hi. i am right there with you.
while reading the news i often feel like “hope” is no longer a tangible thing. like it’s something i lost along the way of growing up and opening my eyes to the world. i sometimes feel foolish for even having hope – but if being hopeful makes me foolish, then call me the biggest dopey-eyed fool to grace this gorgeous planet we call earth.
sometimes i lose it for months at a time, if you’d believe. i hold my hands out to touch it and it is not always reaching back for me, but eventually hope comes home. it always does. when it comes home, and your chest doesn’t feel so cold anymore, all i ask is that you don’t let it sit inactively.
let it move you. be kind. gift it to someone else in the best way you know how. put it in some homemade soup and eat it with someone you love. listen to someone without the intent of answering, but truly listening. read something new. step outside of your comfort zone and let it push you to this time asking how you can help instead of just wondering – and you know what? maybe this particular shred of hope is so brand new and so tiny that you’re still trying to figure out what it is. that’s okay too, you can take some of mine if you need. i can’t provide any solutions, but i can promise you that a little hope can go a long way. a small movement is a movement nonetheless.
we will benefit from unity. cancel cultures makes us afraid to ask questions, be wrong and actually speak to each other. our peers are not always the ones we should be instantly pouncing upon. politicians, the inordinately rich and people in power claiming they are fighting for us? absolutely. your friend or random person on twitter that you may not actually know, that is doing their best? patience. i realize asking people who have been patient their entire lives is no small feat. (as a half-black woman, i am right there with you on the patience train) there are many people i cannot fathom asking for their patience at a time like this, but if you have the capacity for it, i’m speaking to you. someone feeling invited enough to learn instead of someone shutting down because they were attacked always leaves me feeling a little lighter.
i’m hopeful but i am angry and lost and utterly exhausted. i’m sure you are too. much of my anger is being saved for a time when i know i can transform it eloquently into something grander, but i don’t want to ignore the exhaustions and daily struggles because i am writing about hope. some have been pounding their fists against the violent injustice of america since the beginning – and it pounds back every. single. time. if you come to learn you aren’t getting hit as hard as your brothers and sisters alongside you, use that privilege to help them when they get weak. BEFORE they get weak. we need each other. take care of yourself because we need healthy warriors, not burnt out ones. change isn’t going to happen all at once.
this fight is minute to minute, and some minutes do more damage than others. we’re going to fall – but i promise i’ll get back up if you do too.
love,
[Me] who’d like to offer you some of my hope