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Hope Is

In the journey.

Hope is

In walking each other home.  (As Ram Dass writes, we are all just walking each other home.)

Home.  At the right end of the dash.  The left side of the dash.  The beginning.  Birth.  The dash grows.  Both, in length.  And in gathering travelers along life’s journey when paths intertwine.  The right side of the dash.  The last breath.  Death on Earth.  Were one walks out the door of home as a spiritual being having had a human experience and into another door of home wholly as Soul.

Between the dash.   Where we dance.  And we dance.   We dance so giddy when Joy takes our hand and guides us to the dance floor.   We long to run from the outstretched hand when Suffering doesn’t necessarily ask may I have this dance? 

I have valued her friendship for at least twelve years now.  I don’t remember the first day she entered my dash.   I remember she was the first person to hold up a mirror for me that meditation practices didn’t only have to be sitting still.   Even then, she was walking beside me with unconditional acceptance.   I don’t think I fully realized it until I sit down to write this.  She entered my dash at the beginning of a significant inner transformational journey I was starting to walk.  She has been an Earth angel walking me home for over a decade.

We are like-minded in our beliefs about mind, body, and soul.  And she is a role model for me.  She has felt similar feelings of not fitting in amidst the places she has found herself in.  She inspires me with her bravery.  If she doesn’t feel she is fitting in, she takes her Light and goes elsewhere.   She has a thirst to look paradigms, stereotypes, and many generations old legacy systems calling out for evolution straight in the eye and then look directly into her own eyes in the mirror for what she can do to be part of positive change.

And, perhaps quite miraculous is how she actually said Yes to an “athlon” with me ten years ago now!   Let’s do a driathlon together, “she said”.   It will be fun because you don’t have to swim; you can canoe, “she said”.   She, being me.  (smile) My dear friend saying yes to a 3-mile canoe race, followed by a 12.4-mile bike ride, and then finishing with a 3.1-mile run. 

Boy, unconditional acceptance for sure!  (smile)

Her mom went with us for that weekend adventure.  Not to canoe, bike, run with us.  But to cheer us on.   To spend time keeping watch over two of her grandchildren – my friend’s son and daughter – while unconditionally supporting and celebrating her oldest daughter.  

The essence of my friend’s mom.   Passed on to her daughter.

And now a legacy my friend carries forward without her best friend physically by her side.

A few weeks ago, on a stretch of our dashes, my friend’s email read Prayer request for Cindy. 

Her mom. 

November 29, 2022, to be exact. 

Please hold her in your prayers for a successful procedure tomorrow, answers, and a positive prognosis (and for less pain!).

Suffering was now standing up slowly yet deliberately walking to the dance floor where my friend stood.

In my inbox December 1.   December 5.  December 14.  

December 15. 

Today was surgery day. We have good news!…She will be at Spectrum for at least a week. May have to go to rehab after leaving here it will all depend on how she does over the next week.

And then, as I am dancing with Joy the eve of the eve of Christmas December 23, I read

Yesterday we had to say goodbye …  💔  There are no words and there are so many words.   We are sad, stunned, and yet so grateful that we could call her wife, mom, gram, mother-in-law, sister, aunt, and friend!

And in the moment in which life becomes before and no longer the same, Grief stepped from the wooded tree line and began walking my friend’s dash with her. 

Suffering began owning the dance floor. 

As I think of my friend who is now living her life while she simultaneously watches her life -for Grief and Suffering have a way of taking one to out-of-body sensations – I love her even more than I already did.   Susan Cain writes in her book “Bittersweet” that the real reason for…all our emotions…is to connect us.  And Sadness, of all the emotions, was the ultimate bonding agent.   

If I had a magic wand to make this all a bad dream in which my friend could wake up, it would be hers.   But since life brings that which we cannot control anything of, except our response to it, then I choose gratitude that I have the privilege of walking beside my friend on our journeys home.  

Hope Is

The deepening awareness that life is fragile and precious and that in the greatest suffering is the joy of knowing what it is to

Love.

Unconditionally.

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Hope Is

in the privilege of being a co-author an additional time with a community of voices.  Last month I shared about the book that can be found on Amazon, Seeing through Their Eyes.   This time a collective of co-authors share about Kitchen Table Stories: Sharing our Lives in Food.    

For a copy of inspirational stories along with delicious recipes, click on this link below

https://www.amazon.com/Kitchen-Table-Stories-2022-Sharing/

Hope Is

In the inspiration that Hope Has a Cold Nose continues to cast to others in unanticipated ways.   As December knocked, I had the honor of receiving this message below from Page Turner Awards as follow up from their gracious announcement a few months ago that HHCN had made it to the finalists round.

We have just completed a full and complete list all 2022 Page Turner Awards winners, for all awards and awards’ sub-categories, and your submission, ‘Hope Has a Cold Nose’, has won The Best Book Title. We all thought it was an intriguing, charming and warm (in an emotional rather than nose sense!) title!

What is Hope to you?   I would love to read and hear your thoughts.  I’d love to share them with others via email or on my web page(s).  I welcome your handwritten messages or drawn pictures to the address below.  Or feel free to email me (Christine@hopewhispers.net)     

P.O. Box 327

Gobles, MI 49055

ATTN:  Hope Is

42.3838° N, -85.95861° E

Reframed

The number eight.  

Turned on its side is the symbol of infinity. 

Eight years ago, I was dancing with Suffering when my soul mate in fur began having seizures, which turned into a pancreatic cancer diagnosis.  Hmmmmm…this thought just entered…the same cancer that my friend’s mom – who I talked about above – was diagnosed with just a few short weeks ago. 

To the Moon:  What I Learned from Four Running Feet was how I made it matter, that chapter of my story that included Roo’s cancer. 

How I started making all the chapters of my story matter. 

Make it matter that it did. 

Nearing twenty-five years later, and I can still hear those words from a friend.   Everything that happens has purpose…if you drive slower in icy conditions…if you say “I love you” more often before you leave home…you will have made it matter that it happened.

It.  The tragedy I had heard about.

When Suffering had just taken the hands of many and said Now, we dance!

I didn’t know any of those directly impacted.  And yet.  Someone else’s story forever changed my life.

Those of you who know me, or have followed the progression of Hope Has a Cold Nose from manuscript to publication or who have been on this Hope Is quest with me know that I am very passionate about

Hope. 

My favorite description of hope is the quote by Václav Havel.  Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Hope has probably been with me all my life, though I don’t think I started to recognize it until my friend said his words.  And even then, I hadn’t finished framing the chapters of my story in such a way that I begin heeding Hope’s call.   In entirety.  

I started to listen when I first heard a song by Chris Rice on the radio with the words, so carry your candle, run to the darkness. Seek out the hopeless, confused and torn. Hold out your candle for all to see it.  Take your candle and go light your world.   It would take me a couple of more years to know why that song had played and in what darkness I would find myself shining a light into, but I knew at the moment I heard that song that I needed to take particular notice.  Eighteen years later and I still remember the road I was driving on when the song came on the radio.  I think it’s fair to say I noticed.  (smile) 

I held on to Hope as Havel defines it when I felt myself step into another tunnel of darkness a couple of years after I walked through the darkness as a candle for approximately a hundred and forty individuals who found their lives now in significant transition due to life bringing change in the form of a business decision.  This time the next tunnel would be my own darkness, in which I kept the candle extinguished, letting others – like my friend – shine their lights for me to travel my way back into the Light of my soul from the dark night in which it had found a temporary home.    

I began to embody Hope through the journey of letting Roo go, 8 years ago.   She had whispered write a book in her last days on Earth.  Two years later To the Moon was published.  The calling had only just begun.   

If you have read To the Moon, you know how very much Roo let me know daily – if not frequently in a day – that space was not separating her and I.  In the eight years since she has left Earth, she is also still with me.  She has walked beside me this year in what has been another life shifting transformational year for me.  If you have read earlier months of Hope Is, you know some of that transformation. 

For many years now, I have grown my dash letting go of emotional weight no longer necessary to carry and through reframing chapters of my story. This year felt like the first year with Roo when she began to live on the other side of the bridge (rainbow); every day there was a letting go and a reframing and a way of seeing that every sentence of my story could not have been anything different for me to be here now answering what calls.

Serve others by listening, writing, teaching, authoring, speaking, and guiding (coach-mentor) the reframing of one’s life stories from self-judgment to self-worthy, from uncertain to hope-fully, from grieving to embracing, from shame to dignity.  

Make it matter that it did.

Every sentence of one’s story.  

For everything that happens has purpose.

Including when Suffering takes our hand and leads us in a dance. 

Ah, but when Suffering does, our heart doesn’t crack apart.  It actually cracks open and expands to know greater love. 

I know. 

Because mine did. 

Eight years ago, today (it is the 30^th as I write this), we brought Ginger home from a shelter.  Roo had only been gone a little over three months, and up until mid-December that year, we were going to wait a full year before getting another soul in fur to fill our home.  We met Ginger on the 28^th, but due to the approval process, we could not bring her home until the 30^th.  I can still remember how I couldn’t sleep, my body wracked with the feeling that I didn’t want Ginger to think we weren’t coming back for her and even more, my soul felt it couldn’t bare to begin a new year without Ginger.  I cannot go into the new year without a soul in fur by my side, the nonstop feeling coursing through me.

I didn’t think I could love to the depths I had known love with Roo.  Until Ginger.  Through Ginger I began to see that Peppi, my first love – who first showed me hope has a cold nose – had been there as my heart was just beginning to learn the various dimensions of love, both the ways love can comfort, and it can hurt.  Along the way, my heart expanded – and contracted – and then Roo came just before I would enter darkness so that she could walk beside me until I felt ready to step back into Light.   When my heart was wide open – bare and vulnerable and sad and curious and hopeful and seeking how

To make it matter

Ginger came and ensured

My heart would stay open and expand.

