Standing in hope when everything feels hopeless

Before you slide into the abyss, put your roots down into something sturdier. (Scroll to the bottom for a 7-minute grounding meditation!)

Listen, it’s all bad news, and even the good news is a bit of a sham with a dark underbelly and everything is fucked.

This is absolutely, undeniably true.

Except, well.

Except that somehow hope keeps popping up like the little mushrooms I discovered growing on our address sign the other day. Fragile, ill-advised, sheepish, absurd— and unstoppable.

It’s sort of like this rich forest I live in, which was once clear cut, but has grown back thick and alive and robust. It’s hard to believe that these wide sturdy trees were tiny vulnerable saplings; incredible to imagine that they shot up tiny vulnerable sprouts into a bleak landscape of desolation. Now they are lush, green, mighty.

I don’t know what happens next in America, and anyone who swears they do is lying. But I do know that mannnnny of us are feeling a lot of angst, fear, dread, and grief about it.

I live in Canada but the swing to a right-wing fascist state is happening all over the world, and many kinds of cruelty and chaos seem about to be unleashed, and as part of a queer international family, I can go to a place of deep, deep fear.

This is valid. I am allowed to have my feelings.

But I will not drown in them.

Because everything has actually been fucked for a long time, and we’re seeing it all show itself in different ways, like when your neighbor leans over and accidentally exposes a part of their anatomy that you’d never seen before, and suddenly you have all this new information about something you’d really rather not know about.

Adrienne Maree Brown wrote, “Things are not getting worse, they are getting uncovered.”

And also, sure, yes, some things are more deeply fucked than ever.

The people who are warning of coming dangers are not doing it frivolously.

But all you deeply feeling people, you don’t need to be scared into paying attention. You have been paying attention for decades. You already knew so much.

You knew so much more than you wish you knew.

And now the storms are coming in, something that seemed far off is near, and there is an ominous rattling in the branches.

Well here we are, friends. Here we are!

So let’s fucking do this together.

Remember that before every great historic shift was a lie telling people that they were powerless.

You are not powerless.

We are not powerless.

Over and over, the world changes. Not because the powers that be (political, financial, spiritual, military, intellectual) tell us so, but because the actual texture of people’s lives and minds and hearts and bodies and neighborhoods starts to create a swell of momentum that no amount of propaganda can withstand forever.

Are we running this experiment in a new way? Absolutely.

Do I still believe in us?

I do.

Listen, you are reading these fragile words typed madly by a harried mother you have probably never met, and somehow you are feeling my heart and I am echoing yours.

Isn’t this a kind of magic?

Of course it is.

It’s a wonderful magic, powerful and transformative. Simply seeing each other, caring for each other, even if we’ve never met.

How does caring stand up to guns and money and corruption and lies on lies on lies? It couldn’t possibly, except that it does.

In fact it might be the only thing that does—refusing to give up on our collective humanity no matter how dire things may seem. Keeping soft hearts no matter how hard the world gets. Watching out for each other with fierce tenderness.

We will need this ephemeral, transformative force. It is our way forward and through.

So push your roots down into our collective connectedness. Find the dirt, the water, the breathing earth, the fire down deep. Let your own sap rise up in you. Reach out tendrils of care like the mycelium network. Let your caring be like that vast interconnected web that hold all our forests—our very breaths—together.

Stand in your body; it is your own, no matter what they say.

Stand up for someone; somebody could use your help today, no matter how small the crumbs you have to offer.

Stand in your own dignity; laws change but our hearts know that kindness and equality is the only sanity.

Stand sturdy enough to let your biggest feelings course through you. That’s your life force surging.

Stand in hope. It’s such a wild, revolutionary thing to do. Mostly only the trees are brave enough to do it, but we can too.

Love you.

Roots in the ground, arms to the sky, hearts toward each other.

K

P.S. Here’s a grounding meditation you can use any time you need a little help coming back to your body. It’s 7 minutes, and it will pull you out of the swirl and back into a place of sturdiness.