Zealously Hopeful

“We are not okay.” In January of 2023, Brené Brown spoke these words over our group of exhausted public educators during her keynote at the TASA Midwinter gathering of Texas school leaders.

In an immediate sense, she was referring to the rocky reentry into “normal” life, post pandemic. More broadly, she spoke of our culture at large – the hate, disrespect, armor, and pace that characterize today’s society. And how harmful this is to the human souls hunkering down and trying to make it through the days.

As she acknowledged our lack of okayness, there was an almost audible exhale by the thousands of people in the room.

It’s been rough.

It’s still rough.

As I crawled into bed last night and read of yet one more tragic act of school violence a few miles away, another piece of my heart broke. And then it broke again when a friend texted and told me about their child’s traumatic experiences at school because they do not conform to gender norms. Throughout my life, I’ve been a zealot for hope. Obsessively trying to find the silver lining in daily clouds. Certain that around the next corner, we’ll be able to look back and life will be better as a result of the lessons learned or the hard events of today. Certain that in the universe there is always hope.

I’ve turned a few corners in my years, but damn, this is a doozy.

As a 19 year old, I found myself in a violent dating relationship. Ill equipped to navigate it, I spent the better part of a year experiencing the rage, fear, and incredibly hard-to-break cycle of emotional oppression. By the grace of God, an insightful nurse in the ER, and a strength that came from somewhere deep within, I broke free. And the life lessons and things I learned about myself in that season make me almost glad I endured it. After all, I married that guy’s roommate.

As a young family, a job change moved us to the west coast, 1500 miles away from all I’d ever known.  On our first day in town, I met another mom with her kids on the playground who befriended me, gave me her phone number, and after about 10 mins packed up to leave.  That evening, home alone because my husband was traveling, I put the girls to bed.  By the next morning, I discovered my car had been towed from the apartment parking lot and also that a sex offender was registered next door. I called the mom who had befriended me – the one I’d talked to for a total of 10 minutes.  She picked us up, supported me through school registration, helped me find a different apartment, and renewed my hope that somehow this was all going to be ok. 

During what I’ll disguise as an un-timestamped season in my professional career, I had a terrible boss. A classic example of big hat, no cattle. Lots of big expectations and grand demands, zero follow through or support for the dailyness of getting the work done. The joy I’d known in my career drained, I cried often, and dreams of being a Trader Joe’s check-out clerk nearly became a reality. In a moment of fate, I received a call from a colleague in a different district, and away I went to a role that was custom suited for my goals, values, and the community of integrity I craved.

Fifteen months ago, while working in my first private sector role, a mysterious calendar invite appeared on Monday morning’s schedule. I soon learned that my entire division was being laid off and we had to shut down our public school support projects and send in all of our equipment by the end of the week. After a career in public ed where layoffs were mostly foreign, this reality was jolting and disappointing. As unemployment became a reality, an opportunity arose to join a team with a corporate mission more closely aligned to my own. Much growth and opportunity were part of this new role, and I’d have more autonomy over the way I shaped my focus. Once again, hope prevailed and the universe did its thing.

Often, the things you don’t know you need are right on the other side of a really painful season. And the universe shows you that your hope wasn’t wasted.

This is why I still have a few strands of hope in my tired, cramping hand.

America is in a painful season. Our racist roots have surfaced, our vulnerability to be manipulated by propaganda is now well documented, and we have the choice between two candidates that couldn’t be more of a contrast if this had been screened by a Hollywood producer.

We have a middle aged, poised, educated, experienced, inclusive, effective communicator who also happens to be a woman, a woman of color.

And we have an elderly, meandering, name calling, twice-impeached, disability-mocking, race baiting, vindictive, inconsiderate, narcissistic, convicted felon who happens to be a deeply spray tanned white male.

And the race is close.

In this entire essay, it’s these 5 words that most shock and disturb me. AND THE RACE IS CLOSE. They shock me because of what they mean about how nearly half of the country feels – either openly through their behavior or privately by how they vote at the polls while no one is watching. Both are equally concerning.

They are illustrative of how media companies – some professing to be “fair and balanced” – have manipulated Americans to believe untruths. To trust them as “news” sources over the actual words coming out of the candidates’ mouths. To redefine truth and to create a narrative in which fact checking is somehow seen as partisan. They’ve lured people in through the guise of patriotism or a nationalized version of religion and convinced masses that ‘others’ are our enemy. Ironically, othering the same people my faith taught me to love the most.

The 5 words also demonstrate a wholesale failure of the public education system to which I’ve devoted my career. They reveal a lack of historical understanding and the inability of the public to think critically and demonstrate media literacy.

But here we are. Days away from our nation’s fate. Will our democracy continue to flourish? Will we be a country for all people? Or will we be governed by the tyrannical rich? Will we maintain decades old international alliances? Or will we metaphorically (or literally) build a wall around our country – detaching from the world and the humanity God gave us to embrace and support? Will we embrace freedom of and from religion? Or will we lapse into an ironic reinterpretation of our country’s founding by demanding that we are an exclusively Christian nation?

I cannot yet know the outcome. But I do know that these next 7 days (plus potentially weeks of uncertainty that follow) will be filled with moments of fear, stress, uncertainty, depression, calls to therapists, extra melatonin, and other justifiable reactions in the face of current circumstances. I’m going to try and remember that hope wins. Love wins. The universe will come through – somehow turning this crisis into an exemplar of the power of our humanity.

It’s really, really hard, and as Brené says, “we are not [currently] okay”. Things might get better next week, next year, or several years in the future, but given how impossible I’m finding it to live in this uncertainty, I’m forcing myself for now to zealously hope.