This year a similar feeling came as this year has drawn to a close.  The feeling isn’t about entering a new year without a soul in fur by our side at home.  The feeling has been about finishing the letting go to fully step forward with the story of my life written differently.  A couple of weeks ago I had one final thing to let go of.  She was whispering it’s time and remember to the moon and back, always by your side.

I’ve had tucked in a keepsake box Roo’s winter jacket, her harness for the running leash, and the sweatshirt I wore on the day my hand was on her heart when it beat for the last time.   I washed all three items, having sniffed the jacket and harness to relive her smell.  I smiled at the magic of life when I could still smell her even after the wash cycle had completed.   

I’ve worn the sweatshirt a couple of times now.  

Joy has been leading me on the dance floor since. 

New beginnings.  

Infinity. 

One doesn’t wash away the other. 

When hearts are connected, love always remains.  Infinitely. 

No matter time nor space.

I will leave you with this smile.   Hawk has been one of the ways Roo communicates with me, and as I just typed when hearts are connected, love always remains, Hawk just flew by the window.

Hi Roo, I am reminded of the last sentences in our book, To the Moon.  “I will always make it matter, Roo, the life you lived and gave that I might fully live.  Thank you for leading me to the center of myself, my beautiful—so beautiful—gift.” 

Dear reader, now I ask you.

How can YOU make it matter that it did, every sentence of your story?  Especially when Suffering has taken your hand and said I think it is time now for us to dance.

42.3838° N, -85.95861° E

A Cold Nose

A dog is love’s purest shadow – Angie Weiland-Crosby

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Hope’s Spiral Staircase

As a new year prepares its beginnings, may joy, faith, peace, and prosperity be yours in 2023.

N ° S ° E ° W °

Hope Whispers, Nature Speaks

And many other offerings.

I have been redesigning my web sites to include the courses I teach, such as Hope Whispers, Nature Speaks:  How Both can Aid us in Reframing our Life Stories, as well as outlining other services I provide.  Stay tuned in future emails for an upcoming course!  The Art of Listening.  Details are still in development but the current timing for the first course is targeted to begin in March.  Be on the watch for how you can take part! 

Here is a link to one of the two re-designed sites. 

HOPE – Hope Whispers: The Inner Pathway to Whole (christinehassing.com)

You can get to my additional site through links when you visit Christinehassing.com but I will also provide you a link here.

HOME | Hope Ascends (hopewhispers.net)

Much more coming in 2023!   Book three…. a campaign…

Stand by! 

As we stand at the edge of letting go of this year and letting come new beginnings, I stand excitedly looking forward to the future and how my path may intersect with you.  I look forward to our journey together!   

Namaste’

Helping, fixing, and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. when you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul. –

Rachel Naomi Remen

Sincerely,

-Christine

P.S.

If you have enjoyed this month’s message, please pay it forward to others.  They can also subscribe to future emails by visiting www.christinehassing.com.   If you know of someone who has a Hope Is message to share, please encourage them to share via the post office address (or via email at Christine@hopewhipsers.net).  I welcome sharing their input in a future Hope Is message! 

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Hope Is

In twenty-nine diverse neighborhoods that hosted 40,000 diverse running souls, in the restaurants of River North, and on such streets as Jackson Boulevard. 

Chicago. 

October 9.

The Bank of American Chicago Marathon. 

I, along with one of my best friends, joined approximately 39,998 other runners through a cheering section that would rival the best Super Bowl half time shows ever created! 

A heart of America’s land. 

Some spectators may have been at a sideline for their vested interest in a specific runner.  And yet.  Partiality wasn’t present.  Only Acceptance.  And Sincerity.  And Genuine Celebration.  And Care.  Voices holding the signs of a face or name of runner were the same voices that cheered you’ve got this to thousands of pairs of running shoes making their way past where they stood. 

Some spectators were there simply to encourage a group of “crazy-minded” or “adrenalin junkies” or “inspiring” individuals who felt drawn to run twenty-six and point two miles on a chill in the air Fall Day among the tall skyscrapers and historical homes of a “Windy City”. 

When volunteers and police officers were thanked, they responded with thank YOU. 

To forty thousand “invaders” of their home? 

Nope. 

The tones spoke the attitude.

We runners were forty-thousand guests. 

Though the person who coined Chicago as the “Windy City” was spot on when they did, from what I experienced, the W could begin the word

Welcoming.

Hope Is

In the starting place of our hearts.  

A few years ago, when I was earning my MA, I remember a professor who further awakened my starting place heart about how our heart exists not only in our chest, but that there is a heartbeat felt in our stomachs and there is a heartbeat in our brains.  It is one of my favorite feelings when I begin meditating to put my hand on my stomach and feel the heartbeat that greets my hand back. 

A heartbeat at our cores.

From an article titled The Heart has its own Brain and Consiousness written by Rollin McCraty, Ph.D., Raymond Trevor Bradley, Ph.D. and Dana Tamasin, BA,

Most people think of social communication solely in terms of overt signals expressed through language, voice qualities, gestures, facial expressions, and body movements. However, there is now evidence that a subtle yet influential electromagnetic or “energetic” communication system operates just below our conscious awareness. Energetic interactions likely contribute to the “magnetic” attractions or repulsions that occur between individuals, and also affect social exchanges and relationships. Moreover, it appears that the heart’s field plays an important role in communicating physiological, psychological, and social information between individuals.

Experiments conducted at the Institute of HeartMath have found remarkable evidence that the heart’s electromagnetic field can transmit information between people. We have been able to measure an exchange of heart energy between individuals up to 5 feet apart. We have also found that one person’s brain waves can actually synchronize to another person’s heart…The results of these experiments have led us to infer that the nervous system acts as an “antenna,” which is tuned to and responds to the electromagnetic fields produced by the hearts of other individuals. We believe this capacity for exchange of energetic information is an innate ability that heightens awareness and mediates important aspects of true empathy and sensitivity to others Furthermore, we have observed that this energetic communication ability can be intentionally enhanced, producing a much deeper level of nonverbal communication, understanding, and connection between people.

It is 14 days later since my weekend in Chicago, and I am still thinking of the individuals my path walked beside who did not have homes they would be going to in their foreseeable futures.  Grace.  Dignity.  Non-judgment.  Respect.   I wish you well.  All these elements their electromagnetic field transmissions seemed to convey.   They held a cup they hoped would collect silver or green, but they never acknowledged it in their hellos, have a good day, how are you today? greetings.  Individuals of humanity whose paths intersected for seconds and in those brief moments, the only thing present was I see you.  Let’s see each other.

A few days after the race, in that nothing is coincidence way that I believe life flows, my mom sent me a link to this story by Steve Hartman.  My mom did not yet know how much I was touched by the homeless gentlemen who I crossed paths with in Chicago.  This article an affirmation of Grace.  Dignity.  Respect.  Let’s see each other. 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/steve-hartman-on-the-road-officer-seara-burton-homeless-donation/

I recently read an article written for Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper I’m a Death Doula. These are 10 Lessons I’ve Learned About Living from the Dying by Diane Button.  Among her lessons she’s learned includes these.

Lesson No. 1: The ordinary is everything.  A client who had traveled the world and dined at countless impressive restaurants recently shared with me what she was going to miss the most when she dies: her morning bowl of steel-cut oatmeal, the sound of birds, and conversations with her daughter. Over time, she came to understand that a truly joyful and meaningful life includes quiet time, a healthy lifestyle, plenty of sleep, a spiritual practice, everyday acts of kindness, time shared with others, and fewer material possessions.

Lesson No. 10: Show up and finish well…But there is another equally dynamic and relevant aspect of life that my clients consistently reveal as a major component of a meaningful life. It is often expressed as a question: Did my life matter? Did I make a difference? Is the world a better place because I was here?

Mother Teresa guides us to “do small things with great love.” It’s about everyday acts of service. If you are willing to show up, you can make the world a better place. If you can offer someone a smile, you can make the world a better place.

How are you showing up?

What is the starting place of your heart when you do?

Hope Is

In the Angels sent to walk this Earth with us.  

Like the owner of Michigan News Agency in Kalamazoo.   Dean Hauck. 

http://www.michigannews.biz/

Michigan News Agency | Facebook

Divinely put on my path not just for her wonderful support of both of my books in her bookstore.  Each time I have the honor of talking with her voice to voice or in person, she ALWAYS is the messenger of the words I am in most need of or most meant to hear.   She is a role model in her words of wisdom and in her grace in how to have a heart of gold for others without diminishing one’s own worth and joy.  Like her words carrying a meaning similar to this:  Life is too short to be sad for the choices others’ make.  You need to focus on what you are meant to do.  She is exquisite in her dance of grace between opposites, I am inspired by her humility and generosity along with a willfulness of spirit and self-respect.  She is a pillar for fostering and maintaining belonging in community and a lighthouse shining the power of written words.  Though her encouragement that affirms it is time to put serious priority on book three has me walking out of her door feeling invincible in what calls me as writer and author, it is her presence that has me walking out her door feeling in awe that I just spent minutes with an angel that walks the Earth among us. 

Hope Is

Listening to the whisper that keeps growing louder and louder.  IT IS time for creating book 3.  After all, I’ve started a pattern of publishing a book every four years after embarking on two-year adventures writing manuscripts; 2024 is fast approaching for the next publication.  That means the balance of this year and 2023 is…Between the Dash here I come!

What is Hope to you?   I would love to read and hear your thoughts.  I’d love to share them with others via email or on my web page at HOPE IS | -Hope Ascends (hopehasacoldnose.com).  I welcome your handwritten messages or drawn pictures to the address below.  Or feel free to email me.     

