Some of us are made with hearts that are full of hope.

They are able to return again to barren spaces with seeds and watering can, trusting that of course there can be new growth, of course there will be spring.

Those hearts are precious and to be emboldened by a living and hopeful heart is one of the greatest gifts of my life.

A wise woman i know recently said that without hope there would be no life, no reason for life.  We need to, in our darkest moments have a sense of hope that things will get better.  Knowing the cycle of life (and to extend the garden metaphor) there is a season of burgeoning growth and fruiting and there is a season of decay.  When we are in decay we must trust in the fruiting that will follow.

I am also coming to see how there is a special brand of hope that my Pollyanna tendencies were not prepared for.  I have labelled that toxic hope.

Toxic hope is the kind of hope that keeps you standing in shit with your forehead bloodied from banging on the same wall over and over again, hoping that you'll break through to the clean clothes, shower and soft bed you trust is on the other side.

Toxic hope keeps you in a situation, keeps you manipulating the truth in your own mind, so that you will be able to turn up again to something that is hurting so badly, in the hope that this time it will change, or in three more times it will change or next year or....

Toxic hope is the kind of hope that drains your tank and asks you for more, that does not nourish anything inside you to flourish but only keeps that weedy hope alive to the detriment of most of the other things in your garden.

Toxic hope changes the soil conditions of your life so little else will grow inside you.

Toxic hope is turning up to a nuclear waste ground and expecting to grow some veges that will feed your family.

How do you recognise it?  You are diminished by your hope.  You are kept in a situation that takes and takes and takes and yet you make no discernible progress.  You are shifting your own goalposts for what you would like your life to be.

How do you change it? You have to change yourself.  Toxic hope is your issue.  The person/situation/problem/relationship etc etc you are hoping to change will either do so or not.  You cannot hold them accountable for what you hope. Yep, it's sucky and hard and it is your work alone. You have to change your boundaries.  You have to change your hope so that you put it in the light. You have to look honestly (not through your toxic hope goggles) and carefully at just what is in front of you.

If you are hoping for a better relationship for example, saying "I hope we can resolve this.  Are you willing to walk with me to take the next step and sort this out?"  is one step.  The next and crucial step is paying attention to the answer.  You will either get a yes or a no.  Your only way of rooting out toxic hope is to listen very carefully and act accordingly.  If they give you a yes and act on it you are golden.  If they give you a no then you have to act on it and you are golden (eventually).  If they give you a yes and do not act on it then you actually got a no and you have to act on it (and again you are golden, eventually).

How do you recover from it? When you see you have had toxic hope the first thing you might want to do is be kind to yourself. Toxic hope doesn't mean you have anything to be ashamed of or to be harsh with yourself about, in fact the richer your self care the less likely toxic hope is to reroot in your heart.  If you shame your lovely self you only make yourself more likely to turn to toxic hope when things get sticky the next time. My theory on this is if we are mean to ourselves we often hope (toxically) that someone else will love us more/better/deeper than we can love ourselves.  If we love ourselves generously that need to have someone else apply the love balm is not there. We can meet them replete and ready to give honestly and kindly. To turn away from a situation you have held in toxic hope requires an immense amount of patience with yourself - it's a deep groove (to quote Fabeku Fantumise) and you have a lot of digging to fill it back in.  Turn your capacity to hope onto something new. I hope, for example after my recent bout of toxic hope, to be present for rich and fulfilling friendships.  I am taking steps to hope that i can learn the skills, meet the people, practise the actions that will make this happen.

Toxic hope can kill people, it certainly maims hearts every day.  Please don't let it be you <3

If you have any experience with toxic hope i'd love to hear about it
with love
​j

ps if you would like kick start to self care that isn't about mani-pedis and shopping sprees you can try one of these.

Grief is something so personal i hesitate to write about mine.  It involves other people and i don't have their permission to write their story.  

