It’s the hope that keeps us here
We are well into 2025 now- and like so many of us, I came into the new year open hearted, hopeful and relaxed. But watching the absolute mess that is embarrassing men taking over the world and causing real harm to real people, I found myself feeling existentially hopeless. Twenty years of this work and has anything really changed? Has all the work I’ve done during this time really done anything to shift the dial and reduce harm?
This hopelessness, this despair, is so powerful and so needed. We need to sit with the fear, anger, sadness, rage. We need to feel it in our bones that things are not better; they are worse. But how do we live within this reality? How do we navigate it and keep our minds and bodies safe?*
For me, it’s hope and community. In the last month I’ve had brunch with some absolutely iconic women, ran a focus group with young women, held a discussion group on challenging sexism in young people’s settings, went to a dance class, had our collective away day, hosted a survivors wellbeing session, ran a wellbeing group for women leaders, presented at a perpetrators network on a report I co-wrote, and co-hosted a peer learning session for folk wanting to make change to support children.
I went to the bingo in a supported accomodation place for older adults, and I had a housewarming party in my new flat, and, excitingly, I got to hear first hand from one of the most influential academics on post-domestic abuse healing on how her work developed.
And let me tell you, from 8 to 80, these folk filled my heart and soul. Their insights, their tenacity. Their spirit, hard work, compassion, joy, kindness, their here-for-a-good timenness, the dancing, the laughing, the filthy jokes (bingo numbers never sounded so x-rated). Oh my days- it filled my cup. That is why community matters. It brings us so much joy. We are so atomised, so individualised, so polarised- as sociologist Arlie Hochschild says, we have a wall of empathy to get over , and the only way we can do this is through community.
Just as I have so much to learn from the wisdom of those who came before me, I’m also learning from the young women after me. We are threaded together on our journeys to better lives. We’re not on our own, and we don’t have to do it all. We can rest in the connections we have. And with that connection and that community comes responsibility and obligation. When we are in a community, we are part of a whole, and we are in constant negotiation between meeting our needs and meeting the needs of our communities-too much in one direction and the balance tips, our brains blow and we’re burnt out. Communities aren’t idyllic sanctuaries either; we argue, we fall out, we expect too much or not enough from each other, we don’t like how people take their bins out or we don’t enjoy their small talk. But. We are in community. And that matters.
It means being aware of not just our own shit but all the shit others are bringing, and it means asking, how can I serve myself and serve others? How can I be of service?
This question seems to be absent from the cesspit of embarrassing men, but this is how we do better; this is how we fight back. Because we ask this of ourselves. How can I be of service? Because it is only when we show up-together- that we can push back, make connections, be committed to good times and good lives. We gain hope from each other, we learn from each other, we look over the wall that little bit more and we resist, together, in the ways that we can.
As these billboards all over town say; it’s the hope that keeps us here. Here’s to more connections, more community and more hope.
* A great resource on this is Active Hope: How to face the mess we’re in without going crazy
P.S
We’re running another taster session for women leaders on the 20th Feb, sign up here!
I’ve just bought The Four Pivots on the recommendation of one of those brunch based iconic women and am looking forward to digging in to it
I’ve been thinking a lot about unintended consequences and short hand thinking in how evidence is applied in what programmes are about to prevent and respond to violence in schools, and it’s got me thinking about my own short hand thinking, and how to be more robust in more own work.
I’ve run out of time to do any work on my holiday-romance-suspence-commercial women’s-fiction book this month (see existential crisis and community) but it’s bubbling away! Two no thanks from publishers and two no thanks from agents. Onwards!
As members of my community reading this- what gives you hope? Let me know!
