FINDING HOPE HAIKU IN THE TIME OF COVID

Reading with children Facetime is the next best thing When snuggling is out. Walking with Kathy To be outside where life is So spectacular. People delighted By an unexpected call I happened to make. Call from a cousin Who lives in Ontario Remembering me. Grateful for wellness And grocery delivery A home that I love. Making up stories Wednesdays are the send-out days Getting letters back. Balcony pansies Pandemic insensitive Blooming like crazy Media searching For good news to give us hope And give them hope too. Choosing not to clean Because I know there will be Time for it later. Choosing to clean now Because I know I will be Glad I did later. Thinking of places I’m glad not to be in now And those I still love. Sweet whiff of supper Slow cooking tantalizing While I watch Frasier Counting on science Admiring the leadership Of our officials Dreaming a future When this time will be the past That made us all wiser.

AUDACIOUS HOPERS HOPE FOR THINGS

Audacious hopers hope for things No practical person would dream of hoping for, Things we are certain can never happen Given the current circumstances. Audacious hopers drive us crazy Because they simply will not listen To our predictions about the future. Audacious hopers are in denial! There’s nothing quite so irritating As trying to protect audacious hopers From the disappointment we’re afraid they will face. Audacious hopers test our courage! BUT: Audacious hopers change the world And when they do we call them heroes. We buy magazines with articles about them And hire them to make motivational speeches. When audacious hopers tell their stories About the people they met on the journey, I’d rather be named as the one who supported Than mentioned as the barrier who had to be thwarted.

ON CHOOSING TO BE HOPEFUL

Some days I am hopeful, Others not so much. It’s the same world on any specific day Regardless of how hopeful I am, Only the possibilities for days ahead are different. Being hopeful is not wishing. Wishing is for Disneyland And birthday candles And the days when I buy a lottery ticket Just because I have money. Being hopeful is not goal setting. Goal setting is for sales teams And athletes And fund-raisers at the United Way. Hopeful is a way of feeling When I see the world, With certain possibilities, Of how good things could happen But not quite enough of the picture To lay out a detailed plan. On days when I am not hopeful There are still possibilities, Only I don’t see them So I think they are not there. And that is why, On any given day No matter what is happening It is better to be hopeful If I have a choice Which sometimes I do. And sometimes I don’t Which means I have to wait Until I do.

THE POWER AND PERIL OF FAINT HOPES

Be wary of the faint hopes With their promise of the most to gain In the presence of so little to lose. It is the faint hopes in their faintness, That are most easily mistaken for abandoned hopes And therefore carry the power To disappoint cruelly by surprise. Be respectful of the faint hopes With their power to seem unimportant For the greatest power to make change Where change ought not to be possible Waits unseen in their nurture.

ON HOPING FOR THE BEST AND PREPARING FOR THE WORST

Hope for the best and be prepared for the worst. That is what the pragmatists say. Quite frankly, I find that statement a little confusing. At a glance the statement appears to be wise, a good balance of hope and caution. Do we hope that our houses will not catch fire, even as we purchase fire extinguishers and teach our children which exits to use and where to meet if the house should burst into flame? Do we not buy health insurance when we hope to be well? Do we not lock our doors even though we hope not to be robbed? But, on second glance, the idea of hoping for the best while preparing for the worst gives me trouble. Maybe it’s because I have counselled so many people with depression so crippling that it will not allow them to hope for the best. Everything they do seems to be directed toward preparing for the worst. The preparation becomes so compelling a preoccupation that good things within their reach can elude their grasp, remaining as unnoticed as bed bugs in the light of day. The problem, I think, is that hope in the context of hoping for the best is a passive thing, while preparing is an active occupation. We can get so busy preparing that any benefits of hope become invisible to us. Hope isn’t much use until we put a little preparation into it. One of my favourite things about hope is that, when treated to attention and respect, it tends to direct our activities. To get the best out of hope, we have to treat it the way we treat a treasured infant. We can’t simply mention it and expect it to take care of itself. We have to sit with it, inquire about it, experiment with it, nurture it, work towards its goals. We have to invest in it. Even as we invest some effort into preparing for the worst. When it comes to sayings, I think I prefer: Hope for the best and prepare for it. Also prepare for the worst, and hope the time you spent preparing for it will turn out to have been wasted.

A DOG INQUIRES ABOUT RETIREMENT

Pirate: I heard you talking about your calendar. Me: Oh really? Pirate: I know you said this September would be very different from other Septembers because you’d be retired. Me: It will be different. Pirate: Yes. And I have a few questions. Me: Ask away. Pirate: Is it true that you are facilitating hope discussions at the Alzheimer Society and the Artspace Housing Co-op? Me: Yes, that’s true. Pirate: And is it true that you are planning a keynote webinar for the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention, and a hope workshop for the ATA substitute teachers, and a trip to Yellowknife to work for the CNIB? Me: That’s right. Pirate: And do you really plan to see some clients on Thursday mornings before your regular counselling gig at the Walk-In Counselling Society? Me: Yes, you’ve got it. But not very many clients, and I’ll be limiting my work to people who have care-giver stress, and people adjusting to illness or disability. Pirate: And will you be doing some storytelling gigs in September? Me: Yes indeed. Pirate: All this sounds very interesting. Me: Yes, I believe it will be. In fact, I’m rather looking forward to it all. Pirate: Hmmmmm … Me: Is something troubling you Pirate? Pirate: I’m wondering if I have somehow misunderstood the concept of retirement.

