#4: Having Hope

Hope is the elevating feeling we experience when we see, in the mind’s eye, a path to a better future. Hope acknowledges the significant obstacles and pitfalls along that path. True hope has no room for delusion. Hope gives us the courage to confront our circumstances and the capacity to surmount them.

— Jerome Groopman, MD, The Anatomy of Hope

Hope is not being ‘in denial.’ True hope factors in reality. But we need hope to fight off despair. Hope alone will not cure us, but take it away and the outcome is certain. I have this searing memory of being hooked up to chemo, enduring radiation to three parts of my body at once, and thinking… “if this is living, then I don’t want to live.” And some part of me (I’ll call her Hope), grabbed me by the lapels, shook me, and said… “Others have done it, you can do it.” And it got me through a crucial day. All I needed to know was that it was possible and then I could get through it.

Of all my tools, I wouldn’t have survived without hope and the belief in my ability to heal. So, for those sitting in that chemo chair right now, with your life light flickering… please think of what joy might be on the…