P.O. Box 327

Gobles, MI 49055

ATTN:  Hope Is

26.644588° N, -81.8651° E

Reframed

I am blessed to have a dear soul come into my life in the past few months, and as I have gotten to know her, I learned about her living in a home just a short distance from the path of Hurricane Ian.  Recently she sent me a video of the heartache far and wide that Florida now experiences and among her words were these.  So many buildings are down that now you can, once again, look across and see the Gulf of Mexico and on the other side, the bay.

As I stepped through my empathy, I was reminded of words I recently heard retold from something written by Toni Morrison.  Toni Morrison says when she writes about water memory. She says, “You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places to make room for houses and livable acreage. Occasionally, the river floods the places. ‘Floods’ is the word they use. But in fact, it’s not flooding. It is remembering, remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”

Mother Nature.  More powerful than all of us fortunate to walk among her trees, mountains, and lakeshores.     

I began my dance in grace between opposites.  I danced in grace between my heart that went out in compassion and empathy to the gentle, sweet, fiercely determined and resilient runner my friend and I talked with before the Marathon start whose home and boat were part of the footprint Ian had left in his stomp through Florida.  Yet, in a Planes, Trains, and Automobiles movie kind of way without the humor, this dear soul was not going to let what life had brought her unexpectedly to hinder her will to run her first marathon she had trained long and hard for.  She was choosing to say in response to a storm blowing in the power of doubt with are you sure you can do this? with her certainty, WATCH ME! I AM ABOUT TO DO JUST THAT!

And on the other end of the pendulum in that dance is my soul that believes at its core that the world cracking open right now physically, emotionally, mentally, and spirit-lly is because a Universe is trying to get back to where it was, in balance and in harmony.     

For some time now I have been pondering on the ways I can be a part of new beginnings that lead us to balance and harmony.  How best can I leave this world better than when I entered it?  How I believe is that we choose the life we enter into, at the time we enter it.  In the words of Elizabeth Gilbert from her book Eat, Pray, Love that speak to my soul often I was always coming here; I was never not coming here. 

So, since I chose to be a part of this life during a time of significant transformation, how might I take the gifts I’ve been given and leave this world feeling satisfied I contributed to balance and harmony, not division and incongruence?  How best can I show up and finish well? 

I was given a gift several weeks ago while having lunch with a dear friend.  Bless her heart that she didn’t know then that she planted a significant seed with me until I shared with her at our most recent lunch a very big thank you.   She was sharing about her son, only a few short years in the workforce out of college who is trying to establish colleague, team, and manager relationships virtually and finding it challenging to feel authentic connection not having met others in person, at least once.  My friend made the comment that whether a new leader or a leader with twenty years’ experience, there is an absence from their toolkit is how to build meaningful relationships remotely.  How to truly see and hear others through a Zoom or Teams call, or even harder, an “old fashioned” phone call.  

I grabbed ahold of that seed and have been looking at it in a flowerpot next to me ever since!  I keep adding water to it, starting with revisiting the extensive training I have went through on deep and presence listening and communication practices using body gestures, on generative listening experiences through my life story listening, writing, and teaching, and in my own experiences building strong relationships virtually when I was in a role in my career in which everyone I worked with sat in multiple locations around the world.  

I have been revisiting other meaningful moments that I now see as additional seeds that were planted, or perhaps the seed was planted long ago, and I have been merely watering it with each experience that has especially footprinted my attention and my heart.  Like the Dear Evan Hansen movie I wrote about a few months ago.  Or the life-story writing I did with third graders.  Or the stories I read of parents who start non-profit organizations in tribute of their daughter or their son who took their life due to cyber-bullying.   Or the words of author and activist Julie Lythcott-Haimes when she shared during a TEDx course that technology is here to stay, and we can help be the wise elders for young adults who don’t necessarily know what it feels like to be present and in person for a meaningful amount of time with others without technology in one of their hands.  To paraphrase her words, we can be way-showers by providing guidelines at a meal for example, where it is a no phone zone and we provide an atmosphere of welcoming, present, engaging conversation.  Said another way.  Make it a time that young adults want to experience again and more.   

Or the newly appointed positions of Ministers of Loneliness in the UK and in Japan that I wrote about last month.  I anticipate these are not the only two countries in which there could be focused attention on individuals who feel isolated.  Or the fiction book I recently read written by Mike Gayle, All the Lonely People.   The main character in his 80’s.  The second main character fifty years younger give or take.  The other characters of varying ages.   Loneliness doesn’t discriminate in age, gender, ethnicity, ancestral heritage, viewpoint, or life story lived to date.  

Or I think about other ways in which my lens sees the world cracking open for new beginnings and how Mother Nature is trying to aid a return to balance and harmony.   Though for my wellbeing, I am choosing to be largely disengaged from the opinions of news outlets, I also hear of the frustrations traveling via air.  Delayed flights.  Staff shortages.  Less flight options.  I can’t help thinking less flights can equal less pollutants into the sky that our Earth is tired of.   

Or extra time during a layover is a chance to have a conversation with a stranger. 

Maybe even make a new friend.

We make it matter that it is happening by choosing to open the gifts of what life is bringing.   

I think about my experiences in receiving messages and in connecting with others who have left this Earth.  For those of you who have read To the Moon, you certainly know of my connection with Roo after she passed from this life with cancer.   Or in meditation when my Grandpa M. enters and guides a decision I am making.

If I am now creating discomfort because it is not how you believe, let me share an example that I think most everyone can related to.  Have you ever had a time when you made a call to someone, and they answered saying something like it’s so funny that you called.  I was just thinking about you!   Space does not separate hearts.  

If we choose to be open to the possibility. 

A multitude of ways we can listen. 

If we desire more meaningful connection.

To each other.  Within ourselves.

Don’t misunderstand me.  I understand, respect, and also greatly value in person interaction.  I also enjoy and value travel. 

As I ponder my part in helping the world return to balance and harmony, I think the answer lies somewhere in the center of these two circles.

People just want to be seen and heard.

Tangibly.  Sustainably. 

Not just in a quick dopamine hit via social media. 

But in a I see you.  Let’s see each other. 

Look into my eyes and see that I am a human being.

Whose story you see is not the full essence of my soul and me. 

Space does not separate hearts.   I know.  Not only through Roo.  Or my Grandma I. Or my dad. 

So does my mom and my sister still very much a part of this Earth.   Just ask one of us sometime about meal planning and chocolate covered strawberries for a wedding shower.  (smile)

Or ask some of those I’m blessed to coach who I began working with virtually before we could meet in person sixteen months later. 

People just want to be seen and heard. 

And if our starting place with our hearts is to be present and hear and see.

We can do just that.

People just want to be seen and heard.

I know.

Because the gift of my childhood was to learn hands on and gather all the tools I could as to what it felt like to not believe I should be seen and heard

That I would develop the gifts to listen and see

And then teach, coach, author, inspire, and speak how you can do the same.

For yourself.

For others.

For living this life in balance and harmony in the way that means for you.

40.71455° N, -74.00712° E

A Cold Nose

Several months ago, I had the privilege of being a guest on the podcast, Dog Save the People.  If you follow me on social media, you will also have saw my year-long inspirational sharing of messages from these podcasts.

Now check out the dog walk meditations!  Calm your mind; connect with your dog.

Dog Walk Meditation

42.65525° N, -86.20289° E

Hope’s Spiral Staircase

As you know from other monthly communications, my life is blessed with both Ginger and Kutana.   I have shared in previous months how each of them my teachers, each different messengers.   Ginger is my groundedness and centering.  Kutana is my fling your arms wide open to the joy of the moment.  Oh, and in case you doubt, every moment is joy!  (grin)

This video is different than the others I share.  Yet, I think you will find it inspirational just the same.   As you begin to watch it, be thinking about something you love to do.  Something that makes you feel like a kid at heart, joyous, eager, just can’t wait to do! 

Like swimming in Lake Michigan.  Kutana’s I just can’t wait to do! 

https://studio.youtube.com/video/vmofl9iEHbE/edit

N ° S ° E ° W °

Hope Whispers, Nature Speaks

Your homework is this.  

Go outside and walk around until a tree speaks to you to go up to and then put your back against it. 

Think of the symbolism of the tree.   How it is rooted in place.  How it is resilient to various elements of weather – wind, rain, sun.  How it provides shelter and shade.  How its root system reaches out in multiple directions.  (And there are experts who have studies how the root systems talk with each other in a forest.)  

Turn, and place your back against the tree.  Think I am supported.  This tree has my back.

Close your eyes and feel your feet on the ground.  Feel the steadiness below your feet as well as the support behind you.  Breathe in.  Breathe out. 

As you keep breathing, turning your thoughts to how your back feels supported and your feet feel like they are standing on solid ground, begin to listen to the noises around you.  Maybe birds.  Maybe the wind.  Maybe water nearby.   Maybe you are in a city, and you hear horns and people calling.  

Simply listen.   Listen with presence.

Then, think about your forehead, and how in this area is your center of wisdom.  

As you breathe in and out, feeling the tree behind you, the ground below you, listening to the sounds of now,

Think about your chest and how in this area is your center of love.

Breathe in.  Out.  Present with your back against the tree and your feet on the ground.  Present in listening, and maybe what you hear around you is continuing to fade into the background as you begin thinking of how your body is feeling and what your thoughts are related to wisdom and love.

Think about your stomach area and then your legs and how you are moving to the center of vitality.  

How in each of these areas, these centers, is life force.  Your life force of

Wisdom.  Love.   Vitality. 

And how you are always supported.  

In whatever weather of life. 

Namaste’

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.  Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Sincerely,

-Christine

P.S.

If you have enjoyed this month’s message, please pay it forward to others.  They can also subscribe to future emails by visiting www.christinehassing.com.   If you know of someone who has a Hope Is message to share, please encourage them to share via the post office address (or via email).  I welcome sharing their input on the Hope Is website or in future blog messages!   