PREPARING FOR CHRISTMAS

I got down the Christmas dishes this morning, put them on the lower shelves where they can be easily reached, put the every-day dishes up on the high shelves you can’t reach without a ladder. Yesterday I played a new Christmas CD. The day before I practiced some of the Christmas songs that never become listenable unless I practice them for several weeks—the songs I didn’t practice at all last year. Christmas, in my world it seems, is arriving early. Last year I didn’t prepare for Christmas. Well, I suppose I prepared, in the way a sleep-walker or a robot might prepare. I didn’t anticipate. I didn’t feel Christmas. Christmas came last year. It came without my help though I did whatever it was that I had to do. One day, very close to Christmas, I got a ladder and brought the dishes down. One day, I think it was boxing Day, I played a few Christmas CD’s. Baby Ben made his grand entry into the world on new Year’s eve and, as he pulled us forward into the future, I observed with relief that the whole business of holidays was finally over. I hated last November. Last November we were closing down my beloved programs at Hope foundation. I was saying good-bye to clients. I was mourning the loss of my colleagues. We were making adjustments to accommodate david’s changing health. We were paying daily hospital visits to our frail and cherished Gramma. Last November was a lousy month. December was just as bad. Last November I didn’t want to do the things I like to do. If something came up that might be fun, I did it reluctantly. I caught myself hoping I wouldn’t get any Christmas presents. It was a very strange time. But I guess I learned something a long the way, something practical and useful. A good thing it is too, for this November finds me doing painful work--hope work with groups of people who have recently lost a colleague to suicide. “what do we do,” they ask, “after we accept that it is normal to feel guilt and anger?” The answer to this question is not clear to me. I suppose there really are no rules to govern it. But I have, with the memory of last November fixed firmly in mind, approached these workshops with the conviction that there is no moral reason why we can’t consider the possibility of seeking out positive emotions like joy, awe, interest, inspiration, amusement, contentment, pride, gratitude, love and hope. There is no moral reason not to pursue things that delight us, things that fascinate us, things that refresh us, work that really matters. Circumstances may rob us of the desire for these things, but there is no moral reason why we must deny them to ourselves. Perhaps this conviction is helpful to others as well. My email contains a thank-you note: “Thank you so much for your wisdom, encouragement and hope on Friday. They meant a lot to us and to me personally. I had not realized that I had started to give up some of the things that I love to do until you brought it to my attention. I now know that I need to once again do the things that refresh and delight me.” When I read that note, it occurred to me that I had already started looking forward to Christmas this year. But it was the note that woke me to the realization that I hadn’t noticed the change.

ON HOPE AND AGING

Here is one difference between working with seniors—as I so often do now—and working with younger people. When you work with younger people, you are supported in hope by the unspoken assumption of possible continuous improvement. When you work with seniors, you are challenged to have hope while, at the same time, acceptung the premise that people may already have experienced the best moment of their lives. The hopes of older people are not so much about achievement. It is less about what they hope to do and more about how they hope to be treated. It is less about who they hope to meet and more about how those they already know will show loyalty to them.

THE VIDEO SHOOT

FIREFLY DIGITAL “Since just after the time of the dinosaurs the folks at Firefly started producing videos. Over 400 videos in the last 10 years. The exciting thing is we’re just getting started and although the technology is changing at a rapid and exciting pace the core of our work remains the same – it’s all about story telling.” What a pleasure it can be when you come, unexpectedly, into contact with somebody who does a job exceptionally well! It can happen almost anywhere—in a bank, in a tangle of leaking basement pipes, over a wasps’ nest under a veranda, in a counsellor’s office, or in a classroom. It can even happen on a video shoot—as I discovered last week, when I worked on a video with Tracy Bennett from Firefly. I confess, my expectations were low. I have been involved with a few video shoots in the past. Some of them were worse than others. In general, I’d label them in the category of inconvenient and unsatisfying, though the resulting productions haven’t been as bad as the memory of the production. So I would not say I was looking forward to participating in an e-learning video on hope and self-care for the care-partner support programs of the Alzheimer Society. But I have been working with the Alzheimer society for many years, so I agreed to do a video, and I labelled the dreaded experience in the category of “taking one for the team.” My less-than-perfect experience with video shoots has been only partially the fault of the video-shooting process. To be fair, the topic of hope is a difficult topic to grasp and squeeze into a few cogent sound-bytes. Ask me a simple question about hope, and you’ll get a rambling answer. I am, it seems, a storyteller. In the short video format I try to focus on content. Somehow, my content rarely blossoms without the story, and the story that ends up taking first place in the video is unquestionably a story I told, but not the story I had wanted to tell. The preliminary work on the Alzheimer shoot was handled long distance. Like all the video producers who have gone before her, Tracey Bennett had no idea what a HOPE LADY was, or why she was interviewing THE HOPE LADY for an e-learning video on Alzheimer care. She called me from Halifax to find out what it is that I say to groups of family care partners, year after year after year. I admit that I couldn’t seem to tell her over the phone. “We have conversations, I said. “Spouses and adult children of people with Alzheimer disease feel more hopeful at the end than they did at the beginning. That’s my skill, constructing conversations that give people hope.” Even as I said these things, true as they are, I could feel the cloud of vaguery descending. What story was I trying to tell? It was the same old story, beginning again. In fact, I was under-stating the conversational case. The conversations I have with care partners at the Alzheimer Society are not entirely unscripted. When I sit down for a conversation with a dozen care partners, I follow a brief handout and fill in the interesting parts with my stories and theirs. Grasping with Tracy for some sort of clarity, I offer to send her a handout I use for Alzheimer discussions. In return, she sent me a draft video script. This was the point at which I began to feel that we might be on a better track. The interview guide that accompanied the script stated some learning objectives that looked suspiciously like my goals for sessions with the care partners: 1. Understand the importance of hope on the journey as a care partner. 2. Identify ways to maintain hope in the face of this progressive illness. 3. Understand the importance of caring for one’s self as a family care partner. 4. Describe when and how to ask for help. The script had only a few questions for an interviewer to ask. My answers were roughed in. I was encouraged to add to the answers, but not to change the questions. Using that script, I prepared in advance to shoot my portion of the video. Some day a video featuring me in conversation with an actress named Liana will appear on the Internet. It was made in the manner of a movie with actors, but it will appear to be the filming of an interview. To the viewer, it will appear that Liana is brimming with curiosity about hope, the experience of Alzheimer care partners, and the ever present need to maintain good mental health when you care for people who have dementia. It will appear that she has asked just the right questions at the right moments to get the story out. Average viewers will not suspect that the questions came, not from Liana, but from Tracy. There will be no reason to believe that half of the questions were asked later, then inserted into my original answers, after Tracey had heard the content of my answers to the few scripted questions that were asked of me in the first round. Nobody will guess that some of the smiling and nodding was recorded later, then added in and thoughtful pauses. They won’t know that each of the questions was filmed twice, from different angles, while the answers were only filmed once. They will think they are seeing a single interview, start to finish. That is what I would think, if I hadn’t been there to witness the process. The entire process of shooting took about 45 minutes. From this, they intend to develop a 15-minute interview. Tracy was the person who so capably managed the process. I was blown away by her intuition for adding the questions in after the answers were given. She did this on the fly, in the space of a few moments. But while she managed the process of filming the original script, she was also managing the content. She added a whole new section based on her own curiosity about something we hadn’t discussed. She and I had a conversation off camera, then she scripted questions for Liana to ask. Seldom have I had the privilege of watching someone with such a gift for hearing a story and making a story at the same time. The final product will be the joining of a hundred tiny pieces, trimmed to fit like panels on a patchwork quilt. I asked Tracy if she would be the person doing the final edit. She said she doubted it. She would be going on to do something else. She said it was very hard for her to let a project go, to trust the final edit to a person who had not been in the room at the time of filming. But she knew, from experience that the video would turn out well because the foundation was there. I didn’t doubt it. How could I?

