Rising Hope

The Power of Rising Hope

“Your struggle with your varied self, or selves, yields your art… .” – Joyce Carol Oates, The Faith of a Writer.                     

Morning begins with chirping cicadas, the hum of distant cars winding their way to work, and the smell of rich coffee. For a few single breaths, it’s a narrow and wonderful place where I find myself. The harmony of simple things and places is gold to me. Then, an unexpected rap on our door, again and again. Kerplunk! Rising hope vanishes like a stone thrown into the river–frustration and irritation tornado in. Suddenly, my castle of contentment crumbles.

Write this story? Why not? Who knows what unloved parts of me need attention. I’ve learned writing about deep feelings my own humanity becomes known to me and rising hope follows.

Our Words Surprise Us
The complex process of writing carries us to foreign places when we allow the things moving through us to have voices. These personal stories may come galloping, hissing and smoking their way across the paper, and we can’t write fast enough. Words appearing may surprise us like the sudden spring of a jack in the box, and without fully understanding, we find ourselves in unknown places, with people who are not familiar, feeling powerful emotions never expressed. Sharon Olds, prize winning poet, said, “All that wanting to seem normal in regular life, all that fitting in falls away in the face of one’s own strange self on the page.”

Looking for the Significance
When we let our honest writing put a spotlight on the beneathedness of the world, a part of us becomes illuminated, or perhaps revealed in a new way. Writing is about getting something down, not about thinking something up. It’s about waking up the deep cavern inside that has been hidden away or put in a closet. Then, the slow work of accepting whatever is in you is part of who you are. As my long time mentor reminds me, “You must do the work.”

Writers have to be brave and vulnerable to plumb their deepest feelings tapping into parts that are close to the bone. Why? Because those parts that we may not want to recognize can lead to self-discovery and transformation like witnessing the first pinches of pink at sunset. The point is if we as writers do not share our feelings of loss, frustration or loneliness in stories we write—those fists of humanity—the significance in which we seek is lost.

Empowering Rising Hope
Acknowledging the presence of these life-altering human conditions is the very guts necessary for honest writing. At first, we may fall apart for a moment, but delving into the complexities of our life experiences, a new depth to our perceptions of family and relationship is revealed.

Narrating stories about the dramas we’ve lived and our roles in them empowers because we might learn how to speak to ourselves in new ways. Developing our characters may help us better understand how to navigate this world, and in so doing, we are able to meet it with surprising insights and truth. Maybe even humor. Rising hope…and the rise and fall of easy breathing. –Becky Breed

Writing Exercise:

1. Read Wild Geese by Mary Oliver or How the Light Comes by Jan Richardson. Consider Hope Rising: How the Science of Hope Can Change Your Life by Casey Gwinn  and Chann Hellman.
2. What are your tipping points or triggers? Make a list of strong feelings/thoughts you’ve experienced in the past six months. Then, in a second column by each feeling/thought, jot down in two or three words the experiences/events related to those feelings.
3. Choose one of the experiences from the first column to write about. Now, consider what you or a character you’re creating would say or do to convey those strong feelings/thoughts. Another option would be to use those feelings in lines in a poem.
4. Consider using one of the following starter sentences to begin writing:  a. When the first pangs of  _________ came, I felt _______  or b. ______________means everything to me.
5. Or use third person to convey deep drama: a. He didn’t see it coming, Jeremy was _________ or b. The rooms were empty of furniture, she looks at herself in the mirror______.
6. Now reflect on your writing. Retelling personal challenges helps you re-shape the narrative and focus on the power of hope.

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