Cruel Hope

Hey Steph!

Sometimes it is easier to walk around suppressing your deepest desires. Peace and happiness is found in the here and now. And focusing on your desired but seemingly unattainable future can be torturous.

When I was a young girl, all I dreamed about was holding babies and being in love. When I was a teen, my life's ambition was to be a wife and mother. When I was in college, I nervously lived day to day hoping for these dreams to be realized. They weren't. Heartbreak happened and to cope with it, I clung tight to what I could rely on: my family, a few friends, my job, my status as a student. I went back to school, and I found a version of myself I didn't know before. I had a lot of dreams that were hidden away. I wanted to be a musician, and a hiker of mountains, a runner of 10Ks, a voice for women, and a person full of service in her hands. I even wanted to be successful professionally as an editor. I had no idea all of that was in me. I had had tunnel vision all my life on those two goals: marriage and motherhood.

The knowledge of being a more complex being than I ever realized is priceless to me. I wouldn't trade it for the world. But part of that coping has been pushing aside the deep and fervent desires for a family of my own. A friend told me recently that hope is bittersweet. Opening yourself to hope is a test in vulnerability. It is putting your emotions in an unfulfilled future--a future that may never be. When it comes to me and hope, at times I look it in the eye for a split-second than turn around and run cowardly away. I'm not sure I have the emotional stamina to dream (at least about romance and motherhood). Instead, I focus on right now, on how to live my life each day better, on how to achieve all the other dreams I can make happen. And I'm happy.

And then I saw this video:




Wow! Motherhood is beautiful. It is something I still want. And sometimes it's okay to pull out those desires and just let it hurt.

Cheers,

A dreamer if only for today