What Does It Mean
to Have H.O.P.E.?

A note before reading: This piece contains links to sources that may include sensitive content. We include these source links to provide context for our research. Our intention is to help increase suicide awareness, prevention and sensitivity, while also doing the most possible to be responsible and protective of our readers.

Help

Hope is when you allow others to help or show up for you. And when you show up for others in your life, you are planting the seeds of hope.  

When you help your team (whether it is your family, your friends, your coworkers or the community), you have the potential to plant the seeds of hope.  

We don’t have to pretend that life is wonderful if it doesn’t seem that way, but we can let loved ones know that help is always there when we need it.  

Optimism

We might think our situation isn’t worthy of optimism if we can’t identify something to be hopeful about.  

Just as our worth is enough simply because we were born — we can find optimism regardless of who we are, what we think and what our situation is. Optimism helps us move forward in a world where nothing is guaranteed. It reminds us that things aren’t always going to be this way. It reminds us that not every negative thought we have is true and that we don’t have to define ourselves by our thoughts. We don’t have to act on every thought that we have.  

Persistance

Hope reminds us that there is good in the world and we can persist despite how rough our circumstances may be. We might be in the “middle of the movie” and can’t anticipate the good that will happen down the road because we haven’t gotten there yet. But persistence is recognizing that the challenge we are facing is an opportunity for growth, for creation, for making a positive impact in the smallest of ways. Persistence can protect us — it can shield us from succumbing to life’s pitfalls by seeing them through.  

Evolution

Hope requires faith that we will evolve.  Martin Luther King Jr.  said we “don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” We can grow hope by practicing gratitude — even in the smallest of things — and we can envision ways that our circumstances might evolve. 

Hope is a belief that things will get better. It’s allowing ourselves to see the good in the smallest of things. Hope is you. Things will get better because you are here, even if the how and what is not yet known.