Moving in Hope

I’ve long held the belief that books and stories and writing and art find us when we need it most. If you’re like me and you need words like you need air, I’m sure you understand what I mean. 

There are moments where we find things too early, where we haven’t quite reached the place we need in order to appreciate them. But then, there are moments of magic where we come across the words that we need to make it through the stage of life we are in. 

Jesmyn Ward’s On Witness and Respair is one of those books for me. A collection of her essays, the book explores her lived experience and what has constantly driven her to write over the years. But the repeated message for me, the one I needed to hear, was:

| you are here. you survive. your stories deserve to be told. 

In previous writing, I’ve explored my own wanderings through finding my place in the world and trying to find and build up my own sense of worthiness to take up space, to tell my own stories. 

Now, I have not experienced a fraction of the lived experience of Ward. But I do share a background with an ingrained feeling of not ever being enough. Of feeling like no matter what I do, I may never find or build the space where I will be able to be fully myself. In “Cocoon of Sound,” Ward writes, “When I closed the door of the car, he revved the gas, and we sped away from the school, I was myself again - not the poor Black girl or the shy bookworm or the uppity Negro. There was no or, instead I was all of them.” 

In the car with her best friend, she was fully herself. All the parts of her. And there is beauty in finding the places where you can fully be you. They are rare spaces. And they are essential. And what’s particularly beautiful is that the moment for Ward is shared. Living in the States, it was ingrained in me that we only find ourselves on our own. But this is counterintuitive to how humanity has existed over the ages. 

I am who I am because of the people I have known. I am a writer because of the stories that my parents encouraged me to read over the years. I love plants because of my grandparents who gardened and built an oasis around their house. I am strong partly because I have watched my mother and both my grandmothers face down giants and win. I am a lover of music because I watched my sister create magic with her french horn and mellophone. I am compassionate because I watched my father make every person he came across feel welcome and encouraged. I am curious because I grew up around people who were always learning. I am intentional because I have watched people fall through the gaps and don’t wish to experience that ever again, even knowing I will continue to witness it. I adore humanity because I have seen the ways that they light up when they get to do the things they love. I love because I have been loved. 

I would not be me without the people I have known. I would not be me without the stories that have made me. 

But I am wandering away from Ward’s essays. That is what excellent writing does for me. It makes me consider the ways that parts of my life have come together to make me, me. And Ward’s writing makes me feel more willing to engage with the harder parts of life, the tragedies that have also marked my path, but with a look towards hope as I revisit them. 

In “You Tell Your Story: You Survive,” Ward writes, “Often journalists who interview me ask about hope. About redemption. They say that the ending of Sing, Unburied, Sing is tentatively hopeful, and they ask me if I meant to make it so. And each time someone asks me this, my answer is the same: yes, emphatically yes.”

Without hope, everything would be horror. In a world filled with a 3-year genocide, crimes against humanity, leaders who would casually throw away millions of lives, and countless other things, we must still have hope. Without the hope and trust that things can be different, that they will be different, we find ourselves stuck in this loop of despair and destruction. Ward writes about seeing the regrowth of her childhood home after Hurricane Camille in “You Tell Your Story: You Survive.” About how it helped her realize that we could all regrow our communities, our lives after tragedies. We will not be the same, but we will continue. And that’s part of what I will carry with me over the years after reading this book. Our lives will look drastically different, tragedies will strike, our worlds will not look the same. But as we survive, we will have the chance to regrow and rebuild, and that’s the outlook I want to have on the future. I look forward with hope, because I must. 

You can find On Witness and Respair here. The essays contained within will give you a lot to think about and a lot to hope for. May it encourage you in the ways it encouraged me.