N42.36087° W85.87946°

Hope Is

In the way sunflowers grow tall and strong.  Ever reaching and joyously turning their ‘faces’ toward the radiance of the sun.  

No matter the threats to their flourishing. 

Such as free-roaming chickens who scratch and forage near their base as they just begin to sprout and reach.

Hope Is in the way that Nature can Intune so graciously to the circles of life, circles that hold compassion in the same space as indifference.  That hold resilience in the same space as adversity.  That hold woven in the thread of their 360 degree hoops the gifted messages meant for us to choose how we will respond to what they are bringing us. 

These free-roaming chickens become messengers when they exit a break in the fence that holds them in pens of adversity and indifference.   They choose resilience when they cross a field to find my mom’s garden and flower beds.   They message to my mom that she can dance in grace between choosing compassion and choosing frustration when they may forage a flower bed a little too much.  They Intune to both of her responses.   They continue to exit their pen of adversity for her choice of compassion.  They let the sunflowers grow to their best versions of who they are meant to be because my mom chooses in her frustration to buy decorative landscaping options that meets these feathered messengers with harmony. 

What is Hope to you?   I would love to share your thoughts.   I welcome your handwritten messages or drawn pictures to the address below.  Or feel free to email me.     

P.O. Box 327

Gobles, MI 49055

ATTN:  Hope Is

39.443256° N, -98.95734° E

Reframed

September.  

Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. 

It may or may not have been a day in September for Tom…

Zoey and I enrolled in the appropriate service-dog certification training. And then, Fire, you are relentless, never quite ceasing! Okay, fine, I know you have been waiting for these words you want me to say. I’m done, I’m out of here, today is the day! You wanted my life, so you win. I do not need any more of this! I will take Zoey for a hike along with my other best friend that aims good and straight. Here, my back against this tree, this looks like a good final place.

Dad, Dad, wait, what are you preparing to do? No, put that down, I need you! Dad, you can’t save my life and then leave me alone. I have at long last found my home. Dad, I get it, how those flames are brutally hot to the point they take your faith away. There were moments in that shelter when I had no more strength. I know, Dad, what it is to reach a point where you give in and accept fate has a bigger plan. I was ready to accept that euthanasia was my outstretched hand. But then you called for me, and you saved my life. You gave me a purpose that I had been trying to find. Dad, I believe in you, and I believe in us as a team. Please give me a chance to give back to you the way you’ve given to me. Together we can fight this fiery enemy.

My face showered in kisses as Zoey willed me to put my .45 down. In that moment, additional flames were permanently doused. With Zoey and me certified, my calming force by my side, I took the next step of saying goodbye. Thirteen different medications were then tossed aside. Saying no more to the numbness in my body, no more to reliance on what I am certain was Fire’s cousin trying to entice.  After horrific withdrawals, once again I was more present in my life.

-From Hope Has a Cold Nose

Based on this information I found on the CDC web page, I would argue that our awareness should be every day.

This is only in the United States.

The World Health Organization site indicates that over 700,000 lives world-wide end in suicide per year.   A 2019 statistic.  

Given that I just read both Japan and the UK governments have appointed “Ministers of Loneliness” to “combat the growing scourge of social isolation individuals face”, or as I recently heard to address the “epidemic of loneliness”, my heart believes that 700,000 is significantly understated as we near the end of 2022. 

This may be the point where you will choose to fast forward to the “A Cold Nose” section of this monthly Hope message.  I respect your feelings and I understand.  It isn’t easy to look this topic in the eye. 

I know because I was once a very angry person at someone who reached the end of hope and decided to leave Earth through carbon monoxide poisoning.   I became witness to the heartbreak of someone who is one of the most important people in my life, a close survivor of this person’s choice.  Instead of choosing compassion or to seek understanding, I embraced deep-seeded judgment, and my mind framed a narrative I repeated often the most selfish thing he could have done!

Looking pain, trauma, sorrow, despair, and grief in the eye is hard enough for us as a collective humanity.   I perceive it feels like we are being taken to the darkest of places when we add the “nature of” that grief, the reason for why we might now find ourselves needing to choose to look into the glasses staring back at us of the tragedy of despair and hopelessness, of isolation and anxiety, of self-condemnation and unworthiness. 

We can’t always get our hearts around the tragedy of an unexpected car accident or a life-taking cancer diagnosis, but our minds can rationalize it and choose empathy and the gentleness of sorrow without judgment to the person whose life is now revered in what took place between the dash.

We can’t fathom in mind or of heart someone’s choice that not living life feels easier than living life.

Yet, in that dance of grace between opposites that I’m always messaging.   And in that way that I’m routinely sharing we make it matter that which we wish hadn’t or wouldn’t take place in the positive change we make because of it. 

What if we are being given the greatest act of love, we could receive from these souls who have left Earth feeling that the only hope they could find was by leaving this life with suicide the way they chose? 

What if we they are our messengers to bring more hope, compassion, and unconditional listening into the world that is cracking open for new beginnings.  

Yes, for that is what I also believe.  What feels like a falling apart is actually a breaking open for the new. 

Recently I took part in a virtual race for suicide awareness.   Part way through my half marathon run, I paused for a cold drink of water that I was keeping in our garage refrigerator.  As I went to open the door to start running again, on the doorknob was this dragonfly.   Now, as you have also come to know about me, I listen for Nature’s messages.   Among Dragonfly’s symbolism and my experiences when Dragonfly has crossed my path, this little one whispers hope, transformation, new beginnings, and can also be an angel message from someone who has left Earth. 

This little one decided not just to grace my path as my hand reached for the doorknob.  This little one decided to join me for some of my run.   For a few laps this little one stayed on my shirt and together we ran for awareness.

And for new beginnings. 

And for the souls who have left Earth who I believe are whispering to me make our stories matter.

I’ve been asked if book three is in the works and if so, what is it about?  And if one is not yet in the works, what is stirring as book three? 

A title that has been simmering contains these words “Between the Dash”.  

Approximately 22 military veteran lives per day.   Approximately 126 lives per day in the United States of souls who lost hope.  Approximately 1,1918 per day world-wide.   

This doesn’t count the number of survivors who now grieve so deeply, who ride a roller coaster of emotions including judgment and guilt and the longing to remember their loved ones when hope and vibrancy was still theirs.   Who long for their loved ones to be remembered as an extraordinary soul with a purpose, not a soul who “gave up”.  

I think I am starting to see and see again.   When my path crossed with the first veteran and his service dog, my heart was immediately captured when I felt the gravity of souls who reached such states of hopelessness.  I believe so deeply in hope and thriving with life, I desired to help inspire others “not to give up”.   That is still a very significant calling for me.   

Yet, there is more.   Compassion and dignity are whispering.   There is much extraordinariness that is lived between the dash when we are humans here on Earth.   No matter what life may bring and the subsequent choices that can be perceived as someone “losing their way”, it isn’t for us to judge based on what we would choose differently or wish that someone had chosen differently. 

For me, it is about finding a way I can give voice to those who didn’t believe their voices worthy anymore.

I believe they are collectively calling to us as be the change agents for our world to create new beginnings of hope, compassion, unconditional listening, and thriving with life. 

We paved the way. 

33.04192° N, -116.86877° E

A Cold Nose

A cold nose, and so many other noses in need. 

Saving Animals and Healing Hearts. 

A nonprofit organization dedicated to the rescue, rehabilitation and rehoming of abused and neglected animals. We want to spread our message of hope and compassion. We believe that a single action can make a difference in the community, and that collective action can greatly impact the world.

SAHH | Home (sahh4life.org)

On Wednesday, September 21, I had the privilege of taking part in a fund-raising event facilitated by The Animal Communication Collective, another exceptional community of professional animal communicators who have one very simply stated mission: Partner with animal welfare organizations to help them raise money!  

https://www.animalcommunicationcollective.com/

To learn more, please visit one or both links.  You won’t be disappointed if you do!

42.38337° N, -85.95741° E 

Hope’s Spiral Staircase

Your inspiration for this month.

https://studio.youtube.com/video/vmofl9iEHbE/edit

N ° S ° E ° W °

Hope Whispers, Nature Speaks

In August I had the extraordinary – and life-shifting – opportunity to hike a section of the Pacific Crest Trail through the Cascade Mountains.   Seventy-five miles across five days, up and down “hills” with 6,000 plus foot altitude gains, with eleven incredible individuals, a backpack, and the stillness of Nature whose “noisiest” sounds were waterfalls and birds.   I would turn a corner and drink in a view such as these I share and the only thing that I could think in the full presence of such majesty was there can be nothing sideways in the world when you look at something like this”.   Such a state of pure presence with no foot in the past nor in the future.  Simply.

BE-ing.

Your homework is to reflect on this quote from a professor I had the privilege of learning from when earning my MA.  Dr. Shann Ray Ferch in his preface of the book “Conversations on Servant-Leadership”

In a world often brimming with disdain, what is hope?  And where does hope reside?  I grew up in Montana, a state that boasts miles of open land spit by the rugged and sometimes brutal heights of one hundred mountain ranges.  For me, hope is found in nature, in wilderness, and in the wilderness that exists inside people.  Servant-leadership is a way of being that is characterized by wisdom, freedom, health, and autonomy; it is a source of hope in all the complexity and chaos of the present day.  Contrary to the hyperspeed of the contemporary age, I’ve found there are those who walk toward the dawn, and having traversed the night’s darkness they emerge unafraid. When we return from walking the roads we are never the same again.

What is hope to you?  Where does it reside? 

Are you able to embrace the wilderness within you?  

Are you barely surviving the wilderness of life? 

If yes, what do you need to be able to shift from surviving, to thriving? 

How could you reframe your story to do just that? 

I’d love to hear your reflections if you would like to share.  Feel free to email me at ckhred30@gmail.com

Live the actual moment. Only this moment is life.” —Thich Nhat Hanh

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.  Maya Angelou

Sincerely,

-Christine

P.S.

