Hopeful and Determined

Posted on June 1, 2024

I posted this photo and caption to Instagram today.

“Oh, hey Instagram. I just want to post this here for those of you who have had a particularly hard time this week. I’ve been saying at work that my words this year are “hopeful” and “determined.” I think it is the perfect combo for how I am feeling about all the things right now (mixed with a healthy dose of discomfort, disappointment, and heaviness from the world around me). I had a pain block on Tuesday and had hoped to wake up this week with a body ready to get back to walking and that wasn’t the case. So after a day of feeling frustrated and sad and worried and all the other things, I forced myself out of the bed to “walk it out.” I took this picture to remind me that “hopeful” and “determined” looks like this. It might sound easy to say, but it’s very hard to walk that talk sometimes. So this is me working through it in real time. This is me wanting to document the way the sun was shining and the clouds were moving. This is me desperately wanting the world to be better. Hopeful and determined. Sending love to y’all.”

I thought I would post it here too so that I’m documenting the hard parts with the joyful parts of me. All of the parts count and I think if we continually only curate the joyful parts, we miss the depths we have to go to find the joy. I also thought it would be helpful to post some inspiration that helped me through this week. After all, we only have each other.