There will be a way through

There is always a path through the forest
Matt Haig, The Comfort Book

“I’ve spent much of my life thinking about hope. In recent years I’ve spent a lot of time writing about it. Before then, I clutched onto hope like a security blanket. In my twenties I had a breakdown. A fusion of severe depression and panic disorder that made me fall so hard I spent three years of my life desperately wanting to die. It is hard to cultivate hope in such a state of despair, but, somehow, I gathered enough of it to stay alive and see a better future.

Hope can feel in scarce supply for everyone these days. Global pandemics, brutal injustices, political turmoil, and glaring inequalities can all take their toll on your reserves. And yet, the thing with hope is that it is persistent.. It has the potential to exist even in the most troubled times.

Hope isn’t the same thing as happiness. You don’t need to be happy to be hopeful. You need instead to accept the unknowability of the future, and that there are versions of that future that could be better than the current one. Hope, in its simplest form, is the acceptance of possibility.

The acceptance that if we are suddenly lost in a forest, there will be a way through.

All we need is a plan, and a little determination.”

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There will be a way through.

I don’t know yet what the plan is, but it starts with Loving Louder. We can’t go wrong there.