There were times in my life when I didn’t have the strength to hold hope for myself. I believe that each one of us has a tiny and tender pilot light in our soul that keeps our will to live alive. At one point, it felt as though my flame had gone out.

In my first book, Calm Within the Storm, I wrote about how my flame didn’t extinguish in a single moment. I navigated a tumultuous adolescence and tried to ask for help in all the wrong ways: addiction, self-harm, self-sabotage, broken relationships. At 16, I didn’t know how to tell the people who loved me that I was struggling. I also wanted to protect my mother from carrying the weight. To me, despair doesn’t quite capture what I was experiencing. You can feel despair. I felt nothing—complete and total numbness.

What I needed wasn’t fixing. I needed someone who could sit with me in the darkness and remind me I wasn’t alone.

During a dark season, it was my mom who held hope for me. She believed in a future I couldn’t see yet. She showed me what she hoped for me. Her unconditional love and steady belief that I could do hard things helped me reignite that flame and start believing again.

Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning was also gifted to me at the exact moment I needed it. Looking back years later, out of that depressive episode, I couldn’t believe how those words helped me form perspective, acceptance, and that throughline of hope at a time when I thought all hope was gone.

I invite you to reflect:

• When you think about the thread of hope in your own life, what images, memories, or experiences come to mind?
• When has someone else’s hope strengthened yours?
• Who or what helps you feel less alone when things are difficult?

Keeping Hope Alive

I once worked with a group of soldiers who had just returned home from deployment. We were chatting casually at first, but they began asking how they could support some of their comrades who were not transitioning home that well. When I asked if there was anything unique or different that they had done, there was nothing specific they could think of at first. After thinking a little longer, the soldiers ended up sharing all the household projects waiting for them at home. One had painted half the kitchen before leaving. Another had laid almost, but not quite, all the hardwood in the living room. Each one had a story about some half-finished task they had to complete.

Curious, I asked their senior lieutenant about it. He paused and told me, “My soldiers leave half-finished house projects as signs of hope for their families that they’re coming home. They leave evidence on the ground that there’s still work to be done here.”

I said to him, “Sir, what you’re suggesting is that hope is a choice. That people are choosing to stay in this place of being hope-filled.”

What this weathered lieutenant said next has stayed with me ever since: “If you want to be of service, in any capacity, you need your own way to stay hopeful. No one can do that work for you.”

Borrowed hope can help us through hard seasons, but we each need a practice that helps us hold it for ourselves.

Building a Hope Practice

Hope is something we practice, not just something we feel. It sustains us, connects us, and helps us move forward, even through uncertainty and adversity.

We cultivate hope through our environments, our relationships, our habits and routines, the work that we do supporting others, and the daily choices that align our lives with who we’re becoming.

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What can you put into your world, your day, your habits to create this hedge of protection around you so that, come what may, you can trust that better days are ahead? Something that helps you remain rooted in hope, no matter the noise, negativity, or distraction around you, and helps you trust that you are well-resourced enough to find a way through.

When you think about your hope practice, it is important that it is something personal and sustainable. It might look like collecting hope stories, music, poems, or quotes that keep your inner pilot light strong. Perhaps you intentionally plant seeds of hope for the future, be it a project, a dream, a conversation, or a commitment. It could be celebrating progress and seeking growth that excites you. Curating a space that calms your nervous system and inspires possibility. Starting your morning with something that grounds you.

Whatever form it takes, practice it often and guard it fiercely.

I invite you to reflect:

• How do you keep your perspective hopeful when the world feels discouraging or uncertain?
• What small actions or practices have helped you (or others) rebuild or hold on to hope?
• Where do you see signs of hope around you today, even if they’re small or easily overlooked?

Final Thoughts

I basically owe my life to hope, so the very least I could do was write a book about it. My latest book, I Hope So, helps you build your own blueprint for a life that feels anchored, intentional, and filled with possibility, even in the hardest of times.

When we live with hope threaded through our days, we handle the hard parts differently, and we remain open to what is possible. May you begin to cultivate your own hope practices that help keep your pilot light burning bright, keep you showing up, and keep you believing in brighter days ahead.