Hope-y New Year 2020

January 10, 2020

Ten months ago I wrote my first “Hope-y” blog post, in which I explained that “Hope-y” sounds much more realistic and attainable to me than just pure “Hope.” Or how about “Hope-adjacent?” At this point in January, many of those New Year’s resolutions we all were so determined to make (and keep) have possibly taken a downward turn toward entropy as our future vision meets our daily reality. As a recovering perfectionist with a long history of fearing failure, I want to start off this clean slate of a year with a more realistic goal: Hope-y-ness. Hopeful and happy, but with the worn-in, “vintage” look that’s so popular nowadays. And it won’t show the stains and strains of the occasional mess. Easier to maintain, and much more comfortable.

It’s also important for me to acknowledge Hope (or Hope-y-ness) as a partner in balance to Fear, my constant and familiar companion. I spent a lot of lines last year writing about Fear and how it shows up in all sorts of ways, how I’m getting better at spotting it when it comes at me wearing a different disguise (humor instead of tears, impatience instead of paralysis). Choosing to act in spite of the fear is a daily, sometimes minute-by-minute intentional choice, and that can be so exhausting- even as it’s getting easier to do.

American author Audre Lorde, writing on her 50th birthday (and two weeks after a diagnosis of liver cancer), penned this about fear: “I want to write down everything I know about being afraid, but I’d probably never have enough time to write anything else. Afraid is a country where they issue us passports at birth and hope we never seek citizenship in any other country. The face of afraid keeps changing constantly, and I can count on that change. I need to travel light and fast, and there’s a lot of baggage I’m going to have to leave behind me. Jettison cargo.”

Instead of adding more goals and actions to the start of this new decade, what if we focused on subtracting excess baggage? Jettisoning some cargo? Letting go of old stories and past regrets so that we can be fully present in the Present? That’s the only way we can create space for a Hope-y future. There is such freedom in choosing Hope (Hope-y-ness) over Fear, and it is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, over and over and over again.

Now, I am faced with the prospect of genuine good news– our son is coming home– and I am desperately wanting to hang on to Hope. I don’t want the marks I carry from past fears realized to dampen these potential-filled days ahead. My parenting PTSD wants to drag me back down to the days where I was faking it but definitely not making it. Back to before I learned to stay balanced by rooting myself only in the present moment (with the deep understanding that nothing is permanent). No lingering in the past or dipping into the unwritten future. It’s watered my Hope down to Hope-y-ness, but that’s okay. Like Audre Lorde, I need to travel light and fast. And if Hope is “the thing with feathers,” according to that well-known Emily Dickinson poem, then Hope-y-ness is a feather itself, nothing at all that will weigh you down (especially with unmet expectations).

The not-so-divine in me acknowledges the not-so-divine in you, and loves you because of this shared humanity. So “Hope-y New Year” my friends. Here’s a feather for your travels–