If you have enjoyed this month’s message, please pay it forward to others.  They can also subscribe to future emails by visiting www.christinehassing.com.   If you know of someone who has a Hope Is message to share, please encourage them to share via the post office address (or via email).  I welcome sharing their input on the Hope Is website or in future blog messages!   

Namaste.’ 

N42.36087° W85.87946°

Hope Is

• The sound of a robin singing.

• That tomorrow is another day.

• Whatever helps you get off the bed sheets in the morning.

These the wisdoms and perspectives shared with me since last month’s communication when I shared about the established post office box address. 

P.O. Box 327

Gobles, MI 49055

ATTN:  Hope Is

42.38337° N, -85.95741° E 

Last month I shared the message that I had been hearing.  Go back to the beginning. 

This month I keep hearing What is the need? 

Each of you have an abundance of information available to you.  That information holds an abundance of perspectives.   I anticipate what you do not have, though, is an abundance of spare time.  So, I ponder, what would be most helpful to you, the readers? 

Do you read these monthly communications for inspiration? 

To learn more about the healing power of cold noses?

To learn another perspective about how someone views the ebbs and flows of life? 

Are these monthly communications providing a win-win?   I know the passion I put into them.  (smile) Do you benefit from what you receive? 

So, dear readers, I am going to continue my quest that I started at the beginning of this year, but I am going to walk us on a new path.  Together we can decide if this is the direction we wish to travel.  And if not, well, then together we will change it.  (smile)    

This month you will find five sections:

• Hope Is based on your input sent via traditional mail or email
• Reframed, which will provide an inspirational, hopeful perspective
• A Cold Nose, which will provide a message related to dogs’ healing power and an inspirational message about unconditional listening / unconditional acceptance.
• Hope’s Spiral Staircase, which will be in video format with an inspiring message, often connected to Nature
• Hope Whispers, Nature Speaks, which will provide you with an action step or reflective assignment

I am excited for our new path.  I look forward to traveling it with you!  

34.05349° N, -118.24532° E

Reframed

When I am not viewing life as a river, I think of life as a spiral staircase. 

We stand on a step.    We begin taking steps forward.   Upward. 

Or downward if that is our choice.

And as we come back around the circle, we are where we started.  Except for.

We do not stand in the same place.  

We can either find ourselves standing higher up the staircase from our first step.   Or lower. 

But in any given moment after a previous moment.  Or a previous week, month, year.   Or after many years.  

We are not at the same place where we began.  

No matter how much we might think things are the same or have not changed, unless time was frozen still, change has been continual.  Unless time had completely stopped for a second, a minute, or a half century, we are not in the same place.   Or at least we have opportunity to choose not to be in how we perceive, hear, and see.   In how I believe, if things appear to be the same, it is because of the lens in which we are choosing to see.  We always have a starting point in how we hear and see, influenced by our personal experiences both those that are positive and those that hold pain, trauma, or grief. 

Recently I saw a message Maria Shriver had shared through her social media platform.   Recently as of June 5^th to be exact.  It was a picture of her uncle, Bobby Kennedy.  He was quoted as saying this.  What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country. 

He was speaking these words as a statement in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Just one month and one day after MLK’s death, Bobby Kennedy was also assassinated.  As Maria wrote:  On this day in 1968, before many of you might even have been born, my uncle, Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down while running for president. Gunned down on his victory night. He left a devastated pregnant wife and ten children and a shattered extended family.

As I read her words my thoughts were even then, there was significant brokenness.  Fifty-four years later the cries for love, wisdom, and compassion toward one another are still happening. 

Time has not stood still.   There have been births.   And deaths.   There has been much joy.  And there has been great suffering.

And we are no longer in the same place as we were June 5, 1968, shortly after midnight. 

Yet, life continues to bring significant, devastating, and sudden loss. 

And outrage and shocking disbelief.  As I read comments to Maria’s sharing, the crushing grief-filled feelings were as significant for those who remembered hearing the news of Bobby Kennedy and MLK Jr. as the devastating feelings I read and hear citizen comments expressed when a school shooting takes place fifty-four years later. 

And choice.   In how we decide to respond to the profound suffering that is part of what life brings. 

For me, I keep choosing to step up the staircase with the following deeply held belief.   Like a baby bird hatching out of an egg or the butterfly pushing out of a cocoon, I believe that our world is cracking open.  Others might choose to see it as cracking apart.  For me, it is a cracking open to allow new beginnings.  

For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone.  The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes.  To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.   – Cynthia Occelli

45.51179° N, -122.67563° E

A Cold Nose

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend a fundraising event hosted by Northwest Battle Buddies.  An annual gala long anticipated and even longer needed could take place after having been on hold for the past couple of years.   

I will not begin to do justice to all that this evening offered in inspiring stories shared and in moving testimonials including the image of the service dog in the moments he was literally saving his team member’s life.   His team member had reached the very end of barely surviving.   His service dog sensed it was time to intervene.  The veteran took a picture of his service dog reaching out and pulling him back from the edge.   This veteran graciously gave permission for the CEO of NWBB to share his testimony.  

I won’t begin to do justice to describing the significant amount of compassion and support that sat in that audience that night, financially supporting a mission that attendees believed in with their whole hearts.   I also will not be able to give adequate justice to how a room full of humanity came together and offered hope to twenty-six more veteran-service dog teams because they desire to reduce the number to zero of those who reach that edge of barely surviving.  And who then stop living because they do not have a team member who not only senses there is a deep struggle taking place.   

A team member also reaches out its paw and in that touch whispers heart to heart I need you.  I love you.  Together we can make it through.  You have a reason for living in the form of fur and pawed feet.  Please don’t leave.  I love you unconditionally and, in my eyes, you are one thing.  You are the most perfect teammate for me.  I have got your back and I know you have mine, too.  Together, you and me, together we will make it through. 

42.38337° N, -85.95741° E 

Hope’s Spiral Staircase

N ° S ° E ° W °

Hope Whispers, Nature Speaks

I share with you a poem that was recently shared with me in an email sent from Nick Polizzi, Founder of Sacred Science.  It is a Sanskrit poem by Kalidasa, an Indian playwright and poet from the 4th and 5th Century AD.  

May this poem bring you peace on the spiral staircase of life.  May this poem inspire you to experience each day fully present in the now.  Now is the only reality.  All else is either memory or imagination.  -Osho   

Look to this day,

for it is life, the very breath of life.

In its brief course lie

all the realities of your existence;

the bliss of growth,

the glory of action,

the splendor of beauty.

For yesterday is only a dream,

and tomorrow is but a vision.

But today, well lived,

makes every yesterday a dream of happiness,

and every tomorrow

a vision of hope.

Look well, therefore, to this day.

Sincerely,

-Christine

P.S.

If you have enjoyed this month’s message, please pay it forward to others.  They can also subscribe to future emails by visiting www.christinehassing.com.   If you know of someone who has a Hope Is message to share, please encourage them to share via the post office address (or via email).  I welcome sharing their input on the Hope Is website or in future blog messages!   

Namaste.’ 

42.38337° N, -85.95741° E 

One evening I was in between stops on our quest for hope.  I pulled the map out of my backpack to look at the X’s made thus far.  Sitting under the stars, hearing an occasional nocturnal sound in the distance, soothed by them – even by the occasional howl of a pack – I heard a voice whisper go back. 

At first, I thought it was whispering the map.  I looked at where the X’s had not yet been placed thinking where I should hike next.   There is this location over there a little North of where I am.  Or how about down there to the South?   I pulled out my small notebook and pen and started writing down next coordinates.

Go back.

I paused. 

Go back?   To what? 

Go back to where you began.

Back to?   The last X?  To December when I decided to initiate the quest?  To what prompted the first email message to a list of subscribers? 

Go back to WHERE?

Go back to where you began.

My mind continued to race through memories and milestone moments.  I thought of when my path crossed with the first veteran and service dog in Hope Has a Cold Nose.  How I didn’t know when I asked if I could write his life story that it would lead me to writing twenty-two more for publication. 

I turned back to the map, back to where I was sitting under the stars only to race back through each X on the map laying in front of me.  What could I “see and see again” that might help me solve what now felt like a riddle?  Go back to where you began.

I thought of the journey in writing my first book, To the Moon and Back to Me:  What I Learned from Four Running Feet.   I thought of the journey in earning my MA, in which every course was transforming.   Said another way.  Life changing.  I pulled my computer out of my backpack, opening saved course papers I had written, mining them for what my intentions were then.  Was I living them out loud now?

I remembered talking with a veteran as I was seeking life stories for Hope Has a Cold Nose.  He was now in a peer support specialist role to aid other veterans journeying with pain, trauma, sorrow, and despair.  He shared with me about a study that was conducted evaluating what may influence some veterans to not experience as much hopelessness as other veterans may.  He shared that the study identified two significant contributors.  One is that the veteran had a “perfect” life in which everything came “easy” and then experienced significant trauma during their service.  Or a veteran had experienced trauma as a child and did not have a way of reframing their story differently, to turn the trauma into such things as resilience, dignity, worthiness, and.  Hope.  Their experiences in the service were like a final shattering of the fragile eggshell in which the core of each of us reside.   Life had taught some veterans early on that suffering holds the same space as wonder, joy, and innocence and may even act as a thief to these things.  The experiences in the military only compounding these feelings. 

Go back to where you began.

Was I not going back far enough?  

I started stepping through memories of my childhood.  I remembered the baby duck that I tried to save who had somehow broken its neck.  I was wrapping gauze around it thinking that would create a neck brace.   I remembered the special childhood I had when it came time for Easter.  In addition to a basket of sweet treats, I would get a live baby bunny.  One of the perks of living on a farm.   I remembered my pony, Sugar.  And I remembered finding her on her side in the pasture, her body now an empty vessel and her soul somewhere else grazing on grasses and enjoying apples.  I believe she was my first experience with physical death.  At least that I remember. 

