How to Stay Hopeful When the World Feels Dark

A reflection on anger, courage, and our shared humanity

I am angry.

Not the kind of anger that wants to burn things down, but the kind that sits heavy in my chest and whispers, This is not okay. The kind that doesn’t know where to go, only that it must not turn away.

I am safe, for now, in my small corner of the world. I know this. I feel it. And yet, something in me has been shaken awake. The knowing that safety is fragile. That innocence is not a shield. That what happened to her could have happened to me.

And that changes you. It has changed me.

There is a particular cruelty in violence that isn’t just physical, it is psychological. It doesn’t only harm the one it touches. It sends a message outward, into the collective nervous system: Stay quiet. Stay small. Stay home. Don’t be seen.

Fear wants us to disappear.

And yet, something in me refuses.

I don’t want to look away. I don’t want to scroll past. I don’t want to harden. I don’t want to pretend this is normal. I don’t want to be numbed into silence.

But I also ask myself: What can I do?

I am not a politician. I am not a general. I am not a movement. I am one woman, with one voice, in one body, living one life.

And yet.

Spirit has always taught me something different than what fear teaches. It has taught me that we are not separate. That we are not strangers to one another. That we are not divided by the stories we’ve been told.

Soul to soul, we are made of the same breath.
The same longing.
The same fragile, miraculous being.

When one of us is harmed, something in all of us feels it. When one of us is dehumanized, something in all of us goes quiet. And when one of us is silenced, a thread in the great weaving is pulled too tight.

We belong to each other.

Not in theory, but in truth.

And that is why I cannot turn away.

I don’t want to live in a world where we stop seeing one another. Where fear convinces us that we are different, separate, unworthy of care. Where suffering becomes background noise.

So I ask myself a different question: How do I stay human in a world that keeps trying to make us afraid of each other?

Maybe the answer isn’t in grand gestures. Maybe it’s in refusing to disappear. In continuing to speak. In naming what hurts. In standing in the open with our hearts still visible.

Maybe it’s in remembering, again and again, that we are not alone in our bodies, or our stories, or our becoming.

I am but one.

But I know I am not alone.

Somewhere, others are feeling this too, the ache, the anger, the grief, the quiet refusal. They are waking up in the night with heavy hearts. They are asking the same questions. They are wondering how to stay awake without breaking.

So I write this not as an answer, but as a signal.

If you are out there, feeling this too, if you are angry and tender, afraid and brave, small and powerful all at once, know this:

We belong to each other.

And I am standing with you.

Barb