Finding Hope

Finding hope is a process. It moves like the ocean – ebbs, flows, crashes on me, suddenly slips away. Sitting with it long enough, it may soak every part of me, deep into blood and bones. It becomes a part of me, residue coating every strand of hair and pushing the dark places into the open, letting in oxygen and light – arms and legs stretched wide to revel in the sun beyond.

My gawd, I can breathe again.

And with the breath, I know I am ok.

OnSurviving, at its core, is about finding hope. Hope is survival. The process of finding hope is surviving. I hope it comes through, even in the most painful passages, images, performances. In this blog post though, I offer a few micro stories about the ways I have found hope for myself, hoping that one of them might be a spark for others who are struggling to find their own.

POSSIBILITY FOR BETTER.

My process of finding hope began with a strong sense in me that there was more to this life than the pain I had endured. It was so strong in me then that others could see it, possibly even feel it.

When I was in high school, I wanted to get into a zero-hour class that offered a small group of students the opportunity to wrestle with life’s big philosophical questions, together with a beloved teacher. We had to apply to get in by writing an essay about whether we believed that people are basically good or basically evil. I wrote that people are basically good and that the evil some of us inflict on others is created through life experiences, through learned behaviors.

That perspective has helped me to have compassion for those who have harmed me. I know some of their histories, and I know they suffered in their formative years as well. Considering how to hold people accountable with compassion can be a dizzying path to travel. I step lightly through it, knowing that making room to see the full humanity in others is exactly what I need for me. This belief in the potential of us all to be and do better was the foundation of my sense of hope for many years.

Around the time that I was in that zero-hour philosophy class, a friend of mine pulled me aside. She had been raped by a stranger when walking to school one day, and she knew my own story of sexual abuse and knew me to be a person who engaged life with an open heart and appreciating its beauty.

“How do you do it? How can you still believe in people? Trust them?” She asked.

I looked at her earnestly searching face and spoke from my heart. “I have to,” I said.

I meant that I couldn’t see the point in life when I looked at the alternatives. I knew that bad things happened in life, but hope comes from enduring and opening ourselves to the wonder and possibilities that life also offers, so we can do and be better. This seemed to me to be the point of being here in the first place, so to me, I had to, even if it meant being vulnerable to new pain in the future.

WITH GRATITUDE.

I worked as a consultant in nearly a dozen states after my daughter died, which meant a while lot of flights to and from projects. I so badly wanted to be with my daughter again that I prayed that my plane would crash every flight I took. This got worse as time went on and was most acute after I quit drinking.

Hope in this physical life felt nearly impossible in the first weeks of living without my liquid crutch, but I listened to my sponsor.

“I want you to get up every day and write down three things that you are grateful for,” she said.

Her direction had to be better than my own, I thought, so I followed it.

“I am grateful that I had a safe place to sleep last night.”

“I am grateful that my partner’s parents offered that safe place to sleep without ever meeting me before.”

“I am grateful for this cup of coffee.”

“I am grateful that the tide in the ocean keeps moving no matter what kind of day I’m having.”

“I am grateful that a group of perfect strangers wrapped their love and support around me as I struggled to take the next best step.”

“I am grateful that I took a breath and noticed the fine hairs on the leaf that light up in the sun and make it glow in its own right.”

“I am grateful that I took another breath.”

And so on…

There are countless studies that show how practicing gratitude supports positive mental health. In fact, gratitude has a real effect on healthy brain function. Check out this reference from UC Berkeley for evidence. I don’t know if the good folks in AA knew this when they integrated it into their recommended recovery practices, but I know it worked for me. It took time and lots of support, but eventually, hope grew.

LOVE CONNECTION.

I have met many people in my life who seem to be resolutely self-involved and living lives that are harmful to others, or even harmful to themselves. I feel for them and hope that they will find a better way, for all our sake.

I have spent countless hours trying to grapple with those folks in my life. We do not have control over others though, so I wish them well, and I choose to spend time with others that care for me exactly as I am and that show up for me whether I am joyful or in pain and that strive to live a life that doesn’t hurt me, others, or themselves.

I finally shut out my birth mother, though I will always love her deeply, after I realized that the fact that she continues to choose her husband’s feelings over mine is soul-crushing for me. I left a work environment that subjected me to inhumane attitudes and manipulations that left no room for my own self-care. I let go of one-sided friendships.

With the unhealthy relationships clutter out of the way, I have found much more room for connections rooted in love, and I find that I have much more time and energy to nurture those connections. My spouse, his parents, my brother, my sister, my father, my mother-in-action (stepmom), a host of incredible friends who each bring bright lights into this world, a therapist who sends me encouraging notes when I have to take breaks from therapy for financial reasons, strangers who volunteer their time to answer crisis calls when my hope wavers from time to time…each of these connections, connections rooted in some form of Love, connections that I know I must do my part to engage, supports the conditions for hope inside me to grow.

I AM IAM.

I hate when people offer false hope. Real hope is personal; no one else can give it to us.

I was searching for something different when I started working with Lawrence nearly two years ago. I wanted to get in better touch with myself, and I wanted to engage the things I loved in myself more strongly, namely my creativity.

I met Lawrence through my consulting world, and I sensed that he had something important to offer me. I have gotten more out of it than I could’ve imagined.

I started by taking a couple classes from his Embodied Creators series, and during a guided meditation that was part of the second one, I had a truly spiritual experience, similar to one I had walking up and down the beach in South Carolina, saying the Serenity Prayer over and over to myself while trying not to take that next drink. It was something simultaneously inside me and much larger than me. It spawned my final creation from that class, one that you can see now on their web description of that class. “IAM” is the name I gave my superhero alter ego. It represented a beautiful sense of self-acceptance, life-acceptance that has spawned the most powerful sense of hope that I have ever felt in my life.

After that program, I began working with Lawrence in one-on-one guided meditation and coaching sessions, and I have continued the practices I learned from him on a daily basis. After the first session, he said to me, “Do this every day, and it will change everything.” That it has, and through those practices, I grow that internal strength every day and generally change my orientation to life in a powerfully positive way.

Today, I am sitting in my new office in Texas, happily writing this piece on hope, grateful that I have time and space to do it, and excited for what comes next as I lean into writing creatively. I am also excited to get on a video call with my parents tonight to show them around my new house, and later this week, I get to talk with one of my inspiring friends about joining us in our OnSurviving discussion on hope. I am looking forward to lots of other love connections this week too, with calls to my brother and sister who are undergoing big life changes too and a call to another friend who is also following her dreams courageously and beautifully. This weekend, I hope to take another lovely nature walk with a woman from my past who I am lucky to find living 20 minutes away from me for the time being. I feel blessed for all this, but mostly, I feel blessed with the sense of strength that has welled up inside me, allowing me to engage all that life brings me from a resilient and hopeful place.

HOLD ON – IT’S WORTH IT.

Six years ago, I kneeled in my backyard, sobbing and forcing myself to stay out of my house where my gun was, with loaded clip resting beside it. I looked around me and could not draw on one ounce of hope that had come before, so I did the one thing I knew to do and called the local crisis line, then I walked six miles to the nearest crisis center to feel the compassionate touch of someone’s hand while I continued to sob. I held on. See above for why I am so grateful that I did.

Too many people around me, around all of us, are talking about suicide, feeling compelled to it as I was. Finding a way past it is worth it, my friends. Please, even if you can’t see it yourselves right now, take it from someone who knows: it is worth the struggle, you are worth the struggle, and the world will be better for it. Each time I have engaged the struggle, I have been grateful for my courage to do so, to feel the pain and find a way through it.

I am grateful to be alive. I know you will someday too. Please hold on.