I remembered a lot of stories of my childhood.

And I recalled the journey I have traveled through the years to look at those stories to see and see again.  To reframe some of the chapters.  To put other chapters in a treasure chest for safe keep. 

As I sat under the stars, looking in front of me at the maps of all the other trails I had hiked up to now, I started to see that the path I was now hiking was following a very faint trail of footsteps that had walked before me.  Were these on this faint trail ancestor steps I was following, those guiding my way?  No, those were the footsteps I could see to my left and to my right on the paths I had traveled.  Always beside every step I chose – and will choose – to make.  And then I heard another whisper.  Instead, I needed to heed the wisdom of Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

I needed to take the reoccurring whispers I had recorded on strips of paper, placed in this tiny travel case tucked in a pocket of my backpack, pull them out, and see that the next steps on my journey are not on the map in front of me.  The compass points are in these pieces of paper now in my hand.   These that read:

People just want to be seen and heard. 

Foster unconditional listening, which begets unconditional acceptance. 

Identify, and then gently show through words the purpose in the ebbs of life stories

Compassionately look pain, trauma, sorrow, despair, and grief in the eye

Teach how to reframe a story that may be causing mere survival; a new narrative can lead to thriving with life

Inspire the graceful dance between life’s opposition lessons

Teach grace is in our choice in how we hear and see

Intune, speak and write words that offer beauty, wisdom, dignity, worth, and unconditional acceptance.  Within, with others, with life. 

Hold up mirrors for people doubting their worth, that they can find their extraordinary value

Inspire that hope is always in one more (be it moment, step, day)

Advocate holistic healing through the form of a cold nose

Teach holistic wellbeing, mind, body, and soul.

Teach the messages of nature

And that space does not separate hearts no matter the distance, including between those who still walks earth and those who don’t.

Step into the marginalized spaces that hold the most judgment.  Bring dignity to those spaces.  Within the hardest chapters to read are the most extraordinary stories; after all, all souls originate from love without conditions.     

The world is cracking open for new beginnings; teach how to flourish with what wants to be born.

So, I am going back to where I began. 

One place is back with the 3^rd grade class who drew the most amazing pictures of what Hope Is to each of them.   Now each of these extraordinary students will be writing their life stories.  I will have the privilege of being their life story writing coach.   Because

Hope Is

In the stories of our life.

That we tell ourselves

From an early age.

48° 22′ 58.88″ N. 31° 10′ 58.33″ E.

Hope Is

The future that will be there for generations to come

By generations starting out now.

Like the message shared in this inspirational TEDx talk by Zoya Lytvyn

42.46056° N, -83.6539° E

Hope Is

For all ages.

It is stories of wisdom from those who have found a graceful dance with resilience, dignity, worth and.  Hope. 

Like in this special place in Michigan, only one of two like it in the United States

MWDM

War Dog Michigan Memorial

Where hope.  

And worth.

And dignity.

Is in the time lived between the dash.

Hope Is

From elementary age to early adulthood, into the late autumn / early winter season of life.

Hope Is

In the sacred honor of meeting a Vietnam veteran who shared his story of his hope in a cold nose who served beside him in Vietnam.  Chief.  An extraordinary soul who saved this veteran’s life seven times, that this once young soldier could return home, without Chief, to become a husband of forty-two years, a father, a nurse anesthesiologist, and now proud owner of a rescued German Shephard now at his feet when my path crossed with this extraordinary gentleman.

We both felt the same thing.  That Chief had led this veteran to this German Shephard.

For Hope is in Chief never having left his watch of this veteran for fifty-one years.

And counting. 

Hope Is in being extremely humbled by a most reverent gift bestowed to me.   As I listened to an extraordinary story of suffering, joy, dignity, and love, and shared in return the sacred privilege I was given to co-author twenty-three extraordinary stories including one that had similar footsteps to this gentleman’s, I was handed this gift I will treasure for the rest of my dash.  This specially made challenge coin symbolizing this veteran and Chief’s lifetime bond. 

N42.36087° W85.87946°

Go back to where you began.

And then create new pathways.  

I have established a post office box address. 

It is:

P.O. Box 327

Gobles, MI 49055

ATTN:  Hope Is

And now you may be asking, for what? 

After all, it is a traditional mailing method that might feel like it is certainly going back to where we began long ago. 

It is a location in which people can communicate to me anonymously one of two things.

• What Hope Is to them
• Where they could use a boost of hope through a reframed view of their story.

How it will work once I receive your mail.  I have updated one of my two web sites to add a page titled “Hope Is.”  HOPE IS | -Hope Ascends (hopehasacoldnose.com)

On this page I will display some of what is sent to me via the post office address.   Anonymously.  If someone has sent a story that they would like reframed, they can note that request, and I will post my reframed version on this web page.   Note, people are welcome to share their name with me.  I offer sending it anonymously, including using this PO box as the return address, for those who may not wish to share their name.   

People just want to be seen and heard. 

And I am here to listen.  

I also like the thought of the Law of Universal Influence.  we have an influence on everyone around us. That means your family, your friends, and even perfect strangers are impacted by the energy you release. Remember, everyone and everything is connected, so energy has the power to expand into every crevice of the world.   https://www.practical-personal-development-advice.com/7-laws-of-attraction

The power to expand into every crevice of the world.

Imagine how much hope we could expand into every crevice of the world by sharing in what feels presently like a vast sea filled with what is not

That there is an even greater sea of what

Is

Hope

42.38337° N, -85.95741° E 

On behalf of Ginger and Kutana, they wish to share the wise words of Helen Keller.  Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.     And, with her raised ear Ginger whispers we are here to listen.

Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it.  Match the frequency of the reality you want and you can’t help but get that reality.  It can be no other way.  This is not philosophy.  This is physics!  – Albert Einstein

Sincerely,

-Christine

P.S.

If you have enjoyed this month’s message, please pay it forward to others.  They can also subscribe to future emails by visiting www.christinehassing.com.   If you know of someone who has a Hope Is message to share, please encourage them to share via the post office address (or via email).  I welcome sharing their input on the Hope Is website or in future blog messages!   

Namaste.’ 

Greetings to those sharing this quest journey with me.  I trust this finds the last few weeks have been kind to you.  I trust your individual walks have not been too weary. 

I thank you for continuing to hike with me.  I begin walking from where we left off when we last met up on our quest with ideas of directions I might wish to walk towards next.  When I then pause again to summarize the travels for each of you, I am left in awe at where the path led in ways I did not plan.  Affirmation of the quote by Rumi what you seek is seeking you.  As I venture to find what Hope Is to others, what Hope Is finds its way to me.  

It continues to be a wonder-filled, beautiful, sacred, and meaningful adventure, this quest of what Hope Is.   May at least one X on the map bring the same to you. 

Hope Is

39.97729° N, -105.13212° E

I had listened to a podcast by Lynne Twist, author of Soul of Money, shortly after the world began locking down in 2020.  She had shared an indigenous culture’s prophecy that what we were experiencing had been predicted long before our world began locking down due to the pandemic.   From her significant amount of time spent listening to the wisdom of these cultures, Lynne had shared that the past 500 years – prior to the year 2000 – was the time of the Eagle, a time of living from the mind.  She referenced the overwhelming number of technological advances the world had made.  Certainly, that kind of evolution born forth from brilliant thinking minds.  

Lynne went on to share that the prophecy was that we would then begin a time of the Condor, in which the Eagle and the Condor would integrate together, so that we could become a world not of dominance and darkness but of light and harmony.  We would enter a time to begin integrating the heart and the mind. 

Nearly two years later and I listened again to a podcast in which Lynne was interviewed by the founder of Sounds True (https://www.soundstrue.com/), Tami Simon.   Once again Lynne shared how Hope Is

The Eagle and the Condor integrating together in our next 500 years that began as we entered the year 2000.

Our Evolutionary Leap

We would experience huge climatic events for the first 25 – 50 years, per the wisdom passed on to Lynne through these cultures.  These events would humble all creatures, that we would begin to remember our rightful role with Mother Earth.  The mind and the heart will remember we are one.  We have been separated and lost from each other over the past 500 years. 

We would shift from a world of darkness and dominance to one of balance and light.

Hope Is

The Bird of Humanity’s once bent wing will now fully extend, ending the flight in circles, enabling the bird of humanity to now soar.

An additional prophecy from the wisdom of other indigenous cultures.  Lynne referenced the Cherokee as one of the wise sage cultures.  A bird has been flying in circles, one wing – as I think about it, the wing of logic – fully folded out for hundreds of years while the other wing has been bent – the wing of intuitiveness.   Now we enter a time in which the bent wing will also extend, and the bird of humanity will now soar. 

Hope Is

The wisdom of our elders to carry us through, in particular, as Lynne described it, Grandmother energy.   The wisdom of those who have already learned the grace of living an integrated life of mind and heart can teach those who are in still in infancy of such things as mindfulness, listening to that inner knowing, resilience, compassion, and so much more.   Once again, I am reminded of this wise and inspirational Cherokee parable

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.

“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

 Two Wolves – Virtues For Life

Hope Is that we can feed that which will allow us to, as Lynne said have a love for life that will allow us to flourish, not just survive.  The goal is to flourish, to thrive, where we are contributing to the community of life.

42.779495° N, -86.10709° E

Hope Is

Holding tight to worthiness, no matter how deeply it might be buried under the punches of menacing words

And fists

And fear for one’s life.

Hope Is

A strong, brave, and unbreakable will that cannot be shattered, no matter how deeply the physical and emotional bruises have pulverized one’s body and spirit. 

And threaten to hurt three of the primary reasons one fights to take another strong, brave, and unstoppable step. 