LETTING GO

The other day I sat down at a table, spread out my papers, and prepared to make a cell phone call. And then it came upon me, quicker than a speeding freight train, more surprising than a bolt of thunder in the bright sunshine—a stab of longing for the past. I had not seen it coming, even though I was at Hope House, where I go now on Tuesdays, to run our final hope and strengths groups for people with chronic pain. In need of a quiet space for calling, I had ventured into the office that was mine for so long, sat down at the table where I worked through the hopes and fears of thousands of people. Even though that office is no longer mine, I did it without expecting it to hurt. I thought I was over that. I wasn’t over that. I believe that in future I will look upon the winter of 2012-2013 as a winter of losses. It was the winter when my job as a hope cousnellor came to an end, the winter when I spent a lot of time visiting Mum Edey in hospital. It was the winter in which I put on the last pair of soft woolen slippers my mother-in-law made for me. In the past 35 years she had made dozens of pairs, a perfect fit, the ultimate pattern to thrill my feet. I had worn them every day, worn holes in their heels, holes in their toes, and then surrendered them at the point when there was more hole than slipper, surrendered them in favour of a fresh new pair. I still had one slightly-worn pair left when it became clear that Mum Edey would not likely be well enough to knit another. Small holes were showing on the left foot by the time she breathed one last gentle breath and skipped into a forever quiet. “Should I keep this one last pair?” I wondered. But Mum was never one to keep things, and neither am I. The best tribute was declared in the wearing. The other day I held up the remains of two tattered slippers. The bare floor came through to my foot whenever I wore them. “I’ll send them on their way now,” I said to myself. And then, as I tossed them into the garbage, it came upon me, quicker than a speeding freight train, more surprising than a bolt of thunder in the bright sunshine—a stab of longing for the past. I thought I was ready to let them go. I wasn’t ready. I picked up the slippers and put them back on the slipper shelf, just as I had picked up the chronic pain groups for one last wonderful go at intensive hope work. And thus it seems to me that if the winter of 2012-2013 will be remembered as a winter of losses, then the spring and summer of 2013 might later be recalled as the period of trial, practice and preparation for the difficult task of letting go of beloved things and people.

