Hope is one of those words that remind me of the fact that I am a reborn optimist - in the past my glass was always half empty and I will tell you why: it was a safety net for disappointment, failure and rejection. With optimists they may wonder what went wrong when an expectation does not happen, but me, little me, I wonder what went right when the glass is half full or even refilled.
Hope. Hoping for an outcome can be exciting or painful - wanting your favourite sports team or sports person to win can fill us with passion, enthusiasm and good spirit but hoping a loved one pulls through when ill is a different matter.
What do I hope for these days? That my children find something to care and be passionate about. That our health can be the best it can be. That peace can be found within.
Outwardly with my newfound optimism it is getting easier - believing in others for me is less challenging than self belief. Even with this attitude which provides confidence for others there is a little niggle sometimes that "I am still not good enough".
Early childhood was exposure to all the different components related to growing up in a mining village. Awareness of the fragility of jobs, the risk of extreme poverty and family stresses took their toll on my childhood. I was a wanderer - I would climb, trace the ice cream van’s route and stop talking if sad. As an adult today I now realise it was likely that I suffered from childhood depression.
The garden offered peace, solace and a hiding place. After not being able to fly off the garden wall I gave up and revamped the shed making a new "living room" just for me - I can still almost smell the wooden interior when I reflect on this. Empty sand bags were my "avant garde" version of a throw.
Years later I would reflect on childhood having experienced seeing other children decades later and how they interacted within their family - I was able to realise affluence could offer something valuable like expectations of success and gear children up to follow their aspirations and dreams. My background was founded on my fathers' job and how valuable that was, providing housing, a basic wage and scope to move to another mining village.
As a later in life psychology student living abroad in France I paved my own way to the perceived education I missed while a teenager. The sad fact probably was depression and even a lack of interest. I sensed a spark in English but was discouraged from aiming too high with it.
However, flourishing with studies and picking up French at quite a rapid speed I began to make a discovery - life could be good and learning could be fun. It was not that I reinvented myself in France but that I found part of me, part of me that felt missing.
I started to believe that everyone had their "person" while I was in a relationship and socially I came out my shell quite a bit - the language "barrier" again was a safety net at times because conversations and interactions could get muddled and could be amusing therefore averting away from any awkwardness but a funny thing happened: I started to dream in French, express myself differently and form sentences. Looking back at my developing personality and cognition I feel quite certain that I was getting a second chance - a second chance to find a passion, self belief and even advance in life.
What then signifies "advancing in life"? Having hope perhaps. Hope that passion grows, hope that we can connect more in sharing the environmental challenges, hope that our children are respected and that rules for our safety are adhered to.
Back here in Scotland, twenty years since relocating from France I have two wonderful children and am divorced. Life has taught me that hope is essential as it is something to work towards, a goal. With mental health challenges today I explore all factors which may have contributed to this decline; unresolved childhood issues, doing too much, marriage problems which needed addressing and biology too. So now eventually my glass is either empty or overflowing with water but I try to maintain a healthy balance although hard.
Life can feel unfair, biased and complicated, but where there is hope there is optimism. I have never thought I was disadvantaged but that my needs were greater than I thought they were. I grew up in a busy and vibrant home but "the future" felt cursed, almost that a job was everything and not something to really enjoy. Time has changed and having "the bread and butter" is still as crucial as ever but maybe we can have jam and cheese too and add some chutney for the hell of it. Hope feels comforting. Hope feels like home.