I had the sacred privilege of crossing paths with a survivor of domestic violence who gave me not only the honor of writing a story for her.  I was given the gift of listening to an extraodindary and inspiring journey of resilience, triumph, faith, love, and

Hope.

As you join me at this spot on our quest map, may you hold in reverance as I do the gift that has been given to be inspired by an excerpt from this extraordinary individual’s story.

It is a tradition we have created, my children and I.  A yearly event, with flexibility to be a different date each time.  The only requirement is a summer day.   And ideally, it is a day that doesn’t include rain.  That sunshine is present isn’t mandatory, for we’ve performed this tradition when it’s cloudy and cold, too.  A little like life, that sometimes the weather we are given is not the ideal weather we’d choose.

Our tradition involves taking one step at a time.  And it always involves an upward climb.  Most of the time the steps are consistently the same size.  We can always count on our tradition including a large leap to reach the end we have in sight.  Each of us have to set aside any angst we might feel about heights.  We have to remind ourselves if we push through our fears, we acquire a sense of invincibility with the flow of life.  We gain the remembrance within, each of us has the power to survive. 

Our tradition has the ability to take our breaths away when we reach our end goal.  It has the ability to reveal to us limitless possibilities, worthiness, and celebration of our previous year’s growth.  We reach our end goal each year and we see far and wide.  We see in front of us no boundaries and we feel the power within each of us as we stand tall and high.  It is not a power as in “we are royalty, hear us roar greater than you down there that look like ants we see”.  It is power as in we are as strong as this which has lifted us to its tallest peak.   We are strong like this beacon that has braced against the forces of Nature trying to erode its capability.  We are mightier than the darkest nights, menacing ice, and hurling winds trying to take us out at our knees.

Our tradition reveals to us year after year we are lights for others in need.

The only thing is, sometimes the other three-hundred-sixty- four days until our next tradition, we aren’t always certain of our ability to shine.  I guess that is simple because we are human, and we are still learning we are now safe, and all is all right.

My children and I are survivors of others’ self hate that had to find a ship to try to sink.  We are survivors of verbal, mental, emotional, and physical traumas that tried to make us the sea storm casualties. 

Logically I know that I do not have reason to judge my story.  Our stories.  Like the first steps we take at the start of our tradition, I am slowly, one step at a time learning this emotionally.   If you are a parent, though, you can appreciate when I say I wish I could change the journeys my children have traveled in their young lives.  I wish I could give them a different experience to learn the wisdoms of life.

I also wish this for me.  Ah, such is the dance like the round and round circle of our tradition, that tug and pull between learning worth and undoing unworthy.  Between hindsight to teach for our growth

The storm clouds raged, and they still on occasion try to reach dry land where my children and I reside.  The children are the targets of lightning bolts in an attempt to convince them I am not worthy of keeping them safe and dry.  I have amazing children who have learned to listen to their own inner whispers of what is truth and what is lies.  The gift is that I am glad my children have learned how to avoid sudden menacing strikes.  The curse is that I wish they had never had to learn that not all of Nature is calm and free of struggle and strife.  I wish they could learn how to treat and be treated without direct knowledge not every person has another person’s best interests in mind.

I marvel at my children’s kindness and their focus on respect and dignity.  Not just for their elders, so to speak.  But for those who are the other sex or are diverse culturally or racially.  They’ve given meaning to their own feelings and experiences of being treated cruelly.  They have chosen that hate stops with them and will not be paid forward in any way.  They are change agents to end the piracy of deep-seeded destructive “I hate myself so let me create hate in every wave”. 

Sailing the sea of life is like that, you know.  You think you are steering away from home until suddenly, the waves are cresting over the front of the boat.  Before I know it, my home was not my safety.  I could be watching TV and suddenly feel my hair yanked as I was pulled off the couch immediately.  He had found ways to break into my home, stealth-life and suddenly there without me ever hearing.  Suddenly there to choke me, push my head into a coffee table or floor, to remind me with his equally harsh verbal punches that I was lazy, ignorant – basically not worth anything.

Yes, I know, it can be hard to understand how the stormy seas can be so disorienting.  When you are pulled from the safety of shore, the huge white foaming waves leave you so dazed and unable to navigate where land may be waiting. 

The thing is, everyone on the ship becomes dazed and confused.  Officers of the law, family and friends, neighbors, too.  I called the police several times when experiencing his breaking in and entering.  Each time he was believed for his story.  Yes sir, officer, we are engaged to be married.  Just a misunderstanding.  I am always allowed in without her hesitancy.  Just surprised her, that’s all, so no need to worry.  We will kiss and make up, if you know what I mean {wink wink}.  Yes, you too, officer, have a good evening. 

Since I did not have visible marks except my panicked eyes and trembling body, there was never a tow to land to rescue us from this stormy sea. 

And then there is the night our ship took on water and I thought we might sink.  The night I thought I might lose one of the very reasons I fought to survive against the raging seas.  The night my son became the captain of striving to steer our ship to shore.  Actually, the night both my son and my daughter turned that wheel and started us for the beacon of light flashing this way through the tumultuous storm.  

My youngest son was with friends in the basement and my daughter in her room enjoying her teenage sanctuary.  I was on the couch, phone in hand, quietly relaxing.  Yes, I know, I guess the hope within me always tried to believe was safe.   My deepest self craved carving out moments I wasn’t completely afraid.

Suddenly, in that split second blink of an eye, or should say in that split second, I found myself yanked to the floor fighting for my life.  There he was, fully there, but lost behind the deepest rage in his eyes.  Have you ever witnessed that look someone gets when their eyes are glazed over, and they are in a place not able to sense reality?  I hope you only know that look I refer to from TV or movies.

The phone was ripped from my hand as a portion of my hair was also now on the flour no longer a part of my head.  This time I was not certain I was going to reach dry land.  That my life would end now felt more of the certainty at hand.   My screams alerted my son who came up the stairs to help my steering.  Soon the Rage had his hands around my son’s neck, threatening to end my son’s breathing.  My son’s friends rushed up the stairs to assist as my daughter rushed to dial 911 pleading help would come immediately.  My son’s friends reminded this Raging Storm that they were minors causing this Storm to slow and then retreat. 

My fiancé’ left, the police arrived, and we had one major gift in that fight for our lives.  We had visible proof of abuse as blood ran from my son’s body from the broken glass he was pushed through.  As strangulation marks on our necks were our temporary tattoos.

Yet periodically we take a boat trip of anxiousness or nightmare memories.  I sometimes leave my children on land while I take a canoe ride with guilt, shame, and grief.

Every time my children stand at the top of that lighthouse – our tradition annually – I look back at my last step I have just taken to reach the view and I find hope and faith looking back at me.  I look out over the horizon, and I look to the left and to the right beside where I am now standing.

I’ve got three amazing co-captains and together we can weather any stormy sea.  

My dear children,

You know I believe knowledge is power, so I wish to give you this that it may further strengthen yours.

I often tell myself that a good captain makes sure to never lead their crew where they could experience a storm or a risk of sinking.    Yet, I know Nature has its own control, and because Nature cannot be fully predicted, like life, lighthouses have been created to offer beacons of light to guide lost ships so they can find their way home.

Since I cannot undo the times the ship of our lives was tossed and turned and nearly sunk to the bottom of the ocean, the best I can do is tell each of you that I am so proud of the beacons of light I am watching each of you become.  Not just for each other, or for me, or for your friends.   You are each such bright lights of goodness and hope for your communities and for this world.  Each of you, each in your own unique, gifted, talented, smart, wise, handsome, beautiful, good, good ways are the changes for the better the world needs.  I am honored to be your mother witnessing that despite, or maybe even because of, the raging storms you had to endure have made you the ones to end the cycles of violence and trauma that seem to be unpredictable aspects of what has become human nature for some.  The world is in greater pain.  The waves are reaching all new heights.  And each of you are brave souls determined to give meaning to your experiences by not letting the experiences sink you!

We each know we are a collective work in progress to heal as a family.  We each individually are giving our all to heal what has changed each of us for life.  I anticipate we will find ourselves climbing the spiral staircase of our healing journey for a long time to come, but what I am already starting to see.  I am walking the steps of that staircase next to three incredible human beings who are my reason for being. 

Thank YOU for being the greatest co-captains on this ship of life with me.  

Hope, faith, love, and the greatest of these three…

I love you with all my heart. 

-Mom

34.13411° N, -118.35219° E

Hope Is

No longer being anonymous

Ever look at all the people who seem to know exactly how to be?

You think, “They don’t need piles of prescriptions to function naturally”

Well, look again, and you might catch it

Just stay a minute more

There’s this little moment after the sunny smile

As their eyes fall to the floor

And the truth starts peeking through

They’re a lot like me and you

They can fake a smile, too

The anonymous ones

Never let you see the ache they carry

All of those anonymous ones

Who never name that quiet pain they bury

So they keep on keeping secrets that they think they have to hide

But what if everybody’s secret is they have that secret side?

And to know they’re somehow not alone

Well, that’s all they’re hoping for

What if they didn’t have to stay

Anonymous anymore?

An excerpt from The Anonymous Ones lyrics – Musical / Movie – Dear Evan Hansen

During travels home from an international trip, I felt drawn – in that what we seek seeks us kind of way {smile} to watch a movie I had not heard of until that moment I was scrolling through movie options.   Dear Evan Hansen.  

The simple description of the movie is a high school senior with Social Anxiety disorder and his journey of self-discovery and acceptance following the suicide of a fellow classmate.

The depth of the movie reached deep within me.  Touched in a profound way that I, who love words, will not be able to describe.  Touched like the movie I talk about in the introduction to Hope Has a Cold Nose – Extremely Loud and Incredible Close.  Touched like when I asked a veteran and his service dog if I could write their story, long before HHCN became the thought to become a manuscript.  And then a book. 

