath, buried deep, shoved out of sight.
Once lost it takes something strong to find it, unlock it, set it free. I didn’t know I’d lost it until suffering without it. Finding myself in the deep and dark crevices of self judgement I fear and avoid.
It took strength to turn, facing the darkness without hope and walk straight in. As I fell I found the light. In small ways, collecting strength like a snowball. In his eyes, her words, my truth.
Bright and burning it now hugs my chest. Keeping me afloat. Tragically imperfect but floating and gathering strength in my sea of unknowns.
by Sara Weir
They give me hope, a change in altitude. And at some point I'll descend where clouds hang over our skin. But for as long as I can, I'll stay above. Elevated by love to enjoy sunsets over the storm.
It's late January and my body feels like an untended garden
the doctors appointments are taking up the time used for haircuts
so we're growing our hair long
braiding it with hope
I'm a hippie in the hallow
I lie in the field with the goats
I whisper my secrets to them and they say nothing
they only smell of hot grass
the sun warms us through as my baby kneads my breasts like dough, like a kitten
I'm a hippie in the hallow
a chorus of crows on my left and a pile of leaves at my feet
A slow fermentation until Spring
A mandala
A mother's magic
There is a dance here that is easily missed
I encourage you not to meditate it all away.
I have been told by many people
They don’t have a crystal ball.
It’s often said with sadness as though
I would wish to know.
The diagnosis itself is cruel,
The stories of others reported clinically,
drained of anything human
If we knew how the story ended, would hope not vanish?
Instead of being dry statistics, probable,
We tell different tales even if we are not believed.
The fate of being predictable
Is not one I wish for you.
Instead of being like a flower to emerge each spring, I’d like you to be like a sudden rush of wind, a surprise snowstorm,
Taking my breath away.
The hope really is not in the seen.
It lives in the unseen, the believed to be true and amongst the doubt.
Doubt does not take away the hope.
Surprisingly, it can sharpen the edges and bring into focus the unseen, the wished for and the willing to be true.
It makes the digging deeper and clinging longer.
I dwell in the Hope and the Hope dwells in me.
It pushes the living and joy.
That is the miracle.
There sits the gratitude.
I wake and breathe it in, almost choking on its plenty.
There were years spent starving for it,
searching in the eyes of toxic men and crowded bars.
Hope is everywhere now. I place it lovingly on the table,
pack it in my car, and hand it to my friends.
I cannot change a tire,
but I can forge hope in my own fire.
The life skill nobody told me I needed.
Hope is not thinking positive thoughts or succumbing to self-delusions to get though life. Hope is action. Hope is motion. Hope is muscle. You have to use it to make it grow. Hope is moving forward every day even when your head is questioning if it’s worth it. Hope is sitting in the hard stuff and trusting that it’s all for a purpose. Knowing that things will get better…eventually. It’s knowing that in the hardest of times, you are right where you need to be. Pushing forward even when you want to quit. Hope is action. Hope is motion. Hope is muscle. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
Hope is a fragile thing
An elusive thing
Sometimes the only thing.
When everything cracks in half
Bowels out
Strings and stuffing stick to your tongue
What’s left after the noise of your own shouts die out
And the kids finally get to sleep
A sliver of light
At first the smell is smoke (but the good memory campfire kind)
Listen and later you’ll hear voices coming from inside yourself
They say NO. Or NEVER AGAIN. And louder THIS WAY.
This voice is your teacher. When the hawk visits she’s your spirit guide. She teaches you to listen more closely.
You are her and hope is you.
I have had a funny relationship with hope for the last few years. Directing it’s super lackluster powers into my business and personal life, convincing myself that I could hope good shit into existence or at least to a balance. But funny thing about hope that I have come to understand for myself, you don’t need anything to hope. But when you don’t need anything to start something you usually get nothing out of it.
But...
Hope is what I have for my boys.
