On Disciplined Hope

There is an interview with Kerry Washington where she talks about the experience of doing eight shows a week on Broadway and what such a schedule requires in terms of disciplined self-care. There can be no off days where you forget to take care of yourself. You have to rest your voice, take your vitamins, eat well, exercise, and do a whole host of other things to make it through such a schedule unharmed. In the interview, Kerry Washington describes performing as requiring the same intentional focus as what is needed from an elite athlete.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, because in the past twelve months, I’ve been diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder, transitioned from my consulting practice to a new (still equity-centred) job, had an auto immune flare-up, found my hair falling out in clumps, fractured my collarbone through a cycling accident and spent the whole summer indoors, recovered, went on medical leave for a month, recovered, got stranded in the US due to COVID, came out of quarantine, and then started 2022 after being pickpocketed at my hotel and losing all my IDS and cash. In the weeks since then, I’ve struggled with COVID fatigue and have noticed my hair falling out again. I’ve never had my body and my life speak so clearly to me, and at an ever increasing volume over the course of a year.

And what I am hearing is that I need to change paths and inhabit a different, less anxious, more joyful, more hopeful way of being. My hope is that this newsletter about hope will help me heal. When I think of hope, it doesn’t conjure up thinking positively necessarily, but rather, the act of lighting a candle when it would be easier to just be despondent. It is the choice to believe that joy and change-making can go together. That wellness and groundedness and equity work can go together. Hope is finding ways to water your happiness daily, move in small ways, and connect with others. It is about finding the energy to believe that new ways of being are possible within ourselves, within our communities, within our families, within our organizations, our cities and the places we call home. For me, hope is connected to Divine trust and makes me think of the words of the late media icon Tayyibah Taylor about how we must:

“walk with tranquility and peace, and have a portable peace that is not contingent on anything, not contingent on the weather, who you are with or by anything else.” ~Tayyiba Taylor, RIS Convention Session 9, Dec 26th 2009.

This newsletter is a place to share my journey of wellness and hope, to think aloud about the questions I have and attempt to hold hope up as a practice, a sustained and disciplined pursuit that is not foolish or naive, but a practice to keep my body, heart and soul in good alignment. I’ll be sharing the things that I’m reading, watching, listening, and thinking about, in the hopes that sharing can help sustain you through whatever change-making work or grief you are currently going through and offer a bit of hope, enough to light the way forward for another week. Thanks for joining.