What If Hope Is Trying to Speak, Even Now?

It's the first week of autumn here in the northern hemisphere. Since the summer solstice, the hours of daylight have been gradually decreasing, but now, on the other side of the equinox, the change is unmistakable. The nights are longer, and the light keeps slipping away, a little more each day.

On some level we know it won’t always be like this ~ at the winter solstice things will turn; the light will begin to come back. But this stretch of the year can be tough. Less light can bring a heaviness in mood, a sense of weariness, or an ache we can’t quite name.

And we’re not only navigating seasonal changes. Collectively, we continue to live in unsettling times ~ global conflicts, political turmoil, grief close to home, and a sense of pervasive uncertainty. It can feel like too much, and often is.

Self-compassion doesn’t fix the world or bring the light back faster, but it gives us a way to tend to ourselves in the midst of it all. As Viktor Frankl reminds us, “Everything can be taken from a [person] but one thing: the last of the human freedoms ~ to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances; to choose one’s own way.”

This speaks to the heart of why self-compassion is both powerful and empowering. Even in times of grief, conflict, or uncertainty, we still have the freedom to turn toward ourselves with kindness. We can’t always choose the world we wake up to, but we can choose how we meet it. We can choose hope, or at least choose to acknowledge possibility ~ without denying the pain and brutality that also exist.

I often turn to poetry when I need to be reminded of how beauty persists ~ even in difficult times. This poem acknowledges the shadows honestly, while still pointing us toward what endures.

Hope
by Lisel Mueller

It hovers in dark corners
before the lights are turned on,
it shakes sleep from its eyes
and drops from mushroom gills,
it explodes in the starry heads
of dandelions turned sages,
it sticks to the wings of green angels
that sail from the tops of maples.

It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
it lives in each earthworm segment
surviving cruelty,
it is the motion that runs
from the eyes to the tail of a dog,
it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
of the child that has just been born.

It is the singular gift
we cannot destroy in ourselves,
the argument that refutes death,
the genius that invents the future,
all we know of God.

It is the serum which makes us swear
not to betray one another;
it is in this poem, trying to speak.

from Alive Together: New and Selected Poems (Louisiana State University Press, 1996)

Lisel Mueller’s words remind me that hope isn’t a denial of what’s hard. It’s a thread that runs quietly through the ordinary corners of life ~ a dog’s wagging tail, a newborn’s first breath, a dandelion seed. Hope may be fragile, but it’s also stubborn. It insists on showing up.

Would you like to practice with this a bit more? Try putting a hand on your heart and taking three breaths.

With each inhale, say to yourself: what if hope is trying to speak

With each exhale, say: even now

When you finish, notice how you feel.

Sending you peace and a gentle reminder that even in a season of less light, hope and possibility can find us ❤️