Touched in a way that I anticipate this portion of the map will start to have small rips where the creases have been unfolded and folded so many times the seam is pulling apart.     This X has imprinted itself deeply into my heart.  

Hope Is

In the eyes, ears, and hearts of

Children

Teenagers

Hope Is

A whisper within softly – or maybe loudly – nudging where can I offer those growing up after me the ability to reframe their stories if they doubt their stories are worthy. 

Where can I offer the ability to reframe their stories that they will recognize that they are change agents and legacy builders for “The Bird of Humanity to soar” and “for the Eagle and Condor to integrate”. 

Where can I offer the ability to reframe their stories that they will “have a love for life that will allow us to flourish, not just survive”

Hope Is

Being seen.

And heard.

People just want to be seen.  And heard. 

No matter the age.  Young.  Older.  Eldest.

Hope Is

We will see those who are waving. 

Before they have no more hope in their waves.

I’ve learned to slam on the brake

Before I even turn the key

Before I make the mistake

Before I lead with the worst of me

Give them no reason to stare

No slipping up if you slip away

So I got nothing to share

No, I got nothing to say

On the outside, always looking in

Will I ever be more than I’ve always been?

‘Cause I’m tap, tap, tapping on the glass

I’m waving through a window

I try to speak, but nobody can hear

So I wait around for an answer to appear

While I’m watch, watch, watching people pass

I’m waving through a window, oh

Can anybody see, is anybody waving back at me?

We start with stars in our eyes

We start believing that we belong

But every sun doesn’t rise

And no one tells you where you went wrong

On the outside, always looking in

Will I ever be more than I’ve always been?

‘Cause I’m tap, tap, tapping on the glass

Waving through a window

I try to speak, but nobody can hear

So I wait around for an answer to appear

While I’m watch, watch, watching people pass

Waving through a window, oh

Can anybody see, is anybody waving?

Is anybody waving?

Waving, waving, whoa-oh, whoa-oh

An excerpt of Waving through a Window lyrics – Dear Evan Hansen

Hope Is

Being heard.

Hope Is

Being found.

Have you ever felt like nobody was there?

Have you ever felt forgotten in the middle of nowhere?

Have you ever felt like you could disappear?

Like you could fall, and no one would hear?

Well, let that lonely feeling wash away

Maybe there’s a reason to believe you’ll be okay

‘Cause when you don’t feel strong enough to stand

You can reach, reach out your hand

And oh, someone will coming running

And I know, they’ll take you home

Even when the dark comes crashing through

When you need a friend to carry you

And when you’re broken on the ground

You will be found

 An excerpt of You Will be Found lyrics – Dear Evan Hansen

https://www.amazon.com/Dear-Evan-Hansen-Ben-Platt/dp/B09J41PK1P/ref=sr_1_1?crid=VX048O1ZECVE&keywords=dear+evan+hansen&qid=1649008029&sprefix=dear+evan+hanse%2Caps%2C328&sr=8-1

48.926563° N, 31.475782° E

Hope Is

Unconditional love.

Even when that love is pushed away.

Perhaps it is the life story listener and writer in me that has the following reaction to images I see related to the Ukraine.  There is so much more to each story than what we see.  They are each a human being with a very personal story.  Please, let’s make sure we are giving them our full listening ear with dignity, and not pity. 

When I saw an image of baby strollers in a public square to represent the youngest tragedies of war, I wanted to discover what are the 119 individual stories?!  Let’s give each a voice that mattered in the brief moments they, too, have been part of history. 

As my heart called out to the Universe let’s give voice to the images that are not able to speak, the Universe responded with a moving dialogue on my quest journey.   I was talking with a dear individual who had grown up in Russia though he no longer lives there, asking about the well-being of his family who still live in the country.  Each time I am in dialogue with this dear soul I think about how Hope Is

The day he will be able to hug his mother and sister in person after nearly three years of not seeing them in person due to the pandemic.

This dear soul then shared another story.  From the words printed on paper in a news story became a “real” story of what warfare does in choosing which wolf we feed. 

A story of best friendships.  And a story of how the phrase “war torn” is as individualized as it is for a country.   

This dear soul has shared a thirty-year friendship with someone who lives in the Ukraine.  What was initial dialogue when the war began of is there anything I can do to help? Please stay safe.  How are you doing?  Are you ok?  soon became dialogue extremely strained. 

The person I was in dialogue with caring so deeply for the wellbeing of his friend and family found himself being held responsible for the wolf of greed and evil because his original citizenship was associated with Russia.   No words could diffuse his friend’s mounting perspective of guilt by association.  

The next message sent to this dear soul we are friends no more.

Division is not unique, but universal.  Division is a fundamental element of the choice we make in being human.  The choice we make in how we see.  And hear.  

Or no longer choose to. 

Hope Is

Witnessing in this dear soul a deep compassion, grace, forgiveness, sadness, and faith that what doesn’t currently make sense will.

That judgment is only temporary.

That a friendship will come back.

And that this year will include hugs in person with a mother and a sister after nearly three years.

38.367966° N, -92.47788° E

Hope Is

Front line workers named Katie, Laura, Tricia, Lucy, Kathleen, Ali, Chloe, Lori, and Melinda.

Not front line in the occupations you first think of when you hear front line.

These extraordinary individuals are the front-line workers of hope

For children.

For teenagers.

In schools

After school

When a crisis is experienced at a school.  Like a gun threat prompting a lockdown.

Or a suicide.

I had the honor of crossing paths with these extraordinary frontline workers of hope.

Hope Is  

these extraordinary individuals who bravely, tirelessly, and with unwavering faith

strive to bridge this gap

Hope Is

School counselors who are trying weekly, daily, hourly,

Sometimes in a moment

Be the ones to assist in reframing stories that a child or teenager might feel they are worthy

They are seen and heard

Discover that they are change agents of

A hope-full future

And build the inner toolkit that will ensure they don’t just survive, but that they thrive with life.

42.530506° N, -85.850494° E

Hope Is

Not losing oral history for the future tomorrows.

After two plus years, I had a most wonderful gift of giving a dear “grandmother wisdom” special friend a hug in person.   A few years ago, I was privileged to write my friend and her husband’s life stories.   In our more recent conversation, we talked about their stories as we talked about the Ukrainian-Russian war.  Her husband shared a News communication that one of the war tactics is to starve the Ukrainians.   Both he and my friend shook their heads as they shared their remembrance of the Winter of Hunger in 1944-1945, when both were starving in the Netherlands at the hands of war tactics then.   

My friend reminded me of her story of how her and her mom boiled tulip bulbs to eat – or tried to anyway.   She talked of looking out the window and seeing neighbors marched down the street to transportation that only had a one-way direction.  She didn’t know the Jewish souls passing by her window.   Her husband knew the Jewish couple his family kept fed in their home.  Until they ran out of food.  And a neighbor then took them in because fortunately he had a small ration to spare. 

Both of these dear souls – immensely resilient and immeasurably grateful souls – look through eyes of compassion for what the Ukrainians are experiencing.  They do not look back with eyes of trauma they once knew; their own humbleness has softened time and taken the edge off memories such that with incredible grace they talked of how they were fortunate “then” compared to what is being experienced “now”, to be teenagers then, resilient by nature of age, body, and attitude. 

Hope Is

Each of their own stories they also wrote and shared orally as well with their children. 

Resilience is a powerful legacy to pass on. 

So is gratitude.

And hope. 

My friend and her husband think a lot about their grandchildren and great grandchildren.  They pray for a hope-full future.  They question how brightly hope is shining for the world. Yet, their own hope is not diminished.  They’ve traveled too far to not believe in

Hope. 

Which Is

Choosing to thrive with each day of their ninety-two and ninety-three years young, looking at their four children, and their children’s families knowing that they lived the best versions of their life.  Their proof is their children that surround them.

As my dear friend told her four children recently, I want you to know, I’ve lived a happy life and you are the reasons and I want you to know I love you. 

Hope Is

In the words of Robert Brault, Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things

Like hugging a dear special friend n person after two years and feeling wrapped in the warmth of her wisdom and

Hope. 

42.783° N, -86.1° E

Hope Is

The friendships we make the second half of our lives.

Recently I had lunch with one of those lifetime friends.  The kind of friend in which time moves along, the texts and calls are silent, then a lunch or dinner plan is made, and the most joyous rejuvenating reunion is experienced in which it seems like it hasn’t been any time lapse at all. 

Our friendship first began blossoming at least eleven years ago.   Maybe longer, but I remember eleven years ago because it was my first racing event I was training for and participating in, and this friend was one of my biggest encouragers.  

She still is.    One of many blessings I receive with her as friend.  To name a few others.  Like her wisdom.  Her calmness.   Her inspiration in how she centers herself with each day.  And with life.  Her non-judgment of the world balanced with her voice of conviction for injustices that perpetuate division.   Her thirst to learn.  Her love of Nature.  (She was an incredible trekker of trails long before trails stole my heart!)   Her determination.   And her perspective that  

Hope Is

Being connected to what is my Source, that when I set aside ego and connect to Source, I worry less.  I feel more…hopeful.

42.38337° N, -85.95741° E 

On behalf of Ginger and Kutana, may you always have at least one person in life who is keeping a lookout for you.  And if you ever feel sightly squished by the weight of the world, remember, there is always at least one person who has your back! 

Listen to the mustn’ts, child. Listen to the don’ts. Listen to the shouldn’ts, the impossibles, the won’ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me … Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.” —Shel Silverstein

Sincerely,

-Christine

P.S.

If you have enjoyed this month’s message, please pay it forward to others.  They can also subscribe to future emails by visiting www.christinehassing.com.   If you know of someone who has a Hope Is message to share, please encourage them to contact me.  I welcome sharing their input in future messages!   

Namaste.’