How Hope Heals

advent reflections on loss, light, and rebuilding a brighter tomorrow

The Promise of Hope in Dark Days

I’m clinging tenaciously to hope these days.

I’m in the painful middle, and it’s so easy to believe the middle is all there is. That it’s an ending, not a dormancy between. That the middle between seasons of joy holds bare truths about life, about me, about forever. The middle feels like mud, clinging and weighing and grey.

But this week’s theme is hope, and I know I need it. Perhaps you need some, too.

In the tradition I was raised in, the four weeks leading to Christmas mark the season of Advent, a time of anticipation and reflection, of unseen hopes not yet fulfilled. Each Sunday we’d light one more candle until on Christmas day, five were lit.

I continue that tradition every year, lighting a candle in the quiet of our home of three. Reflecting: What does this word mean to us? Where do we see or experience it in life? How can we cultivate it in our own lives? How can we share it?

The first week’s theme is Hope. Following in the aftermath of American Thanksgiving, a time celebrating family and togetherness that leaves so many of us aching from the contrast between ideals and lived realities, hope feels fragile, fleeting … and ever so needed.

In my last post, I wrote: Love behind, love within, love to come.

I’ve been meditating on these words in the days since. Choosing to believe the last part, the part unseen, as I walk through the valley of crushing and complicated loss and resounding emptiness. As death and separation and estrangement collide to silence the fa-la-las, I choose hope.

Sitting in the muddy earth to meditate, I notice before me the bud of a perennial flower beginning to open. My lost friends gifted me these bulbs one Christmas, but I’d forgotten them. Their tender shoots recently began to emerge, and someone mistook them for grass and mowed them down. And yet, hope finds a way. Stubbornly, several shoots pushed upward. Buried beneath the ground, unseen, stuck in the mud… waiting. Mortally wounded, yet not defeated.

I think hope’s like that.

Choosing Hope

Holding onto hope must be a choice, as it is so easy to turn away. Hope is hard. It is scary, uncertain. We try to self-protect by refusing to believe its whispered promises.

My anxious clients often protest, “If I let go of anxiety and let myself believe good outcomes may come, how will I bear the disappointment when the worst comes to pass?” There’s a mistaken belief that avoiding hope keeps us grounded and prepared.

But the truth is hope creates resilience. When we persist in anxiety, depression, and self-doubt, it’s true: there may not be far to fall, but then you’ve agreed to settle at the bottom. Hope may let us down, but as we spend more time with a belief in potential goodness energizing our steps, we build internal strength that fortifies us for whatever hard times may come.

Hope is the seed of manifesting the life you want to live. Unless you believe something is possible, can begin to envision it and lean toward it, you will not take actionable steps toward creating the dreams of your heart. Hope increases dopamine, building motivation. Manifestation is the sum of vision + hope + action.

Hope increases blood flow to the pre-frontal cortex, strengthening problem solving, future-oriented planning capacity, reducing stress, decreasing despair. It increases neuroplasticity and strengthens neural circuits associated with positive thinking, decreasing pessimism’s depressing hold. It calms the amygdala, reducing worry and anxiety, allowing for greater presence.

The difference between hope and toxic positivity is hope does not require ignoring the present reality of pain, of loss, of struggle. But hope makes room for movement, reminding us that the present, while real, is not all there is. It makes space to build and to receive a brighter tomorrow.

Hope improves mental health, physical health, and overall resilience. Hope is the antidote to despair.

Cultivating Hope (5 Steps)

So how can you cultivate hope when you feel you have none to hold? When hope itself feels like a vain or fleeting wish?

- First, continue with the gratitude practices inspired by the recent holiday. Gratitude grounds you in the present and tilts attention away from a feared negative future.

- Turn your focus toward meaningful dreams and goals. Hope solidifies as we set a vision of not just ending present pain or emptiness but imagining an ideal of what could be. Take time to reflect, pray, or meditate on this vision.

- Focus on what you can control. This won’t be everything, but it isn’t nothing, either. When we fixate on what is out of our control, we tilt toward despair and can become seized with anxiety. A focus on the influence we do have reminds us we have some power to find a way out, to build the life we want despite the challenges.

- Surround yourself with others who inspire, support, and lift you up. Hope may arrive silently in stillness, but it may come in the collective, too. Release competition and let the strength and diligence of others mentor and guide you toward a hope-filled future.

- And finally, look with intention for signs of your vision coming to life. Allow yourself to savor and appreciate the small steps along the way. Make space to notice.

Reflect

What unseen longing lies in your heart? What fears cover those longings with foreboding whispered suggestions that only darkness lies ahead?

The days are darker lately, but I know they will lengthen soon. The season of Advent journeys us through and toward the darkest days, with the fourth Sunday of Advent landing on the darkest day of this year. Then, following Winter Solstice, light begins to re-emerge. It is fitting to begin this journey into deepening darkness by cultivating stirrings of hope.

Hope carries us through the darkness.

Hope reminds us more light will soon appear.

from my heart to yours,
Deborah

I’m loving peppermint mochas this season - how about you?