Hope Through Adversity

Hope is long phone calls with my mom and the time I can spend with her and my dad or the contact we have around holidays through gift giving on Valentine’s Day or any other celebration.

Writing a blog about mental health with a hopeful tone seemed daunting. I have been struggling with my physical health, which, in turn, makes struggling with depression and anxiety harder. It makes me think of the advice, “What can it hurt to have hope?” A close friend and surrogate aunt asked me that question, and it has made me feel just as challenged at some points. She’s helped me grow while also pissing me off with a lecture about more healthy behavior. A lecture that was necessary. Part of this growth has been coming to the understanding that one must be honest in relationships and that anger and love cannot only co-exist but are necessary for honest intimacy. Anger does not cancel out love, a lesson that I’ve brought to my relationship with my partner. My fiancé made me aware of how hope and despair coexist. So maybe hope isn’t just a mindset, but just those moments where I can feel happy, such as taking a walk or having ice cream with my fiancé.

Hope is texts that warm my heart. Hope is a joyful day with a friend. Hope is texts from my chiropractor and how my friends never stop me from venting. Hope is feeling joy and connection with the “work family.” Hope is long phone calls with my mom and the time I can spend with her and my dad or the contact we have around holidays through gift giving on Valentine’s Day or any other celebration. In these ways, I can have hope. It’s cognitively difficult for me to define hope, and so maybe for me, it needs to exist in the heart, in love, and in connection.

Speaking of connection, that is and has been a huge part of my healing journey. I came into Karis hating men, thinking they were the enemy. I also formed multiple friendships and acquaintances with the men I met there. It was not easy or quick. One friend (a man) taught me skills in the kitchen, which was a place I associated with trauma and abuse. My trauma related to the kitchen was so intense that when I made a mistake cooking dinner for the Community early in my time there, I ended up having to call the Mental Health Crisis hotline. In retrospect, I’m able to laugh at the absurdity of it all, but in the moment, I was terrified.

By the time I left Karis, I still had some anxiety around cooking for my Community, but I also found joy in making food for them. Not all of my friendships were with men, of course. Another close friend (a woman) would share endless giggle-fits with me in addition to helping to process my trauma. An example of both these things was the time that the two of us put a card from my abuser down the garbage disposal. Luckily, the garbage disposal survived intact. These are just a few memories, but there was so much joy, bonding, and healing through all of the simple moments in between. Conversations at dinner, happiness instead of fear, and kind greetings at the door; everything and everyone contributed in big ways and little ones. Recently, I had fun baking Christmas cookies with a Karis friend, a tradition that we’ve done for the last three years. Also, I feel so much pride in my friends’ growth and accomplishments. As you can see, Karis was and still is a huge part of my sense of hope.

It's so special to me that Karis has an alumni group, and every time I visit Karis for alumni programs, I feel a sense of being at home.

It’s so special to me that Karis has an alumni group, and every time I visit Karis for alumni programs, I feel a sense of being at home. All the memories I have created there make it that way, whether they were people whom I still talk to regularly or with those with whom I’ve lost touch. I am so glad my fiancé brought up how despair and hope coexist. Without that comment, my brain felt stuck on how hard it could be to be hopeful or even how to conceptualize what hope meant to me at that moment (Yet another reason it is great to get married besides his cooking). Looking back at my time at Karis, I experienced many moments of joy through my trauma recovery. Come the future, maybe I’ll look back and see the same type of hope that I experienced then in the struggles I’m dealing with now. No community is a perfect utopia, but a memory of an event from Karis that broke my heart at the time can still bring me some happiness now. When I came to Karis, I was too scared to come down to the dinner table. Through my connections, severely socially anxious me had gotten to the point of missing those dinners once I moved out. I still miss them sometimes. Hopefully, hearing about that can instill a little bit of hope in you.

Writing about hope ended up being easier than I thought after all. It makes me feel happy. I am human and know that the depression, anxiety, and despair will visit me, but that the hope will as well. Wishing everyone reading this many moments of hope in whatever form that manifests for them.

A.L., Karis Alumni