I hope that they take the lessons I try to teach them and they learn something from it. I hope that they see me fail and fail and fail some more, so that they know the fun and the story, at minimum the lesson, is found in the failing and not in the winning. I hope that the time we spend together camping and hiking and exploring the world is what they remember about me and what they choose to share with their kids. I hope that they forever choose what they love - in work, in others and in themselves. I hope that they know they always have a choice, though they may not like what choices they have in front of them. I hope that my boys know that back is always a direction, as is forward, through, over, under, around and together. I hope that they know that nothing is fair and that’s what makes everything fair. I hope that they know that being depressed will happen to them and it’s okay and normal and scary and alienating, but they will survive to tell the story and come out better humans for it. I hope that they know that there is no promise on forever, in love, in work, in fun, or in boredom. I hope that when they are older and they look in the mirror and think of what’s broken about them that they realize it is precisely what others love about them - assuming the brokenness isn’t being a sociopath. I hope that they know that as long as I have a breath, that I will be there for them in any capacity I can. I hope that therapy is part of their lives on very deep levels and that it stands for strength and not a sign of weakness or disability. I hope that they learn that it’s okay to be selfish, because if they can’t take care of themselves that they can’t take care of anyone else either. I hope that they discover that it is not their job to fix anyone, to make anyone else happy, or to save the day. I hope that they never settle. I hope that they learn to quiet their minds and find lasting peace. I hope that they know that they are not their emotions or their thoughts. I hope that they are honest with themselves at a minimum and then ideally with everyone. I hope that family is central to them - the ones you choose and the ones you don’t. I hope that their circle of friends is always strong, but they always have those two or three anchors that will be there no matter what and that they nurture those relationships. I hope that they learn that peoples rage is often projected and we are not who people say we are, good or bad. I hope that they come around to the idea that we are not all good and we are not all bad, and that every decision lamented on in the future was made with best intentions in the moment otherwise we would never have made it. I hope that they see there is no future, there is no past, that there is only right fucking now and I hope they stay in that as long as they can but give themselves grace when they inevitably do not (see above about failing). I hope that they don’t make the same mistakes that I did. I hope that they let music, Art, books and sometimes simply life bring them to tears and uncontrollable laughter. I hope they chase the dream first and let money worry about itself - though know that chasing the dream sometimes means eating shit for a while. I hope it all works out in the end for them. I hope I haven’t failed them.
Hope is what connects us spiritually to one another, I don’t mean to a god, though I don’t not mean that either. Hope is what we do for each other because we can’t live each others lives. Hope is a hall pass with a heartbeat. Hope is good intentions. But hope is no more than a wish without a birthday candle to blow out, a lottery ticket with no numbers.
For me, I don’t hope anything for my life anymore. And that’s not some sad line. It’s lessons learned. We are either making things happen or we aren’t. A little luck never hurt and baby steps are the only sure fire path to anything. But if you want to throw a little hope my way, I’m glad to have it. And I’ll be sure to do the same. I hope you understand.
by Adam Chapin
“Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
Love and hope are inside jobs and really independent of the circumstances of your life. This is the surprising gift and news to me of being challenged by addiction and codependency in my life. It is freeing when you really start to understand. It doesn’t matter what the people I love are doing. It doesn’t matter what chaos is happening around me. Love and hope and joy are all available to me at anytime in any circumstance. I only need to go deep inside of myself to find it. And we all know this is true in the smallest and everyday ways of life. How you get happy singing in the car, watching a sunset, going for a run, holding a hand, being in nature, looking at light or color or even crying tears are all proof that love and joy and hope are always accessible inside.
by Wendy Laurel
screaming on the floor today
door open, willing anyone to hear
feels like the wrong place to start
to talk about hope
but i've been to the depths enough troubled times to know
clouds always give way to sun
especially when it feels you'll never hold light on your cheeks again
the breath lets out after a good cry
your feet pick themselves up for another step
and the swirl begins again.
once a prisoner of brokenness
dust and gray and empty
resuscitated by the glimmering glow of
and swept up up and away by
the uncharted, the undiscovered
the everything that will come and
blow our hearts to smithereens
for as long as i circle the sun, and the moon crosses my skies, i will keep stitching, and stretching
by Britt Hueter
The last 6 months the word Hope has taken me on a roller coaster ride. The heights of hopeful and the lows of hopelessness.
