The Woman's Book of Hope. Eileen Campbell
world, we cannot protect ourselves from being touched by suffering. There is no cure for being part of the human race, and this can sometimes leave us feeling hopeless and powerless. We can all too easily find ourselves in a dark place of despair, reacting with anger or blame, or attempting to insulate or even anesthetize ourselves against the pain.
In Greek mythology when Pandora lifted the lid of the box she had been forbidden to open, all kinds of evil spirits were let loose into the world to wreak havoc. At the same time, however, a healing spirit named Hope was released to help humanity deal with suffering.
However dark the situation, hope is always available to us—“hope springs eternal in the human breast,” wrote the poet Alexander Pope. Hope is born in darkness, just as we see the stars only when the sky is black.
Crisis isn't totally bad, however; it can result in breakthrough as well as breakdown. Hope doesn't deny the darkness, nor does it expect everything to be as it once was before the crisis, but it does offer the possibility of redemption. Quite simply, hope is a miracle for it changes us, changes the situation we find ourselves in, and is contagious, spreading beyond us to others.
Hope is both a choice and an action. If we give way to despair, we are unable to do anything. And although human history is a catalog of woes, it is worth reminding ourselves that it is also rich with magnanimous acts of courage, sacrifice, and compassion.
We need to practice being hopeful and making good things happen, focusing on what we long for and taking determined steps to bring it about. What we put into practice becomes habit. When we shift our perspective and face the pain we feel, things begin to look different. Not only do we find ourselves surviving, but we also become empowered. We learn that the very things that have caused us to suffer and despair are the experiences that contribute to our growth and maturity. Crisis asks of us to bring forth the best of ourselves and use what talents we have to help others. In daring to take action, we trust that there is the possibility that what we contribute can make a difference.
So what steps can we take in the face of pain and suffering to access hope and make our own lives happier and help to spread hope to others?
First and foremost, we need vision and conviction that the future can be better. When we believe this, we are motivated to act with bravery and daring. If we're determined, we can drive through our vision, but being patient and letting things unfold without trying to force them are also necessary for balance. Instead of being afraid of the future and closing down, we can open our hearts and feel a profound sense of connection to others. We empower ourselves, and, as our capacity for self-awareness increases, we grow in wisdom. As each one of us changes, becoming the best we can be, so our world is transformed.
Throughout the book, I include stories of those who have triumphed over adversity and been sustained by hope: survivors of holocaust, exile, and imprisonment, for example—Anne Frank, Malala Yousafzai, Shirin Ebadi; social activists—Grace Lee Boggs, Harriet Tubman, Wangari Maathai; explorers and extreme adventurers—Ann Davison, Sacagawea, Diana Nyad; scientists like Marie Curie; artists, composers, poets, and writers—Artemisia Gentileschi, Hildegard of Bingen, Emily Dickinson, and Xiaolu Guo. I also include the experiences of those who have been abused or kidnapped—Maya Angelou, Oprah Winfrey, and Natascha Kampusch; and the stories of refugees who have made new lives for themselves, escaping from Uganda, Iran, and Syria.
I write from my own experience of facing difficulties. Like you perhaps, I know what it is to have had a difficult start in life; to have struggled financially; to have experienced betrayal, disappointment, and divorce; to have been seriously ill and wondered whether I would recover; to have lost family members and friends; to know what failure feels like; to have been attacked and injured by someone with mental illness; to have had my home burgled; and to have experienced a degree of trauma—I was close to the World Trade Center in New York on 9/11 and flew into Nepal the day of the 2015 earthquake. Yet, I know that all these experiences, however painful and difficult they've been, have helped me grow. When with reflection I realized I had a choice about being hopeful or not, I discovered that I had greater resilience than I ever imagined. I found greater meaning and purpose in my life because of what I had been through, and as a result am now happier and more fulfilled, and feel grateful for all that life offers me.
I hope that whatever hardships and difficulties you are struggling with in your life, The Woman's Book of Hope will help you see the issues with greater clarity and that you choose hope and discover new depths of understanding on your journey, ultimately finding a sense of peace and joy.
Chapter 1
Creating our vision of the future
The point about hope is that it is something that occurs in very dark moments. It is like a flame in the darkness.
—JOHN BERGER
Each of us at some point in our lives is likely to experience adversity, grief, and despair. For some, the crisis may follow the loss of a loved one, an accident, an illness, or an unexpected firing or dismissal. It may be an ongoing struggle with poverty or abuse, or it could be simply the dire state of the world with its inequality, violence, and terrorism that plunges us into a deep depression.
Whatever the cause, hope seems to elude us, and fear, doubt, and confusion make us lose our way. We reach rock bottom. This is sometimes referred to as a “dark night of the soul,” originating from the title of a poem by sixteenth-century Spanish mystic and poet St. John of the Cross. On such occasions it's hard to see any light at the end of the tunnel, we feel overwhelmed by the darkness, and the future stretches bleakly before us. We find ourselves questioning the whole basis of our lives and whether there is any meaning and purpose in them.
Hope is the opposite of despair, and we need it because it helps us deal with our suffering, but how is it possible to coax hope from the embers of despair? We can start by reminding ourselves that the light is always there, even though we can't at the moment see it. There is never a time when dawn doesn't break or winter doesn't end. Hope is like the bird singing in the dark night, sensing the approach of the dawn light. When we accept that light is the other side of darkness, we are more able to face our dilemma. Nothing stays the same forever—things change, we change. We can turn things around and begin again, perhaps making something good out of the pain and turmoil we feel.
It may well take some time to accept and come to terms with what has brought us to this juncture, but that glimmer of hope in the darkness helps us find resources that we didn't know we possessed. We discover a different perspective that helps us deal with the situation. As Maya Angelou, the American poet, writer, and social rights activist, put so well, “God puts rainbows in the clouds so that each of us—in the dreariest and most dreaded moments—can see a possibility of hope.”
Once we have tasted hope, we can hold on to it, magnifying it while building a vision of something better. Hope makes the present less difficult to bear and gives us the energy to pursue our dream. Our dark night has been like a death and a rebirth, an awakening to a greater sense of meaning and purpose. Each new day we can cultivate a more expansive state of mind and enrich our lives with the prospect of a brighter future, one in which the essence of who we truly are is revealed, as spoken of by the Persian Sufi poet Hafiz:
I wish I could show you,
When you are lonely or in darkness,
The Astonishing Light
Of your own Being!
1. Turning things around
Let's imagine we've allowed the possibility of hope to surface. Perhaps the future can look different. Maybe all is not lost.
There's a story about a famous painting called The Chess Players (sometimes also called Checkmate and The Game of Life) by Friedrich Moritz August Retzsch. Probably painted in 1831, it used to hang in a public gallery but is now in private