CHAIN LETTER

The other day I got a chain letter. It was a different sort of chain letter, not the familiar kind that you send on without making changes, propelled to send it on by the threat of bad luck to the first chain-breaker. This chain letter changed with every sending. In fact, it was a bit of a tangled chain. It tangled on its weaving journey, shuttling back and forth across the country, traveling across the world and coming back. Its order was tangled too, email being what it is, always showing us the last letter first, previous correspondence chained below. And the topic was a bit tangled, though the theme was clearly hope, hope that became more entangled with love as it traversed the generation gap and returned by a slightly different route. I was intrigued to find myself both at the end of the chain and in the middle. So I untangled it. On March 31, Easter Sunday, Mark rogers from Waterloo Ontario wrote a piece on hope to his colleagues at Habitat for Humanity. This is what he wrote. “I thought I would send out my weekly rant today in order to wish you and those you love a very Happy Easter! Regardless of your religious persuasion, I think just about anyone can appreciate the message and themes of the Easter story, namely: suffering, sacrifice, resurrection, new life. Each year, millions of people around the world rally to celebrate this message because it has such profound significance for everyone of us. For at its core, it’s a story of hope and new beginnings. And who us could live without a sense of hope, or survive this journey of life without second chances? In his best-selling book, Man’s Search for Meaning, former Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl, chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp prisoner which led him to discover the importance of finding meaning in all forms of existence, even the most sordid ones, and thus a reason to continue living. In a heart-wrenching manner, Frankl describes the essential difference that characterizes those that survived these unfathomable circumstances from those that did not. His answer: HOPE! Without a sense hope humans by nature surrender to their circumstances, believing that their present conditions will remain the same no matter what effort is exerted to change them. And yet, with a sense of hope, regardless of how granular that hope may be, individuals can overcome almost unimaginable situations and triumph in the end. As Martin Luther King, Jr. once stated, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” Building Homes, Building Hope! I want you to stop today and truly reflect on that tag line, because it’s more than just our organizational banner. It’s who we are in the world. It’s what we represent to people around the globe. It’s our mission, our meaning, and our message! Far more than simply building shelters for families in need of affordable housing, we offer them a sense of hope, enrichment, optimism, and new beginnings. And when people sense they have even “a chance” for a better life, it’s astonishing what they will do with it! Just ask any of our Habitat partner families! Frankly, I cannot think of a better organization, a better mission, or a better message to be associated with on this Easter Sunday! Building Homes, Building Hope! It may very well be the best message you could share with someone this Easter!” On April 2, a colleague on Vancouver Island responded to that email with a note of her own, sent back to Waterloo. She wrote: “Good morning, Mark. I just wanted to send you a very personal note about your rant this morning. Nine years ago today, my first husband lost his battle with cancer. He had been diagnosed with terminal cancer about two and a half years prior. Things progressed very quickly for us, as he found out that he had cancer in September 2001 and, within about another month, found out that he was terminally ill and had basically no hope of survival. Your message was especially poignant for me today as I remembered that he had meetings with Wendy Edey of the University of Alberta’s Hope Studies Central regarding his situation and how he found hope, even in the midst of his seemingly hopeless situation. We also met with Wendy together once and discussed how we were both able to find hope even in the very grim situation that we found ourselves in (our sons were 10 and 12 at the time of diagnosis). I remember that we just cried and cried and cried. He thinking about the end of his earthly life and missing all the significant events in our sons’ lives and me trying to figure out how I could possibly go on without him and raise our boys on my own. With some thought-provoking questions from Wendy, he admitted that he felt confident and hopeful that his family would be okay and would carry on after his passing and I admitted that, even though I thought it would take a very long time, that I felt hopeful that the boys and I would continue to live our lives and would eventually be able to find comfort in happy memories instead of always being surrounded by the rawness of our grief. This is getting a bit long, so I will wrap it up! In a nutshell, I truly believe that Habitat for Humanity can provide a beacon of hope for families, even when they feel that their situation is utterly hopeless.” Later on April 2, Mark distributed that note to some Habitat colleagues. One of them was Mary in Edmonton, who read it with interest, recognizing my name, knowing that our daughters are friends. . And so, even later on April 2, Mary passed the email along to Kate in south Africa. On April 3, Kate sent the email to Ruth in Guelph Ontario, just a short drive from Waterloo. On April 5, Ruth sent the email to her mother in Edmonton. “Somebody wrote about you,” she said when she sent it. And along that tangled chain, my words of hope work, spoken at a time of great suffering and remembered for 12 years, came back to me.

REHAB THEN, HOPE WORK NOW

These days I am reflecting a lot on the differences between what I knew then, and what I know now, what I did then and what I do now. This week it will be 36 years since I got my first real professional job—a position at the CNIB, providing services to people with very low vision, mostly seniors. I was 23 years old, looking forward to a lifetime of infinite possibility. The seniors I met were inspired by me, and that was good, but they also pitied me—many of them in unguarded tearful sympathy. “You are so young,” they would cry in tremendous distress. “It is so sad.” I was immediately defensive. I did not want their pity or their tears. I wanted to give them accessible alarm clocks and library books on tape. I wanted to offer them white canes to ease their travel and magnifiers to aid their cooking. In short, I wanted them to stop grieving their losses and get on with the business of planning productive futures for themselves. Though many of them welcomed me and the great services I came to deliver, emotionally, it was difficult for me to reach them with anything more personal than professional detachment. Except for shared humour, an asset that worked wonders for me even at that early stage in my development, I wanted to set a boundary that said, “I am not you. Don’t pity me. I am young. I am doing fine. I am planning a great future. Leave me out of your sadness.” Years passed and I moved on to other employers, other educations, other life stages. Now, 36 years later, I am seeing people of that same population, seniors with low and deteriorating vision. Things are the same, and also different. The CNIB still delivers accessible alarm clocks, audio library books, white canes and magnifiers. More people are being served, and the population is older, largely because people are, in general older and healthier than they used to be. I am now a Registered Psychologist who has been hired because of my long experience in counselling for depression with people in all sorts of difficult situations. Others deliver the clocks and canes and such to my clients. My job is to deliver the emotional well-being that will inspire people to be the best that they can be. Something else is different too—and that is my point of view. A man has come to my office. He’s a young man by my current standards, only 77 years old. He’s had audio books for quite a while now. He was twice prescribed antidepressants—something that would never have happened to such an ordinary man 36 years ago. He stopped taking them both times. “They didn’t help,” he said. I start asking him about other medications he is taking—something I would never have done 36 years ago. He tells me about some, giving me the reasons why he got them. To show that I understand how he feels, I tell him I am almost 60 now, coping with ailments one at a time, quite often looking back with longing to the days when I could simply jump out of bed first thing in the morning without first causing to call a meeting of my body parts to ask who wants to move first. He starts to laugh. He tells me how frustrated he is with his television. He can’t operate it. He can’t see the menu on the screen. When I say that I too am furious that we can no longer get a television that a blind person can use, he perks up and tells me he wants to smash it. I get this. He has learned, as I have learned, that one wrong move on the remote will disable the TV and you won’t be able to use it until a sighted person comes along. He has learned how easy it is to make that one wrong move. We are different in TV watching, I not having much time for it. But I am well aware that in only a moment I also will be 77 years old, no longer employed, a woman with plenty of time to watch a TV I may not be able to use because I can’t access the information about channel and volume changes. Together we talk about the kind of message we need to deliver to TV manufacturers. We envision TV-throwing events where we will go together. He is laughing again. I am noticing that seniors don’t pity me any more. They see that I am almost 60 and have somehow wended my way through life’s challenges. Instead of talking about the magnifiers they need, we talk first about the times in their lives when they were faced with unwelcome changes. We talk about what they did in those instances. We wonder if they have changed much since then, if they still intend to be resilient, to be forward-looking, to take what comes to them and move on. They will hear and internalize this kind of talk from me because they can see me counting the years of my own future. Now that we are standing on the same ground, it’s hope talk pure and simple. “This is the kind of person you proved yourself to be. In the face of this unwelcome change, what kind of person do you hope to be?”

