Ending with hope

I began March with a big cry, searching for a shoe that had slipped under my bed. And I’m ending March with hope, as I’ve coached teachers and led professional learning and parented; watched and cried with teen activists and read your blogs; devoured inspiring books and articles, and talked to friends and strangers about how to make this world, our world, a better place. A place of equity, social justice, joy.

I’m almost done with Hope Nation: YA Authors Share Personal Moments of Inspiration, edited by Rose Brock #hopenation. I haven’t read the essays in order, but have bounced around, starting with some of my favorite authors (Angie Thomas; Jason Reynolds & Brendan Kiely, who wrote together), but the essay that’s stuck with me is David Levithan’s. I haven’t read any of his books (so sad, I know), and he cheated a bit by writing a short story. He excuses himself, though: “sometimes we fiction writers need to make up a story to tell a truth of the moment.” So it turns out David writes a story for his friends every Valentines Day, and in 2017, he wrote a story about friends attending the women’s march in Atlanta (and he includes lots of what really happened, because he happened to be there, and shares it’s centered in “what I did and… what I saw”).

There’s a line in the story (which is so worth reading) that resonates with me: “I can feel the alchemy of hope working, that transmutation of despair into determination.”

I love the language of that sentence, and even more, I love the idea: that it’s possible to take what’s not working – hatred, darkness, despair, anger – and shift it, after adding a dose of hope, hard work and relentless energy – into love, light, determination and peace. I am committed to transmutation. I am committed to alchemy, with rigorous, audacious hope, as the engine of change. I will arm myself with books galore, a belief in the power of reading, writing, talking and thinking, and a focus on building relationships with students (even when that’s hard). I have a lot of power in my community – privilege that comes from my whiteness, my degrees, my titles and roles. So I’m not crying about shoes or files today, but instead, standing with Rose Brock and the amazing authors in Hope Nation. I’m charging forward into April – watch out!