The Resilient Unrelenting Power of Hope
I feel like my posting here has been lacking, intermittent at best, this past month or so, not because I did not have words, but because I had too many words for all that was happening in my life and in my head.
I enter August staring down a calendar that for the next four months will be the busiest I have known in over two years. It is full of good and varied professional work, family gatherings, fun with friends, several “artist dates” #IYKYK (Read anything by Julia Cameron to learn more), and some doing + dreaming in the hopes of some doors opening for me in 2026 in several areas of my life. I am excited. I am terrified.
There. I said it.
Two years ago, on this every day, I was living in Norway on the last leg of my #sabbatical and just weeks away from the epiphany that came to me while there of this “pie chart life,” as I nicknamed it.
I have now been living this “life” out for a whole year and a half, give or take, and I am here to tell you that living the life you once could only dream of is simply a different kind of rollercoaster than the one you were previously riding on.
Nothing is perfect. Nothing.
Well, that isn’t true. It is “perfect” to even have the ability and circumstances that allow you to pursue the dreams of your heart. It is in the execution of them by an imperfect person in a fallen world that causes it all to go haywire from time to time.
I believe God gives us a gifting that is just ours to help us cope in times of trial and suffering.
When I was little, I had so many big dreams for my life, coupled with a lively imagination. So, it isn’t necessarily odd that when my parents abruptly split when I was eight years old, I took to pen and paper and mapped out a life. My life. I was telling someone today about this because the memory popped up while I was writing my #morningpages this morning, and so it was top of mind, so to speak.
Here is the story.
I was eight years old, owned nothing and claimed nothing as my own except Pee Bear (long story for another day) and my words, aka feelings. So, I proceeded to draft a “last will” that bequeathed Pee Bear, and there were letters. I wrote personal letters to my father, my mother, my grandparents, my siblings, and my friends. All of the most important people in my little, young life. They were earnest, to say the least, and sincere. My big broken heart full of emotions towards all that I felt I had lost; that I had - actually - lost, and a deep resolve to ensure that no one I loved would not know just how much I loved them, should anything ever happen to me. I also wrote out a daily schedule, Sunday through Saturday, broken into fifteen-minute increments from waking up to brushing my teeth to eating meals to bedtime. I then proceeded to write a list of life goals. I kept it for decades, and sometime in the past dozen years, I misplaced it (though it is probably stuck in a journal somewhere). I remember a good bit of it, though, and so with complete knowledge of how ridiculous it might all seem now, here goes…
Education
I had noted that I would get a bachelor’s, a master’s, and a doctorate. I even had my proposed age to complete each.
I would fall blissfully in love, get married, and have at least three children. I wanted us to have twin boys and a girl. I had ideas on their names too but noted that I was flexible because I wanted my husband to have a say too. Note: I had been playing mommy, preacher, and teacher since I was at least three years old.
I would purchase back our family farm so that we could live there either full time or on the weekends only because I wanted to work in the “big city.” At nine, we had been moved off the farm I grew up on for a little over a year. I am sure a lot of this was both my homesickness for that place, if not that time, back when everything felt/was normal with our family.
I was going to learn how to fly a helicopter so that I could fly between the city and the country whenever I wanted. This one is amusing because I was going to build a helipad on our land. I can remember exactly where my nine-year-old mind thought it should go.
I was going to be a millionaire by the time I was thirty. Financial security was suddenly a deep need.
I also had some notes about law school, so that was a possibility in my young mind.
Etc…it was a couple of pages. *Shaking My Head*
Even as I type these words, I feel the emotion from that time. All the exceptional therapy in the world can help you heal, fill up a toolbox complete with all the things to help you live out your best life, but nothing can ever take away completely the poignant sting of when life gives you your first wave of harsh reality, coupled with a broken heart. Over the span of a couple of years, I lost both of my grandfathers - whom I completely and totally adored, my father (both emotionally and physically) - whom I worshiped, my older sister, and my mother (emotionally).
At eight, my parents had wrecked my little world, and I was trying to hold onto anything and everything that would give me…well, hope.
I have been dreaming and writing down dreams, plans, and schedules ever since. When my world feels out of sorts, it is a pen and legal pad that I reach for in an attempt to sort out the rumblings in my mind, heart, and body via words.
I have written hundreds of thousands of words in my 54 years. I have written over a hundred thousand words this year alone. True story.
For fun, I did some math while editing this piece. I write a minimum of 1,500 words every morning in my #morningpages, though I am betting the average is more like 2,000 words. So, at 1,500 a day, and today is day 216 of 2025, that comes out to 324,000 words.
That means I have already, at a minimum, written 324,000 words this year. Ummm…I believe my original estimates are wildly…off.
All of those words in the morning pages are not just simply my musings, but where I safely store my hope. They are pages and pages full of dreams, frustrations, math, lists, love, loss, grief, wonderings, ideas, and every wild and wonderful and wicked thought that enters my brain. It is the safe place for me to wrestle out whatever it is that I woke up that morning pondering on. It is equal parts creativity and therapy. You write morning pages with the full knowledge that no one will ever read them. They are just for you. Only you. {Unless you decide to share.}
So, whether I share any words publicly, I am walking out my hope every single day in those pages.
Walking it out.
Walking in it.
I guess I want to say here - share here, with you - is that it is our individual responsibility to curate, hold onto, and spread hope to ourselves and others every single day. I have spent a summer evaluating my personal approach to hope, finding hope, and writing about it.
I don’t know what this next leg of life, the following season, holds for me, but I do know this…I choose to be grateful for everything that got me here. It has all mattered. Everything matters.
❤️
Author’s Note: I wrote this essay about two weeks ago, but I have hesitated in posting it. Too personal. Too much potential accountability (I feel attacked by the “rough math” I did on just how many words I am writing daily.). Too many windows into my eight-year-old heart and mind as it was just beginning to process and self-soothe what was happening to/around her. Too much…well, Me.
…and maybe I am sharing it because I am on a Thoreau kick lately.
“Life isn't about finding yourself; it's about creating yourself. So live the life you imagined.”
- Henry David Thoreau
And I wonder if all of us don’t need a good kick in the pants to remember what the eight-year-old in us dreamed about and figure out if some of those dreams can’t still come true. One ticket for this rollercoaster ride called life…and all of that.