Respair: Recovering from Despair Through the Practice of Hope

I am crossposting here from my post at ALL THE CARE IN THE WORLD on Substack.

Radical resilience requires cultivating a hope practice.

Finding Hope

In the face of despair and challenging times, hope can serve as a powerful antidote, a skill that we can cultivate. My exploration of hope began in early 2024, prompted by a project with my dear friend Mary Freer, founder of Compassion Revolution. Several times Mary and I have engaged in creative projects together. For this year’s project, Mary suggested we focus on hope. What I learned through this exploration is that hope is an essential skill for world-building. Hope is a key part of my personal resilience tools to show up every day and work to create a more equitable world.

Understanding Hope

Initially, I viewed hope as a somewhat soft concept or happenstance. Also, I assumed that hope was adjacent enough to love, a concept I have explored deeply for nearly 15 years, and that there was not much for me to learn. However, as I reflected on Mariame Kaba's teaching, I began to see hope differently: “Hope isn’t an emotion... Hope is a discipline… we have to practice it every single day.” This perspective shifted my approach, framing hope as a rigorous practice rather than a passive feeling. 

Experiencing Despair

I began the year and this hope practice attempting to come to grips with the challenges present in my life. Over the past few years, I faced significant life events: losing my home to a fire, the untimely death of my brother, career changes, moves, and numerous significant challenges we are all facing on a societal level. Despair was a companion I had come to accept as part of life. I had not yet considered what skills I might build to navigate and see beyond despair as I imagined new ways and new worlds.

The Concept of Respair

Early in our hope practice, Mary sent me an article, Five Words We Should Bring Back into Use.  From the article:

“Respair”, Dent explains, means “fresh hope; a recovery from despair”.

This concept of respair resonated deeply with me and sparked ideas for how I might actively pursue the movement between despair and hope, what it might be like to acquaint myself with those steps, and challenging myself to come to deeply know how fresh hope could be the discipline Kaba referred to. 

Cultivating a Hope Practice

To embark on this journey, I developed a "respair field note" template to document my experiences with hope. This structured approach encouraged me to notice the small moments of hope in my daily life. Armed with my notebook, I began to observe the world around me more keenly, and soon, I was flooded with "hope alerts"—instances that sparked a sense of possibility inside me.

Noticing the Mundane

One of my first hope alerts occurred while sitting on my couch. I noticed a plant, the start of which had been a gift from a dear friend, thriving in my living space. This small observation led to a realization: hope often resides in the mundane. As I was running errands or about the tasks of daily life, I found hope in unexpected places, such as the vibrant atmosphere of a local library and in my neighborhood Buy Nothing group. Each of these movements towards hope and away from despair meant I grew a capacity for an active practice along a spectrum of hope.

The Emergence of Themes

As I documented my experiences, patterns began to emerge. I discovered that for me, fresh hope often materialized through connections—both with people and the environment. These connections were sometimes subtle, requiring a pause to truly perceive their significance. By actively seeking and acknowledging these moments, I began to cultivate a habit of hope. 

To be sure, despair took no breaks during this time. The genocides continued, the political landscape was fraught with unkindness and misinformation, I made another career change, and my parents' health declined. Despair continues to be a companion, yet I can use my hope discipline to show up and navigate the challenges, with the possibility of also building a better world.

Building Hope in Community

With my newfound understanding of hope and the joy of learning it in conversation with Mary, I felt curious about how the community was mapping hope and building its hope skills in these challenging times. I created an interactive public art installation, "Hope Factory," aiming to create a space for individuals to explore and nurture hope collectively. During Hope Factory, we respaired together - we pinned our despairs on one wall and what sparked hope on another wall. Then, using string pulled between despair and hope, we mapped the actions we took to move between these realities. We made Hope Zines, where participants could take their newfound hope skills out on hope field trips and look for hope alerts.

Cultivating Hope as a Skill

Through this exploration, I have come to know hope not just as a fleeting emotion but as a vital skill that can be practiced daily.  I see hope as another way I can invest in my own resilience so that I can show up to navigate the systemic and structural challenges we face. As the cracks in the system deepen, it is hope that I want to be able to rely on to create new ways of being and connecting together. Imagine what we can do together, committed to being seekers of fresh hope, as we acknowledge despair and yet build new worlds with our hope.

Join me for Radical Resilience: Cultivating Hope

I aim to finish 2024 full of hope. I hope you’ll join me for the last 100 days of the year to embark on a respair journey together, to build a hope-full practice. Learn more and register here.