How to Practice Hope When Everything Feels Heavy
As a therapist, I spend much of my time holding hope for people who are struggling to find it for themselves. It’s one of the quiet responsibilities of this work — to sit with fear, grief, and uncertainty while still believing in the possibility of something different.
But I’m also human, and these past months have tested my own capacity for hope.
One night, overwhelmed by the relentless cruelty of the news cycle, I texted my publisher: “I’m just horrified by how bad things are getting and I don’t know how I can keep peddling hope.”
She responded almost immediately: “You’re not peddling hope — you’re teaching survival. This is what we need now. Look to the elders and the ancestors… they have the answers.”
That line sat with me. Because in session after session, I’d been confronted with the same raw question in different forms — from parents, caregivers, and clients alike: How do we keep going when everything feels so uncertain? How do we know when it’s time to leave?
My answers felt flimsy, like they didn’t acknowledge the depth of this moment or the grief underneath it. I could offer coping skills, regulation strategies, perspective — but not certainty or a deep well of hope. And that gap started to ache.
A few weeks later, as I watched Kol Nidre services, Rabbi Darby Leigh spoke about hope as a practice rather than a feeling:
“Hope is not naïve optimism. Hope is a discipline. Hope is a choice. It’s not something you feel or don’t feel — it’s something you consciously choose. Hope is a choice to believe that our actions matter.”
That reframe landed powerfully in a time when so much feels out of our control. Hope isn’t a mood to wait for; it’s a muscle we build through practice. It’s what we do when we can’t guarantee outcomes but still refuse to give up on impact.
Hope Without Panic
Lawyer and activist Chase Strangio recently wrote,
“There is absolutely justifiable fear in this moment, but we must contend with that fear without exacerbating the chaos this administration craves, without needlessly escalating panic, and while honoring our histories of navigating through many of the conditions we face now.”
That balance — acknowledging fear without letting it dictate our behavior — is the heart of practicing hope. It’s not about ignoring what’s terrifying; it’s about resisting the pull to react in ways that deepen harm or despair.
Therapists, educators, and advocates know that panic narrows perspective. It tells the nervous system there is no way out. Hope, by contrast, widens the frame. It reminds us that every generation before us has faced its own forms of terror and still found ways to build, love, organize, and protect.
Hope as Strategy
Speaker, Author, and Advocate Ben Greene puts it bluntly: “Your despair is someone else’s business model.” In a media landscape that profits from outrage, choosing hope is a form of resistance.
Greene argues that hope interrupts the economy of despair. It keeps us connected to one another and to possibility. It invites us to ask, What can we still do? What can we still protect?
He defines hope as resting on five dimensions — identity, memory, attention, community, and care. It’s a framework that reminds us: hope isn’t only emotional; it’s relational.
Identity: Remembering who we are and what we stand for when systems try to erase us.
Memory: Grounding in the histories of those who’ve resisted before us.
Attention: Choosing what we center — not just what we consume.
Community: Staying connected, even when isolation feels safer.
Care: Sustaining one another and ourselves, so the work continues.
For me, this translates to very tangible acts:
Sending a message to a trans teen’s school counselor to ensure their gender-affirming support plan is being followed.
Showing up for a parent who’s terrified but trying.
Writing or speaking even when it feels like I’m shouting into the void or putting a target on my back.
Hope is not abstract; it’s behavioral. It’s a series of micro-decisions that say, I still believe this matters.
Practicing Hope
Here’s what I’ve been returning to — both personally and professionally:
Name what’s real. Hope isn’t denial. It starts with naming what hurts and what’s unjust.
Stay close to the work. Despair thrives in distance; connection is grounding.
Set smaller horizons. Focus on the next conversation, the next client, the next email to a policymaker.
Curate your inputs. Protect your attention from doom loops and fear-mongering algorithms.
Keep track of proof. Every small change — every kid affirmed, every family supported — is evidence.
The Discipline of Hope
Rabbi Darby’s words have stayed with me: Hope is a discipline. It’s not something we feel; it’s something we do.
Each act of care, each boundary we hold, each story we tell, is a way of teaching survival — not just for ourselves, but for the people watching us to see what’s still possible.
Hope doesn’t ask us to be unafraid. It asks us to stay present in the fear and choose to act anyway.
Maybe my publisher was right: I’m not peddling hope. I’m practicing it.
And in this moment — when so much feels broken, and when so many of us are tired — that practice is survival. It’s how we build the future we still believe in, one conscious choice at a time.
This isn’t new. We have history to show for it. Trans people and other marginalized communities have been fighting, organizing, and surviving long before us. All we can do — all we’ve ever been asked to do — is make it better than we found it.
As Rabbi Darby reminds us, “no one can do everything, but everyone can do something.”
And maybe that’s what hope really is — the collective act of doing something together, over and over, until the world shifts a little closer toward what we know it can be.
If this piece helped you breathe a little deeper, send it to someone who could use some hope right now.
Watch Rabbi Darby’s Kol Nidre service
Read Ben Greene’s piece “Making the Case for Hope”
Read Chase Strangio’s piece “For Those Trans People Who Are Scared”
