My little bird died around the time I was 6 years old, and I've lived 7 lifetimes since then desperately seeking the secret medicine, and yet everywhere I turned people just kept telling me, "your bird isn't dead, your bird can't be dead, birds of hope don't die."
Now as I sit here, sobbing, trying to find the words to thank you for sharing the secret, all I can think to say is I hope(🙃) this message offers reciprocal validation that while your work may not change the entire world, it has absolutely, pivotally just changed mine. 🙏💖
Emily, I love you. My husband loves you. We often say how thankful we are for you! Thank you for pressing on, planting one foot and then the other, bearing love into the world, even if you don’t always get to see where it is blossoming, fruiting, dropping seed and springing up in new places. Our lives have been made better, freer to love and be loved, because of you.
Ugh, patriarchy!!! Down with it!!! Love will win!!!
Emily you are truly a DELIGHT and I ~feel~ this post at an atomic level. Needed this, feel this, keep coming back to read snippets of it. I am sorry for your pain (me TOO my dude, ME TOO) yet grateful for your beautifully written reflection on it.
Felt compelled to comment after the surprise delight of your sister popping up on my YouTube (thank you, Past Me, for subscribing to your channel) giddily responding to your original video. Youse are the absolute tits (compliment — not sure if it’s just an Australian slang thing but it is high praise) and I love your magnificent brains.
In late-diagnosed-AuDHD-post-burnout-recovery solidarity with you,
Thank you Emily. I have hope sometimes (or about some things) and not about others. Your words give me comfort and wrap words around why I hadn’t given up working toward those hopeless things.
Thank you for making this video. I don't know why I'm seeing it now, almost a year later, but I'm grateful it showed up in my feed today. I have depression as well, although there have been times when it's taken a vacation. That was before my husband died in 2021, he was 53. I had hope early on that I would re-partner, but after almost 4 years I don't see that in my future. I am 57 now, our son is 13. I wish I could have figured out a way to put our family back together, but I couldn't. I have lost hope too, but like you Emily, I have faith that I'm supposed to be here for my son. I move forward for him.
This made me cry. I love this definition of faith. “A belief in an unimaginable future.”
I love that you don’t need God/dex to have faith. This makes so much sense to me. In the past when I’ve talked to Christians about why they give and do good works for others their reflexive answer is that this is what God wants from them and in exchange they’ll be allowed into heaven. Never once do they say because it’s the right thing to do or it it gives me purpose in my life or it’s its own reward. Totally dependent on extrinsic motivation.
This definition of Faith is a celebration of intrinsic motivation. We keep living our values because there is something INSIDE of us that wills us forward against all odds.
Maybe it’s innate/in our DNA. Who cares…when hope is lost Faith kicks in.
I've relied for many years on a similar idea inspired by Kierkegaard's story of the knight of faith and the knight of infinite resignation, in which he thinks of faith the way you define hope, your faith is closer to his infinite resignation but same general concept. Also dealing with intractable depression for decades, also both more pessimistic and more unafraid of the future than most ppl I know.
Thank you for this, Emily. My bird still works, but my spouse hasn’t had one for a very, very long time, I think. I am going to share this with him. (Also, thank you for your book with Amelia, Burnout. It helped me through a very difficult time and I have recommended it to many people.)
I've been down a rabbit hole about hope this evening after encountering a podcast where the interviewee says we should bury hope ""people always say 'keep hope alive', I feel like we need to bury hope, along with worry, like we shouldn't be hoping for things. We want to know that it's possible for us and say 'I *will* have' or 'thank you', the prayer is thank you for the fact that I already have this thing in my life so I think we should just like take hope out of our vocabulary, cause with hope there's always like this seed of doubt, that it's not really possible, and of course worry out of our vocabulary too, so it's thank you for what is and thank you for what will become." and I started thinking about how I've been trying to kill my hope for a romantic relationship with someone and even for any romantic relationships at all because none of that is guaranteed and it was too damn painful to encounter the intense wanting to fulfill what seems like the only chance I'll ever get again at experiencing a relationship with a person who fits into the extremely tiny overlap of all the circles in the Venn diagram of my identities/things that are important to me, at every turn. I got tired of the most painful crush of my life and said "ok what can I do to let this hope die". And I re-watched your sister's video response to this and at the end commented "but dammit what if our hope is for love?!" 🤣🙃 Anyways I try to remind myself that I have plenty of agape love through friends and family in my life. It takes the edge off things when they get dark.
Once you abandon hope there is a certain freedom that comes with being with what is and relating to what is behind and beyond hope. In 2001 I had a terrible loss and developed a undiagnosed chronic pain condition. I was in pain for five years with no answers. It broke something in me. And I found a way to live by accepting radically. what is, being a little more gentle with myself and continuing to live despite at times not wanting to be alive. Pema Chodron talks about this in her book When Things Fall Apart. Letting go Of Hope actually helped me stay alive. I live from a place of presence compassion and try to make choices that might lead to change that I might not ever see.
My little bird died around the time I was 6 years old, and I've lived 7 lifetimes since then desperately seeking the secret medicine, and yet everywhere I turned people just kept telling me, "your bird isn't dead, your bird can't be dead, birds of hope don't die."
