Hope with dirt under its nails.

📍 Hope

I’ve been thinking a lot about hope lately—not the bright, easy kind that feels good when things are going your way, but the kind that’s harder won. The kind that comes with bruises. The kind that keeps showing up even when it doesn’t know how things will turn out.

Hope that is rooted, not in certainty, but in possibility.
Hope that makes space for grief, for rage, for rest.
Hope that says: we’re not done yet.

This isn’t the kind of hope you have to feel in order to act.
It’s the kind that grows stronger when you act anyway.

Not because you believe everything will be okay,
but because you believe we still get to try.

🌱 A Story About Hope (and Solarpunk)

At the beginning of 2023, I fell into a familiar and deeply uncomfortable place.

After years of pandemic grief and watching institutions crumble—watching people I care about abandon collective care in favor of convenience—I found myself deeply depressed. Not just about COVID, but about everything: the climate crisis, the rise of fascism, the casual way people stopped showing up for each other.

If we couldn’t get it together to wear masks and protect each other in a global pandemic, how were we supposed to face something as massive as ecological collapse?

I couldn’t imagine a future that didn’t end in disaster. And without imagination, hope just… dried up.

I told a friend how hopeless I was feeling. They gave me an unusual prescription: “Try solarpunk.”

Now, if you’re unfamiliar, solarpunk is speculative fiction that asks: What if we actually made it? Not by escaping to Mars or inventing some billionaire savior tech, but by sticking around and doing the work. It’s not utopia. It’s not clean. But it is a vision of the future shaped by community, adaptation, and care.

My friend (virtually) handed me Another Life by Sarena Ulibarri and said, “Start here.”

It takes place in a seemingly utopian society in Death Valley—a moneyless, sustainable community doing its best to live in right relationship with each other and the land. The main character, Galacia, is a conflict mediator. A peacekeeper. Someone trying to hold things together with integrity.

But then she discovers, via a new technology that reveals past lives, that she’s the reincarnation of a man who once led a movement to abandon Earth in favor of colonizing another planet. A man who chose escape over repair.

Everything shifts. Her identity. Her authority. Her relationship to redemption.

It’s not necessarily a feel-good book. It’s not about fixing things with good intentions and compostable dishware. But it is about reckoning. And about how even in a better world, people still carry grief. Regret. Contradiction.

And somehow… that made it feel possible.
It wasn’t utopia. But it was a future that still had room for flawed and real people.

Then I read Arborreality by Rebecca Campbell.

This one hit closer to the bone. A series of vignettes set along the slow collapse of the Pacific Northwest—a future shaped by climate disasters and pandemics. An isolated professor rescues books from a collapsing library. A man plants fireweed in his now deserted neighborhood. A community creates living buildings out of trees.

Small acts. Quiet moments. Echoes that stretch across generations.

It’s a gorgeous book. And it wrecked me.

But also—somehow—it helped.

But in this book, no matter how hard it was, how isolated people were, they survived. it’s what people do.

Even now, in this moment of willful ignorance and overwhelming despair, I believe many of us will face what’s coming. We’ll fight. We’ll build. We’ll adapt. We’ll pass stories down and say: this is what we tried. This is what we learned. Here’s what we saved.

I wish I could say that since 2023, the world has become safer or more just.
We both know it hasn’t.

But I can tell you that I’ve started to believe in something again.
Not in inevitability. Not in comfort.

But in possibility.

In the idea that our dreams—our weird, imperfect visions—are blueprints.
They won’t be built to spec. They’ll be altered, weathered, and reshaped. But they’ll give us a path forward.

So, if you can’t see a better future right now?

Borrow someone else’s vision.
Look to art.
To imagination.
To those who are doing the hard things.

Hold on tight.
It will become clearer in time.

🪷 On the Mat: Setting Intention, Holding Hope

There’s something powerful about pausing at the beginning of practice to ask: What am I holding today? And how do I want to move with it?

Setting an intention or dedicating your practice doesn’t have to be lofty or poetic. It can be quiet. Specific. Personal. It can sound like: “May I soften.” “May I keep going.” “This breath is for my ancestors.” “This practice is for everyone who still believes in better.”

When we offer our practice—whether to ourselves, to someone we love, to collective struggle—we create space for something sacred to rise. A sense of connection. Of meaning. Of hope.

And when we move with intention—in whatever way we need or choose—we start to build something together.
Not perfection, but presence.
Not control, but connection.

Because sometimes hope isn’t something we feel. Some days it’s something we choose. Something we practice.

✨ This Week’s Practice: Holding Hope – A Restorative Yoga Practice

Hope isn't always bright and shiny. Sometimes it's quiet. Tender. Guarded. Sometimes it needs a little room to stretch out.

This 60-minute restorative practice is an invitation to explore what it means to hold hope: in your body, in your breath, and in the space around your heart.

We’ll move through a series of heart-opening postures, ranging from gentle to gloriously brazen, with plenty of time for softness, stillness, and mindful curiosity. Whether you're cracking the door open to possibility or flinging the windows wide, you're welcome here.

We’ll close with a guided meditation to help you stay connected to whatever flicker of hope you find, whether it's a whisper or a roar.

Suggested props:
• 2 large pillows or 1 bolster/couch cushion
• 2 small pillows or yoga blocks
• 2–3 blankets or towels
• Optional: an eye pillow or scarf, extra cozy layers, and any supportive setup for extra heart support

🗓️ May 11, 2025 – 9:00 PM Eastern
📍 https://youtube.com/live/Pl2xG5TNWPo?feature=share

No expectations. No need to feel "hopeful" to begin.
Just come as you are, and we’ll hold space for whatever you’re carrying.

🍦 Fat Tuesday

This week’s snack: A Brown Sugar Boba Popsicle

Because joy is still on the menu.
Because pleasure doesn’t need to be earned.
Because you deserve something that makes your taste buds do a little dance, even when the world feels heavy.

Mine was brown sugar boba, with chewy pearls throughout (not just at the bottom, thank you very much). I loved it.

If you like a brown sugar cream cheese boba, you’ll love this. 10/10, would snack again.

What’s delighting your senses this week?

📬 Closing

If hope still feels far away—no matter how many books you read, breaths you take, or bolsters you stack—that’s okay.

No one is hopeful all the time.
You’re not failing. You’re not broken.
You’re just human.

Hope isn’t a constant. It’s a flicker, a whisper, a thing we practice.
Some days we hold it close. Other days, we let others carry it for us. Today I can carry it for both of us if you need.

Either way, you’re not alone.

In rest, resistance, and whatever comes next,
Shannon