Spring and the Vulnerability of Hope

This is my March 2023 newsletter.

The spring equinox (known as Ostara, around March 21st) is coming up, and I’ve been thinking a lot about the shift into the bright half of the year. This is the moment when day and night are equal, but immediately after that, the days start to become longer than the nights. It’s a good time to shed whatever has been going on in the wintertime and open to the new hopeful energy of the spring (even though it is currently -18 and snowing where I am in Edmonton). 

But hope is kind of…hard. We talk about it as if it’s a universal good, but hope can be dangerous. It can feel incredibly vulnerable. What if I allow myself to hope and things don’t turn out the way I want? 

I’ve been in a complex dance with hope over the last couple of years, and I’ve noticed that I have a tendency to expect and plan for the worst. I keep hope very, very close to my heart and certainly don’t engage with it joyfully. This helps me feel safer from a negative outcome. It helps me feel like I’ll avoid the embarrassment of finding out I shouldn’t have hoped. 

But…is this working for me? 

This is me as the Fool, number 0 in the Tarot deck, as photographed by Brittany Charlotte.

Well, yeah, it is, kind of. The last time my hopes were dashed I recovered a bit faster than I could have because part of me was expecting the worst outcome. And yet I spent a lot of time before that moment expecting bad news, and it’s not as if I didn’t experience any disappointment. I know I would have recovered either way.

So many of my fears, I’ve come to learn, boil down to having to feel a bad feeling. Shame, sadness, disappointment, loss, self-hatred, embarrassment (embarrassment is a big thing for me around hope, apparently). But the truth is, I know how to feel bad feelings. I’ve felt a lot of ‘em and I’ve gotten through it every time. I also know who to ask for help if I get overwhelmed by my feelings. What if I could trust that I could take the hit of a big disappointment in exchange for some of the lightness and joy that comes with hope beforehand? What if I didn’t spend all my energy preparing for the worst? What if I knew, fundamentally, that I can handle bad news, that I’m already prepared, that I don’t need to waste any more energy preparing?

The Fool from the Modern Witch Tarot deck

That, my friends, would be a leap of faith. It’s the Fool tarot card, which is, among other things, the card of stepping into the unknown, taking the leap of faith. Maybe it will be great. Maybe I’ll fall into the canyon of bad feelings. I can get out again. I’ve done it before and learned some things. 

So my intention this spring equinox is to experiment with letting go of my constant bracing and try on hope like a new spring jacket. I’ll let you know how it goes. 

What is your relationship with hope like? Can you march into the spring (pun intended) with joy and possibility, trusting that you know how to fall and get up again?