Hope alone will not cure us, but take it away and the outcome is certain.

Hope is the elevating feeling we experience when we see,

in the mind’s eye, a path to a better future.

Hope acknowledges the significant obstacles and pitfalls

along that path. True hope has no room for delusion.

Hope gives us the courage to confront our circumstances

and the capacity to surmount them.

— Jerome Groopman, MD, The Anatomy of Hope

Hope is not being ‘in denial.’ True hope factors in reality. But we need hope to fight off despair. Hope alone will not cure us, but take it away and the outcome is certain. I have this searing memory of being hooked up to chemo, enduring radiation to three parts of my body at once, and thinking… “if this is living, then I don’t want to live.” And some part of me (I’ll call her Hope), grabbed me by the lapels, shook me, and said… “Others have done it, you can do it.” And it got me through a crucial day. All I needed to know was that it was possible and then I could get through it.

Of all my tools, I wouldn’t have survived without hope and the belief in my ability to heal. So, for those sitting in that chemo chair right now, with your life light flickering… please think of what joy might be on the other side of that treatment. It is possible. I believe in you.

Hope can be imagined as a domino effect…a chain reaction…

each increment making the next increase more feasible.

— Jerome Groopman, MD, The Anatomy of Hope

I do not expect hope alone to save you. But it can inspire you to seek out the answers that will. Hope empowers you to be the master of your own healing, instead of sitting around waiting for some mythical white knight. Look around you and find something beautiful and suck that beauty into your being. Let it energize you to do one small but positive thing you couldn’t have thought you could do before that beauty filled you. That one positive thing will grow within you and the next day you will do a bigger positive thing and so on.

This post is from Book 2 of my Thrive Tribe Series, What I Did and Do and Why, a naturopathic protocol that helps me to survive and thrive, available from the bookstore, starting at $7. The book will be posted sequentially in its entirety on this blog, once a week. Subscriptions are free.