In the Mumford and Sons song, “Awake My Soul,” there’s a line that says, “Where you invest your love, you invest your life.” I just returned from a trip to visit my aunt. In her bathroom, she has a towel that reads, “Love, Family, Faith.” In those three things she has invested her entire life with all the love she could give.
For a long time, hope was how I invested my love. I built my career on hope. You kind of have to if you go into the arts. I built my family on hope, starting with the day I said yes to my husband’s marriage proposal. I built my community work and activism on hope. Hope that things really could improve.
At some point in the last turbulent two years, I sort of lost some hope. The first days of the pandemic felt so incredibly hopeless as the streets of our cities became ghost towns and the hospitals filled to capacity. The political climate in this country felt hopeless, so did the cultural divides. The struggling publishing industry has left many of my writer friends feeling discouraged, and now there’s a war raging that feels like a throwback to World War II. Is there any hope humans will ever stop fighting?
Hope, though, is a life force. It is pure energy. Without it, we falter, we stagnate, we wither. Hope is our anchor. It keeps us safe and strong during all the storms life throws at us. Hope has seen us through the darkest days in…