WHAT DO TAX AUDITORS NEED?

In one of those twists of probability that surely can only happen to a hope speaker, I found myself standing before a hotel ballroom filled with tax auditors—yes, tax auditors hearing a speech from THE HOPE LADY. A slight diversion from the usual assortment of social workers and patients with chronic disease. In this business you never know what might be around the corner. Now I would be less than honest if I claimed a long history of respect for the tax auditing profession. Some of my most colourful not-heard-from-the-mouth-of-THE-HOPE-LADY language I keep in reserve for the every-so-often days when they send me the letters demanding that I prove I am still blind and therefore entitled to the full amount of the disability exemption. . More of that language is saved for the days when they write for proof that we actually gave all that money we claimed to have given to charity. But the lady who arranged the speech and shaped the topic made the case with eloquence. “Tax auditors need hope too,” she said. And when I thought about how it must feel to be the people it’s okay to hate, even in our tolerance-striving society, it seemed that she was probably right.

ON BEING HOPEFUL

How can I look to a less-than-promising future and be hopeful at the same time? 1. Hope audaciously. Others can give you statistics, predictions and probabilities, but only you can decide what to hope for. So decide. 2. Find hope in yourself. Discover how it feels to be hopeful. Hope is an emotion. Where does your body feel it? In your chest, your knees, your eyes or somewhere else? 3. Express your hopes. Use the language of ”I hope”. Check for that hopeful feeling when you say “I hope”. You may be surprised to find that others are willing to share your hopes, maybe even willing to work on them. 4. Hang out with hopeful people. You know you have found the right people when you notice that you feel hopeful when you are with them. Avoid people who bring you down. 5. Look for symbols of hope. Collect things that could remind you of hope at times when you might need it. 6. Remember things that turned out better than you expected. Tell others about them. 7. Remember impossible things that became possible. Tell others about them. 8. Take the long view. Remember things that took longer than you expected. Tell others about them. 9. Say things that make you hopeful. Speak as if you believe a hopeful future could happen. Use the language of “when” and yet”. Start sentences with, “I believe.” 10. Do things that make you hopeful. Call them acts of hope. 11. Hoping is a dynamic process. Keep finding new things to hope for. Wendy Edey Registered Psychologist wendy.edey@ualberta.ca 780-690-8452 www.thehopelady.blogspot.com

IF I WERE BEING BULLIED, WHAT WOULD GIVE ME HOPE?

With so much attention focused on bullying these days, I’ve been wondering what kind of talk would give me hope if I were being bullied. Of course, if I were being bullied, the bullying would probably have been going on for some time, and I would likely have already tried a number of things. I might have tried telling the bullies to stop, or ignoring them, or telling somebody about it. I might even have tried moving away. And having tried these things and found them to be ineffective would definitely have sucked out a lot of my hope. I might even be feeling that I should give up because the situation is hopeless. Now all of us know that hope is power. People who have hope are active. They look for options. If there’s one thing all bullying victims lack, it is certainly power. So if I were being bullied, and I told you about it, what could you say to me that would give me hope? You could say, “I believe that what they are doing to you is absolutely wrong!” You might not say that because you’d think I already know you believe it’s wrong. But if I were being bullied, I’d probably think it was my fault, and I’d be wondering if the bullies were right. I’d need to hear what you believe. I’d need to hear it more than once. You could say, “The human race hasn’t figured out how to stop bullying yet, so we have to work hard at finding solutions.” If you said that, you’d be hinting that the human race might just solve this problem some day. Even if I didn’t think you could solve my problem right now, the idea that you had a vision of solving it could give me hope. You could say, “I know you feel terrible now, but your life will be a lot happier when they stop bullying you.” That would give me hope, because it would show me that you can see a time when they will stop. If I were being bullied, I wouldn’t be able to see that time on my own. Most important of all, you could say, “I will help you deal with this. I will stick by you even if it goes on for a while before we find a solution. I will be your friend. I will not give up. You can count on me.” If I were being bullied, and you talked this kind of language to me, I might just keep on hoping. I might just keep on trying. Both of us would be stronger, more committed to getting something done. Both of us would have more hope. Both of us would have more power. If there’s one thing that scares off a bully, it’s knowing that other people have power. (This article was first published in the Edmonton Examiner, 24/10/2012)

