Finding Hope

Hope. Hope is to be optimistic, think with positivity, to expect with confidence.

In challenging times, hope can indeed be hard to access but hope is essential. Hope is what gives us that inner strength to keep going. It activates our motivation and resilience so we can face and overcome adversity. It is a belief that things can and will get better.

When you’re in the trenches, up to your neck in it and you’re seeing life through a grey lens, all you want to do is curl up and hide. It’s taking everything in you to show up for the day, your kids, your family, your work, for yourself. You’re struggling to compose yourself when inside all you want to do is scream, you do scream, loudly and violently but in private. You don’t want to leave your house, you’re struggling to speak or interact with people, when the lump of grief in your throat threatens to rupture and bleed out of you. Hope can be hard to access, but you must.

Finding hope is about shifting your focus, like moving a lamp in a room, it changes the feel of the environment. You must look for the light. Try and try harder until you find it. Fight. The light, hope, is found in the everyday things that bring you some peace, make you feel joy and gratitude and loved. Your family, friends, pets, a hot cup of something enjoyed curled up under a blanket holding yourself, small moments of peace, nature, exercise, fresh air, the sound of morning birds, rain, a hot bath, a good cry, tv. It’s about finding something in the moment, no matter how small, no matter how simple it seems, it's about finding some ease, some peace, some release so you can access hope. Your reason to keep going.

Once you start to feel that sense of hope, you realise you have choices. You get to choose how you think and behave in this, and you get to choose who you are in it. You create your life; you are not a product of it. That feeling of empowerment and an awareness of your feet on the ground will remind you of your strength once again. This is a cycle and it’s why we do the work. The more we can come back to basics and remember who we are, regardless of our circumstances, the more able we will be to survive and thrive.

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all the darkness.

Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future.