Here we be

About this series

According to the Oxford English dictionary, hope can be defined as “a feeling of trust." In the past, I've described it as my superpower. This sinewy hope has kept my head and heart above water for some time. Among other things, it helped me survive growing up rural and queer during a time not much better than the present. As a young one, I learned that if I could see possibility, I could keep going. I came to trust hope. This trust has been shaken in recent years. As I get older, I'm learning that sometimes I have to leave behind something for which I once hoped. This new knowledge hurts. I know and respect loss as a part of life; I just didn't expect to lose hope. It feels necessary to answer this question: how does one give up and carry on at the same time?

As I started looking for answers, I found myself working with images that unexpectedly reminded me of the months after my mother passed. It turns out that the heart of my question and of this body of work is about grieving loss. In my experience, grieving is the way in which you find yourself anew in a place that is also radically altered. Getting there often involves looking for a way out, looking for the thing you lost, and/or just lying on the floor weeping because the pull of gravity is too much. You come undone, and pass through days like a ghost. In this permeable state, you also start to feel how the world keeps reaching out to you. That reaching? That, to me, is hope. It is the world reminding me that I am a part of it, and it is a part of me.

So, to answer my question: hope doesn't come from within me, and it exists independent of any outcome. It is in the letting go and the carrying on. My mother wrote a haiku, the last line of which I can now remember: “Death gives rise to wings.” What I think she was talking about is the way that letting go allows us to rise to meet the present. This is the moment that will see us through, not all the ones that came before or any possibility of one to come. My mom was pretty sinewy too.

In the present moment, things that we hoped for and even saw manifest are being taken away—bodily autonomy, trans and queer rights, affirmative action. We are living in a world on fire, at war with each other and ourselves. Trust is in short supply. Hope still keeps me going though. It is a process, yes. Loss is a part of it, yes. There is no way around that loss, only through it; oh, yes. There are no guarantees, and I will continue to hope that we will find our way. I know that I am not alone. I feel you with me. May we find ourselves anew in a place radically altered from which we came.