hope in our bodies

This past election night, I was playing a game with friends, candles lit and bellies full of cheap Chinese food. When we heard the news Mamdani had won the mayoral race in NYC, we all grabbed our glasses to cheers, chanting together, “One good thing! One good thing!” In my body, I felt a warmth and brightness travel from my chest to my neck and shoulders, down my arms and into my belly and legs.

Hope begins in our bodies, and like every emotion in our bodies, it is a temporary state. We don’t have to be hopeful all the time. Hope lives alongside some level of regulation, coherence, flow, expansion, and connection. Trauma is something so overwhelming that our presence leaves our bodies; hope is a sense that we can return again. Hope is healing.

I don’t think hope has to be this cerebral, fixed, confident feeling that everything is going to be ok. Honestly, everything is most definitely not ok right now. Hope starts with a felt sense in our bodies that takes practice to notice. We often don’t find it alone in a vacuum; we find it alongside belonging. As Angela Davis once said, “It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism."

In Asian medicine and acupuncture, the heart is the supreme ruler of the body. The heart is informed about threats in our environment by other organs in the body that sense them- our kidneys, for one. The heart responds to threat and also tells the body when it’s over and we can return to equanimity. Our heart’s capacity to sense our support system helps us feel a sense of hope and safety in the face of danger. When the heart is functioning well, we’re able to reach toward one another, as well as scared parts of ourselves, when we need help.

So, how do we reach toward connection in times of hardship? Maybe we can start with a gentle self embrace, or another small act of care toward ourselves or someone we love (two-legged or four-legged). Maybe we choose to share what we’re feeling with someone we trust (even it feels pointless or hard to describe). Poet Ocean Vuong said in an interview I listened to recently, “Anger even has an aftermath, and you realize the aftermath of anger is care.”

When you’re struggling to find hope, what does it feel like to let someone know, and to be seen and cared for? Who cares for you? What softens when you find evidence of community? What do you notice in your face, throat, shoulders, chest, belly, legs?

I’ve heard multiple people in my community say they cried when they went to the recent No Kings march not because it changed world politics but just because it felt hopeful to see so many other people in real life that also care. Hope is a feeling we come back to, and often it is a feeling that we are not alone. It’s a feeling that helps us act in alignment with our values because we’re less stuck within overactive protective responses like fight, flight and freeze.

When in the last couple weeks have you felt hope, or the most like you want to feel, or even the least bad? When you return to that moment, what happens?

Yours truly,

Katie

art by J Carino