Now as I sit here, sobbing, trying to find the words to thank you for sharing the secret, all I can think to say is I hope(🙃) this message offers reciprocal validation that while your work may not change the entire world, it has absolutely, pivotally just changed mine. 🙏💖
Emily, I love you. My husband loves you. We often say how thankful we are for you! Thank you for pressing on, planting one foot and then the other, bearing love into the world, even if you don’t always get to see where it is blossoming, fruiting, dropping seed and springing up in new places. Our lives have been made better, freer to love and be loved, because of you.
Ugh, patriarchy!!! Down with it!!! Love will win!!!
Emily you are truly a DELIGHT and I ~feel~ this post at an atomic level. Needed this, feel this, keep coming back to read snippets of it. I am sorry for your pain (me TOO my dude, ME TOO) yet grateful for your beautifully written reflection on it.
Felt compelled to comment after the surprise delight of your sister popping up on my YouTube (thank you, Past Me, for subscribing to your channel) giddily responding to your original video. Youse are the absolute tits (compliment — not sure if it’s just an Australian slang thing but it is high praise) and I love your magnificent brains.
In late-diagnosed-AuDHD-post-burnout-recovery solidarity with you,
- and then some -
mez xx 💛
There is much more I wish I could say, but all I can muster for now is, thank you for putting this into words. 💙
Thank you Emily. I have hope sometimes (or about some things) and not about others. Your words give me comfort and wrap words around why I hadn’t given up working toward those hopeless things.
Thank you. Just thank you!
Is this an original word you created? "cisheteropatriarchal"
Great and apt word!
Thank you for making this video. I don't know why I'm seeing it now, almost a year later, but I'm grateful it showed up in my feed today. I have depression as well, although there have been times when it's taken a vacation. That was before my husband died in 2021, he was 53. I had hope early on that I would re-partner, but after almost 4 years I don't see that in my future. I am 57 now, our son is 13. I wish I could have figured out a way to put our family back together, but I couldn't. I have lost hope too, but like you Emily, I have faith that I'm supposed to be here for my son. I move forward for him.
This made me cry. I love this definition of faith. “A belief in an unimaginable future.”
I love that you don’t need God/dex to have faith. This makes so much sense to me. In the past when I’ve talked to Christians about why they give and do good works for others their reflexive answer is that this is what God wants from them and in exchange they’ll be allowed into heaven. Never once do they say because it’s the right thing to do or it it gives me purpose in my life or it’s its own reward. Totally dependent on extrinsic motivation.
This definition of Faith is a celebration of intrinsic motivation. We keep living our values because there is something INSIDE of us that wills us forward against all odds.
Maybe it’s innate/in our DNA. Who cares…when hope is lost Faith kicks in.
Beautiful.
🙏thank you.
So good! Abandoning hope for faith has saved me many times too. I started to understand why people turn to religion, and call it their faith.
Thank you. I’ve been living with depression for longer than I can remember and, just, thank you for showing me an alternative way through
I've relied for many years on a similar idea inspired by Kierkegaard's story of the knight of faith and the knight of infinite resignation, in which he thinks of faith the way you define hope, your faith is closer to his infinite resignation but same general concept. Also dealing with intractable depression for decades, also both more pessimistic and more unafraid of the future than most ppl I know.
Thank you for this, Emily. My bird still works, but my spouse hasn’t had one for a very, very long time, I think. I am going to share this with him. (Also, thank you for your book with Amelia, Burnout. It helped me through a very difficult time and I have recommended it to many people.)
I've been down a rabbit hole about hope this evening after encountering a podcast where the interviewee says we should bury hope ""people always say 'keep hope alive', I feel like we need to bury hope, along with worry, like we shouldn't be hoping for things. We want to know that it's possible for us and say 'I *will* have' or 'thank you', the prayer is thank you for the fact that I already have this thing in my life so I think we should just like take hope out of our vocabulary, cause with hope there's always like this seed of doubt, that it's not really possible, and of course worry out of our vocabulary too, so it's thank you for what is and thank you for what will become." and I started thinking about how I've been trying to kill my hope for a romantic relationship with someone and even for any romantic relationships at all because none of that is guaranteed and it was too damn painful to encounter the intense wanting to fulfill what seems like the only chance I'll ever get again at experiencing a relationship with a person who fits into the extremely tiny overlap of all the circles in the Venn diagram of my identities/things that are important to me, at every turn. I got tired of the most painful crush of my life and said "ok what can I do to let this hope die". And I re-watched your sister's video response to this and at the end commented "but dammit what if our hope is for love?!" 🤣🙃 Anyways I try to remind myself that I have plenty of agape love through friends and family in my life. It takes the edge off things when they get dark.
Thank you Emily!!!
Once you abandon hope there is a certain freedom that comes with being with what is and relating to what is behind and beyond hope. In 2001 I had a terrible loss and developed a undiagnosed chronic pain condition. I was in pain for five years with no answers. It broke something in me. And I found a way to live by accepting radically. what is, being a little more gentle with myself and continuing to live despite at times not wanting to be alive. Pema Chodron talks about this in her book When Things Fall Apart. Letting go Of Hope actually helped me stay alive. I live from a place of presence compassion and try to make choices that might lead to change that I might not ever see.