THE HOPE LADY'S FUTURE

There’s a question I’ve been thinking a lot about lately: What is the difference between the Hope Foundation and THE HOPE LADY? It’s a difficult question to consider, the two—Hope Foundation and HOPE LADY having been so closely intertwined for 17.5 years. Still, there’s no getting away from it. It is a question that simply will not go away, because the Hope Foundation is a non-profit organization managed by a board of directors. Those directors have given notice that the Hope Foundation will officially close December 31 2012. Hope research will be the responsibility of the University. Physical assets will be dispersed. Holiday pay will be added to final paycheques. Come January 1 THE HOPE LADY will no longer carry a key that fits the lock on the door of Hope House. Her business telephone number will be reassigned in the campus phone system. And thus we come to a different question, another one that simply will not be thrust aside: If a Hope Foundation falls victim to a lack of financial support in the jungle of non-profit organizations, is there still a HOPE LADY? The answer to this question is clear and unclear at the same time. Yes, there will still be a HOPE LADY in 2013. She will most certainly be different from the 2012 version in some ways. Though we don’t know exactly how those differences will be manifested, we do know about some things. This seems a good place in which to state them, for she will certainly be doing many things that she loves. It’s more hopeful to focus first on the knowns. THE HOPE LADY will be blogging in 2013. This promise she has made to herself. THE HOPE LADY loves blogging. You may wonder about this, given the stretches when she does not blog at all. But rest assured that, at those times, she is thinking about blogging, explaining to herself the reasons for the gap, and planning what she will write when she starts again. Blogging gives hope to THE HOPE LADY. It clears her thinking. It sometimes makes her laugh. She will need all of these things, just as she has needed them in the past. THE HOPE LADY will be making public appearances. Some dates are already booked and have been for a long time. She will be doing conference keynotes, making her knowledge about how to use hope and strengths tools in counselling and group work available in workshops for professionals, and facilitating hope discussions for groups of people who are trying to find hope and strength in difficult times. THE HOPE LADY will still be supervising students who are learning to be counsellors. She won’t be able to do this at the Hope Foundation, but she is committed to supervising the Master’s students studying counselling psychology at the University of Alberta. She does this every Wednesday morning, and has for years. It is one of her great pleasures. Now for the unknowns. THE HOPE LADY does not yet know how she will exercise her love of counselling. A lot of people say they would not welcome the opportunity to deal with people who have illnesses, depressions, chronic pain. But this kind of work has made her very happy in the past, and she’d like to find a way to keep doing it. She will still, after all, be a Registered Psychologist. THE HOPE LADY does not know how she will deal with the looming loneliness. She is accustomed to arriving at the office knowing she will be in the company of friends. She is used to laughing some time in the first five minutes of the workday. She is, by nature, a social being and those social needs have been splendidly met on a daily basis through a shared enthusiasm for knowledge, challenges and experiments in the company of some of the finest people the universe ever created. It won’t be easy being THE HOPE LADY without a Hope Foundation. Without the supporting structure of a Hope Foundation it won’t be easy to be known, to be respected, to be reached. If the Hope Foundation had weathered the financial storm, I would have faced a different problem a few years hence. I would have had to wonder how to retire THE HOPE LADY when I retired from the Hope Foundation. Retirement would have offered certain perks. These I would have presented to her as an incentive. THE HOPE LADY might have welcomed later morning starts, more holidays, less drafting of annual reports and calculation of statistics for funding requests. She likely would have retired—albeit with a lot of complaining. But she still would have wanted to be THE HOPE LADY—wanted it because she liked it so much. Things did not turn out the way we had hoped. The Hope Foundation took early retirement. Seeing the inevitability of this, I have presented all the advantages to THE HOPE LADY. She can sleep late. She can stay home on cold snowy days. She can take a holiday whenever she wants. She can join a bridge club, sing in a daytime choir. But THE HOPE LADY has made her position clear. She is not ready for retirement yet. She has insisted on staying with me. She’s stuck like glue and hard to shake. Now I just have to figure out what, exactly, to do with her.