And yet grief is also universal.  As much as our culture encourages us to run from grief, even going so far as to turn away from ageing women who are a reminder of the scythe of time swiping closer each day to the youth-is-all-there-is-that's-worth-aspiring to  myth.  Each of us are touched by grief.  Each of us shuffle a little closer to the end of the gang plank with each passing day.

This man, with his gentle hands and soft eyes was my Dad.  He died 5 weeks ago tomorrow and i am acquainted with grief the way we all secretly wish to avoid but can't.  Those we love will die.  There is nothing else really that we are promised.

We might feel like we are promised all kinds of other things - my big three are that if you try hard enough love will last forever, things are fair, and love will prevail.

Grief has shifted the first two of those to the not so true pile.  I have learned over the last 6 months that no matter how hard you try love may not last. I was taught years ago by a fierce and generous old woman that "Life is not fair my girl, no one ever promised that and the sooner you let go of that idea the better off you'll be."  She was right and yet i seemed to have a bulb of hope that sprouted after each winter in my heart , a flower that held fairness and hope in it's sepals.

I wanted so much, as i realised that Dad would die soon, to be able to love him Home.  To be able to put aside all of the detritus that had gathered in our path and return to the love that had me trust him so deeply. It was an imperative to me that i do that.  I had no map.  i had no idea what that would mean but i had to be with him in support as he found his way back.

It meant asking my separated husband to come back, leave his life and take over for an unspecified time.  It meant asking my girls to manage without me.  It meant being in a hospital, being with my birth family and all of the confusing and often difficult things that entailed.  But none of that seemed to matter as much as seeing Dad Home.  i had to trust my heart's urgency around this and do it.  I could have listened to the voices outside of myself and just gone and visit but my heart's insistence was strong. It was my Dad and it was all that really mattered.

Dad's circumstances had meant we hadn't been available to each other much over the last couple of years.  That was tough for both of us and i had begun grieving him long before, when the man i loved was no longer really "there".  But none of that mattered.

My family's circumstance meant that this time was hard on everyone in different ways.  That was tough but not in a way that really mattered.

So i continued to grieve while i turned up.  With my brothers we made a map of what we needed to do, how we needed to be, what worked.  We tended to Dad and to each other with kindness and care in a way that melted so much away.

I can't explain how it felt to be in that funny little room, it not really mattering if it was night or day.  Not really mattering if we washed or ate or slept.  I can't tell you all the things that happened in that liminal space but i can tell you what rose up and what sustained us was love.

So much love in fact that i think Dad stayed around a lot longer than the grim reaper wanted him to... he was bathing in that love, soaking it up.  Too bad if the dude with the scythe was tapping his toes and looking at his watch, Dad received and received and received.

I read somewhere that a Buddhist teaching says that we take our state of mind with us when we go and i believe that those last few days Dad had here in this body, meant that he went on with love. Replete with Love, his own and ours and i can't tell you what that means to me this side of it all.

And that brings me to the regret piece,  So often we regret what we don't do.  I wanted to write this because i have been aware that had i carried any regret about what happened for Dad, this grief would be intolerable.  

The gift of turning up for him full bore, nothing held back, in my true loving power has gifted me a clean grief.  Hell yes i miss him.  I wish i could hear him say "Love you" and feel the truth in those words one last time.  But i can turn to him and know he experienced our love for him clean and true and that regret-less state holds me up.

I know i am lucky to have had the chance to farewell him that way but it makes me think about the other griefs i have.  Things that are hard to carry and hard to lose.  If i can tend to myself and my life without regret i know, from my experience with Dad that anything that comes on the other side of that will be cleaner and easier to carry.  

I want to continue to live like that.  To love clean.  To turn up true.  To be alive to what my heart tells me and to act on that faithfully.  That regret-less life is not about being reckless but rather gifting myself the clean river of love that moves through me without the silt of "i should have.." that has clogged my heart for so long.

I miss you Dad and i don't regret a minute of loving you.