Hopeful in the sense of love being enough, hopelessness in wondering if hurts run too deep.
When your life sort of crumbles, you find out who’s there for you, and you find out who takes from you. A harsh reality when you’ve been ignoring the signs and living in an avoidance bubble.
You discover where you need healing, and does that soul crushing process ever test who you are. And yet, AND YET, there is hope in that despair, a gift in realizing that hurts open you up to getting to the root, a spotlight shining on an ego that makes you take note of your reactions. That is a gift, even as it strips away at everything you thought you were, and reminds you of all the losses that shaped you into protecting yourself. Could this really be exactly what I needed? I could have never gotten to this level of healing, without facing the hopelessness. We spend our lives fighting our feelings, dimming what hurts, and in turn make things bigger, and last longer than was ever meant for us. Sitting in the hopelessness is where I found my hope. We are taught to only live in the light, but I think that only comes from sitting in the darkness first. We are conditioned to be scared and in need of a night light, a never ending cycle of changing out the bulbs.
There is Hope in despair, oddly enough. Something I wouldn’t have believed 3 years ago. In imperfect reactions, in forgiveness and in my screams that uses that ugliness that I would have kept at bay. Had Hope not been taken from me with just a few words from a strangers, my body would have kept tingling, my eyes kept blurring and my mouth left as dry as a desert. Stress was there in my bubble, but I was always ready to blame something else, take it out on who I was, and wonder what was wrong with me. I avoided the signs by sleeping, by escaping to where I felt loved, and carried around the emptiness that I stuffed into an overflowing suitcase.
Hope comes in slices, even when I want it to be the whole pie. It’s sometimes plated as cherry when only rhubarb makes sense to me, it’s infuriating. It’s realizing that cookie could have been spelled cookey, and key, kie and still had the same end result, the story has the same ending, but it’s not a path I would have chosen had it not been forced on me. It’s not what I have unconsciously become to know as truths, it makes my mind scream with injustice and begs to go back to the comfort of being the victim. I have stomped my feet telling others my way is the only way, believing that hope came in my answers and in mine alone, when it only comes forth in the questioning.
Hope is there when I’m willing to go against what is so engrained, when I started to ask the hard questions, and sit in the mess of answers that test me. It changes faster than I can keep up with, and keeps me uncomfortable, but it’s there none the less. It’s in a God that I trust, A God that is different than the one I once knew, and in humans that stumble and bring forth their best broken selves. I can know hope only because I’ve also known despair, love because I know hurt, trust because I’ve felt betrayal. Hope is in our imperfect selves, and in a God that carries the brokenness for us. No matter the hopelessness swirling around me, Hope is there in love and in the trying, and surrounded in grace.
by Kyla Ewert
Close at hand at all times.
Tangible, when rhythmic breathing fills my ears.
When eyes once seeking...
...strain no more.
Soaking in the slivers that have been waiting.
Seeping into every space with a vacancy...
...surrounding all of those without.
Fuel for the path ahead.
by John Waire
I look back on the last few months in both a fog and with a clarity only the uncovering of your own truths can provide. So much to sift through, so much buried pain. To see is to feel and to feel is to own and they’re all so intertwined it can be confusing, disheartening, overwhelming. Emotions twisting and turning, the changing tides. Millions of footprints embedded in the sand, washed away with one crash of a wave. Chapters end and chapters begin. My vision for my future fractured, blood running cold, hard, dry. Like cracked dirt in a desolate desert. And yet there’s a quiet thumping through it all. A slow but steady stream of excitement; like when you’re climbing to the top of a roller coaster and you can’t see anything in front of you and you know that at some point the breaks are going to release. That you’ll be free. That the wind will again carry you. It’s an integration, I’ve learned — bits and pieces of opposites that make us whole. The fear and the excitement. The sorrow and the release.
Life is forever ending and beginning.