HOPING, COPING AND MOPING WITH CHANGE

A change is coming up for me. It will happen on December 31. It’s not a change I wanted, but it’s coming anyway. Managing that change will take some focus, some thought, some flexibility. Is that a good way to start thinking it through? No, let me try again. A change has already begun for me. It’s the change that happens when you begin to plan for a change on a specified date, take for example, December 31. Managing my life during the change is taking some focus, some thought, some flexibility. So here I am, doing the three things I tend to do in the face of looming change: hoping, coping and moping. Hoping, coping and moping. Even as I write these three words I suspect I have put them in the wrong order. Of course it’s only natural for somebody who calls herself THE HOPE LADY to put hoping first. And, to be fair, I am hoping, quite a bit actually. Hope, as I often say in keynote speeches, is a positive and healthy experience. It permits us to consider the future and simultaneously be okay in the present. I am luckier than the average person. I have, at the front of my consciousness, at the tips of my fingers, engrained in my repertoire of habitual thoughts, a fascinating and varied collection of hope-fostering tools and strategies. I have a history that constantly reminds me of something my good friend Christy Simpson once said to me: “When you do hope work, it works on you.” So why am I thinking I have the three words in the wrong order? Well, it’s a matter of time allocation, I guess. The truth is, I seem to be spending a lot of my time coping. Coping, as I have often said in keynote speeches, is the process of taking each day as it comes and doing the things that need to be done in response to the things that are happening. It requires energy and creativity. It often involves deliberate activity. It is focused firmly in the present. Its rewards are twofold. On one hand, coping gets you through each day so you can start the next. On the other, it earns you a lot of praise. Everybody loves a good coper. You hear: “I am just amazed by how well you cope!” With feedback like that, it’s small wonder we tend to spend so much time coping. So I’m giving a lot of energy to coping, which is why I think it ought to go first. But then, yesterday, I started to wonder, if I really didn’t want this change, why shouldn’t moping get the chance to go first? Moping, as I have often said in keynotes speeches, is the expression of a natural constellation of emotions, sadness, frustration, annoyance. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Yet it’s the process most feared by the world’s best copers. They fear that if they let it show, nobody will like them. They fear that if they let it take hold, they won’t be able to make it stop. To be quite honest, I have been doing quite a bit of moping—mostly in secret. Moping in secret, I have often said in keynote speeches, is a waste of good moping. Moping is a process with a purpose. It was invented to give the best copers a bit of relief from the unceasing pressure of having to cope all the time. Moping, in its best form, is a message to others that you need to be comforted, or helped, or simply allowed time and space to get your act together. Moping, I have often said, knowing that copers won’t mope forever, is something you ought to do more of. Yesterday I decided to take a little of my own advice. I vowed to start moping more, to mope better. “I’m tired of all this coping,” I told my friends. “I am tired of being responsible, of being professional. I am tired of being a hero. I am going to be a victim.” My friends were very quiet. I could see they were thinking. Finally one of them said with great compassion, “I expect this change will be very difficult for you.” Now there’s nothing that makes victimhood more difficult than heartfelt expressions of great compassion. Nonetheless, I was determined to mope, and I would not be moved. “No it won’t be difficult for me to be a victim,” I shot back in my best victim fashion. “I’ve had more than enough of looking after others. I’m going to be hurt and helpless. People can look after me for a change.” My friends were quiet again. They were thinking again. They’re a bit like me. They don’t like to lose an argument. One of them said, “You’ll have to develop some new skills. Take the diva stamp, for example. (The diva stamp is something I do with my foot when I’m planning to go ahead with something and I won’t be dissuaded. Just doing it gives me power, resolve, hope.) You’ll have to find something to replace the diva stamp,” they said. “You always smile right after the diva stamp. Good victims don’t smile.” I was quiet. I was thinking. This was exactly the time when I needed to use the diva stamp, to show them I meant business. But what if they were right? What if the diva stamp was always a precursor to smiling? Tears would be the thing I needed, tears pouring down my face. I concentrated on tear production. I focused on it. I waited for the tears to fall, fall in public, fall the way they fell in the days after I first got the news of the change. Unfortunately, I’ve never been any good at producing tears on request. A sad song will bring them down in 1.5 seconds, but you are not always in reaching distance of a good stereo. I was not in reaching distance of a stereo with the right sad song playing on it. Still, a voice echoed in my head, advice from A TED Talk, or a conference speaker, or a book I read some time. “Be the change you want to see.” I approached my failure with renewed resolve. I would do it. I would be a victim. “I have to go now,” said one of my friends. This was my chance. “Okay,” I cried in my best, almost-in-tears voice. “Okay, just go. Just go and leave me here in my sorrow. Just put other commitment above your loyalty to me. Yes, you’ve go. Just go!” My friends were trying to be quiet. They’re a compassionate lot, after all. But they couldn’t be quiet. They were giggling. There’s nothing more difficult than being a victim when your best and most compassionate friends are giggling. So I gave up the task of trying to find the proper order for hoping coping and moping. I didn’t really have time for it anyway. I had to plan a keynote speech. Still, when I get the time, I am hoping to become a better victim, a more effective moper. Apparently it isn’t as easy as it’s made out to be. It will take some focus, some dedication, some learning. I am kind of looking forward to it. Learning new things always gives me hope.

WHEN HOPE MATTERS

My thoughts are a muddle My messages mixed I’m trying to plan I’m between and betwixt. I’m weighing positions I’m doing the math Considering strategies, Seeking a path. But let’s not forget While I figure tihngs out That we mostly need hope In the times when there’s doubt.

HOUSES COMING DOWN

Houses in the 110 block on 89th Avenue are quickly coming down. One day a house has siding. The next day it’s naked. Two days later its front steps rise up from the street, leading to a pile of rubble. It takes a while to build a house, a shorter time to tear it down, no matter how long it stood there. This isn’t the first time a house has disappeared from 89th Avenue. A house can go very, very fast. One day it’s there. The next day it’s gone. Several years ago one house disappeared from the street. It was worrying to think that a house could simply go. But we all survived. But this situation is different. They’re tearing down 9 houses on 89th Avenue, the very block where Hope House stands. Even for a group of people who spend their working days focusing on hope, it’s not easy to come to work every day and not feel sad on a street where 9 houses are coming down. There are the minor inconveniences—no driving down the street, no parking. There is the total sensory involvement—the tinkle of shattering glass, the beep beep of the machine as it backs up to change position and take another bite. Now it’s a bite of the roof, next a bite of the wall. There are the challenges of working within metres of a major construction site. You do a lot of shouting. No more quiet meditations to help people deal with their problems. As if that isn’t enough, they’re also taking down the trees in 9 yards. Too bad there were so many trees in the 9 yards. Every day the view from the front of Hope House opens up a little. “I can see all the way to International House,” says Rachel. She says it sadly. It is clear that nobody at Hope House minded not being able to see International House. And then there are the experiences of a blind traveller on a street where the only predictable thing is that you can’t predict anything. Okay, I am THE HOPE LADY, so I’ll switch gears here and admit that things can get interesting. Construction guys are keenly aware that a blind person works on this block. They worry. They approach me. “Excuse me, ma’am. I’d like to give you my phone number. Then you can call me whenever you want to walk down this street. I’ll come out to help you.” Do you know how often guys want to give me their phone number? Not very often. Still, the task of finding the situation amusing can only carry you so far. Amid all the grieving and unsettling, there’s the good news. It’s good news that the university is growing. Who could be sad about that? More people want to study. More people want quality accommodation. The removal of 9 aging houses will allow further construction of the east Campus Village. East Campus Village, by all accounts, is a nice place to live. The best news is that Hope House is not one of the 9 houses. It is one of four that are staying on this rapidly changing block. With a little luck, it will still be standing when all the rubble is cleared away. “It’s in good condition,” explains the man from the university. So this old house will be put once again to the task of making the best of circumstances beyond its control. Hope House is a senior citizen among Edmonton houses. It’s celebrating its 96th birthday this year. Of course, it wasn’t always Hope House. But it’s had a long history of adapting to change. It was built for a family—a squarish 2-storey dwelling with a glassed-in sun porch topped up with a generous attic. For extra style it took on 2 second-floor balconies. Some time in the 1940’s it reached out in back to grasp a lean-to, a pantry maybe to augment its insubstantial kitchen. Some time in the 1960’s it graduated from family ownership to University owned property. It opened its doors to student renters—some legally there, some sleeping free of charge in the tiny space beside its huge basement furnace. Some time in the 1980’s it participated in the development of the Canadian Encyclopedia. One day the University of Alberta offered the dilapidated house at 11032 to the volunteers at the Hope Foundation. People with disabilities would be visiting, so the house went modern with a wheelchair accessible main floor bathroom where the pantry used to be. In the mid-1990’s it got an elevator. The attic space was opened wide enough for 6 desks. The leaning front porch was raised up a centimeter a day until it was level. One year the house got a new furnace. Two years ago it got new windows. Lucky Hope House. Somebody—no, many people—wanted it to have a future. And so they kept working on it until it was so cherished that it won the right to stand with three others on a street where 9 houses are being knocked down. It was, as they said, in good condition. There’s no getting around it. It’s sad to come to work on a street where 9 old houses are being knocked down. “We have to be reasonable,” I say in my HOPE LADY voice. “We have to take the long view. Two hundred years ago this street was a patch of bush along the river. One hundred years ago it was a farmer’s field. Last year it was a 2-sided row of old houses, most of them in deplorable condition. In two years a student will move here from Toronto, or New York, or Australia or Hong Kong and 89th Avenue, the way it will look at that time, will feel like home.”

