What gives me hope | from the quarantine archives

It’s the first week of the new year. 

I found it suitable to leave the year behind with my first (and only) homemade sourdough. It was doused in flour, tasted like a rock and set off my smoke alarm twice. This was the first time I’d heard it in my new house, with a recorded woman’s voice screaming, “Evacuate! Evacuate!” to me in my kitchen at midnight on a Monday. 

My friends and I talk about something called a “single-female-homeowner-cry trigger.” There’s no way around it: this was inevitably going to be one for me. Naturally, the smoke alarm led to me collapsing in tears on my tile floor, not peeling myself back up until I could laugh at the mess that 2020 had become (only 3 months in..). 

Things are always messier and more chaotic on the inside than they look on the outside. 2020 was the year that nothing was perfect but we all still learned to call it "good." 

We got acquainted with our needs, because there was no other option.

We loosened our grip, because the illusion of control no longer worked.

There’s never been a greater time of shared, collective unraveling. Not in our generation.

I moved my body and made more art than I have in years. I curated a home. I found my growing voice in justice conversations. I met and worked with the kind of heroes I’ve only ever read about, like Bernice King, Sophia Bush, Bryan Stevenson and Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. I got to stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the most influential people I know to lobby members of Congress. Learned about speaking up without speaking over. I sought what it means to be an ally but first a friend. Made my hair darker. Celebrated a friend’s secret baby bump. Zion showed me both the wilderness and the Promised Land. I started to climb mountains that wouldn’t budge & I had no idea how to move. We fought for ourselves and for each other.

There’s a chance 2021 could seem more like 2020 than any of us want. 

Even still, I’d have hope. Not because things will be perfect (they never were) – but because we have grit. And heart. We are braver, stronger, realer and refined. We lifted the veil on things that were supposed to divide us beyond repair. And learned that hope that is seen is no hope at all.

Hope is always worth it. Even if we have to spend our whole lives looking. 

👋🏼 Hi, 2021. You are exactly who we’ve been waiting for.

Adapted from Instagram.