Here we be

I've described hope as my superpower; I grew up rural, queer and too quiet about the hurt. Now I'm finding that sometimes you have to leave hope behind. For instance, I will never carry a child in my body. Facing the question of how one gives up and carries on at the same time, I found myself working with images that reminded me of the months after my mother passed. In my experience, grieving is the way in which you find yourself anew in a place that is also radically altered. You come undone, and you also start to feel how the world keeps reaching out to you. That reaching, 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 this is the answer to 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, only one 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.