BELONGING IS THE KEY TO HOPE, HOPE FOUNDATION WINS A LAUREL AWARD

Congratulations to Lenora LeMay and her team on winning a Laurel Award for Post-secondary aboriginal Camps. . The Hope Foundation organized post-secondary camps for aboriginal students at the University of Alberta in May and November of 2011. The students, grades 5-7, came from Montana School at Hobbema and Mother Earth School, just west of Edmonton. The program was funded by. Given the right conditions, university is a good place to foster hope. It can show young people some possibilities for the future they might choose when they graduate from high school. At a glance we might think of post-secondary education as something that fosters hope because of the career possibilities it opens. But two instructors, Tracy Bear and Margaret-Ann Armour, gave interviews in preparation for the writing of this article. Coming from different perspectives, both stressed the importance of presenting the university as a place where these young students could feel that they would belong. Belonging, they said, was something the students would need to imagine before they would see a university as a place of hope for them. Tracy bear is passionate about university. As she strives to earn her third university degree, she is well acquainted with the obstacles that face aboriginal students. Tracy is Special Advisor to the Vice President academic. “We brought them to lunch in the council Chambers,” she says. We wanted to teach them how a university is run. So I asked them how many aboriginal University of Alberta students they believed there would be. Would there be 50, 100 or 1,000? They thought there would be 50, or 100. But I said No! There are almost 1,000.” Just knowing that so many of our people are on campus might be a trigger for them to say, ‘Hey, I belong here.’” Tracy remembers moving to various locations across Canada and never seeing another face and eyes that were brown like hers. She also recalls a time, just three months ago, when she went up in an elevator with five other women. All five were aboriginal, and each of them has a Ph.D. She says, “I just wish that the media and Canadian society could see those moments and see that there is so much more to aboriginal people than we usually see.” Asked why she is so passionate about the university option she says, “Coming to university has opened up a whole universe of opportunities that I never imagined. I planned to get one degree and go back home. At the start I wasn’t thinking of getting three. I went to New Zealand and I learned that there are aboriginal people around the world who are in similar situations.” At Hope Camp, Tracy taught a course in visual journaling. Using pictures as well as words, she guided the students through a process of documenting their camp experience. She hopes that future hope camps will have more involvement from some of the aboriginal students in faculties such as medicine and dentistry. She is now working with a team to develop an aboriginal gathering place at the centre of the campus. She says, “I am hoping this will be the starting place for future aboriginal hope camps. Having the students come on campus and not just see me, but seeing other aboriginal people doing all sorts of amazing things is, I think, the absolute idea of hope. It’s a fantastic camp and I love being involved.” Dr. Margaret-Ann Armour, a professor renowned for her efforts to make science accessible to a wide range of people, also mentions the need to belong. She tells a story to explain how this idea influenced the manner of her teaching. “When those students came in to the lab the group was quiet. Normally I would get things going by asking questions. But that wouldn’t be the right thing here. They need time to feel that they belong. So I talked for a while and then I went right into having them make nylon.” The process of making nylon went very well. By the time the nylon was made, the students were involved. They were ready to ask and answer questions. After that, they went on to make Bakelite. She believes it is important for all of us to understand that science isn’t something that experts do in labs. Science is happening all around us, in the natural world, in our own bodies. Asked how an interest in chemistry might be extended beyond a single camp, Margaret-Ann said, “We have to make opportunities available for lifelong learning. The more you learn and the more you find interesting, the more likely you are to want to learn more. With aboriginal students, we come with baggage. Maybe we don’t work as hard to get them interested.” Margaret-Ann’s philosophy of science extends beyond the experiments that can be done in a lab. “Science can be informal.” It includes things known and understood through observation and experience. “Sometimes we devalue this knowledge because we think of it as not being proven by experiments. I hope the students will want to go on learning more about science. I try to talk about things that are meaningful in the life of the group.” Observing the group like any scientist worth her salt, Margaret-Ann noticed that “The group did a wonderful job of making nylon. Nobody did anything they weren’t supposed to, nobody spilled anything. I noticed that they had good hands.” When she mentioned this to their teachers, she was told that many of the students would have had experience making bannock. Hope is different things to different people. A post-secondary hope camp for young aboriginal students is one way that the Hope Foundation, working with partners, can foster a sense of boundless possibility, create a feeling of belonging, and ultimately offer a key to a future filled with hope.