The Evolution of Hope

It’s been over a year since I have delivered a meditation session for the Sanctuary community. I had to step back as my husband became acutely unwell. And tragically, after seven months of struggle he passed away at the age of 53.

When my husband, Graeme, first became sick, his doctors told me that they were hopeful. He was young and fit and his kidneys were working. He was fighting sepsis due to a complication, resulting from metastatic cancer.  Only at that stage, we were unaware of the cancer. It was a time filled with darkness and the doctor’s hope was like a life vest that kept me afloat.

Further down the line, when we were told he had Stage 4 cancer and he would eventually die of the disease, the message of hope shifted from living a full life, to living a life that included years. When it became obvious that it wouldn’t be years, the hope changed to a hope to be married before he was too sick.

Hope didn’t evaporate. As Dr. Kathryn Mannix the Palliative Care doctor explains in Kate Bowler’s podcast Everything Happens, hope simply evolves into something new. As darkness ebbs and flows in a myriad of shades, so does hope.

In fact, it isn’t until we are able to be with the darkness that the light of hope appears. At one stage of Graeme’s journey, his oncologist had failed to tell us of a new location of the spreading disease that was ravaging his body. When I confronted his nurse, asking why we were not being told everything, the nurse responded that they didn’t want to take away hope. Only this lack of clarity only brought confusion and despair. And a lack of hope! Once we knew the full picture, the light of hope got brighter and moved in a new direction. It became a hope for comfort and connection with those who truly mattered to Graeme.

Now that Graeme has passed, people come up to me all of the time and tell me how unfair it is. I always tell them about my new hope. My hope that this is fair. That Graeme is truly resting in love and peace and wrapped around my heart. That he is no longer suffering and that it is (actually) he who keeps changing the song on my Alexa when I am doing the dishes and not some glitch in the system.

Hope keeps us afloat when pain overwhelms us. It’s the light that helps us be with the darkness when it comes in a little bit too close. And the best thing about hope is that it can be cultivated. According to Brene Brown, hope is a cognitive- behavioral process that when practiced has the potential to be a tool that we rely upon.

If you would like to listen to a session focused on this blog and to do a meditation practice that helps us cultivate hope, click the audio link below.