Overcoming Despair and Finding Hope in Difficult Times

By Dorothy Van Soest
WILPF Liaison to the Poor People’s Campaign and WILPF Women, Money & Democracy Committee member

March 2021

Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.  
                                             – Former Representative John Lewis

Even when we lean on longtime Representative John Lewis’s inspiring words, it’s difficult not to despair when more than half a million U.S. lives are already lost to COVID-19 and 2,000 more continue to be taken daily. It can be hard to hold onto hope when our economy is collapsing, increased violence endangers our democracy, and ecological devastation threatens the survival of our planet. And optimism is sometimes hard to find when more and more people are living in cars, RVs, and tents and tens of millions are on the verge of eviction because powerful and indifferent forces ensure that a tiny sliver of people will receive an ever-larger share of wealth even as the hundreds of thousands working minimum wage jobs cannot afford basic essentials no matter where they live in our country.

Forward Together, Not One Step Back

Our job is to resist despair even in the face of so much pain, death, and blatantly intentional injustice. The challenge is as much psychological as it is political because we’re led to believe that we’re helpless, that if we can’t solve every one of the problems, we shouldn’t bother trying. But the antidote to helplessness is hope — defiant, resilient, persistent hope. Here are ten ways to find that hope and help us sustain our energy, especially when our spirits begin to flag. 

Use your imagination. Allow yourself to imagine the world you would like to inhabit and then believe it is possible to create it, no matter what evidence there is to the contrary. Imagine a world free of nuclear weapons and war. Imagine a world where adequate food, shelter, and access to health care are universal human rights for all. Imagine, as does WILPF’s Women, Money & Democracy Committee, changing the purpose and intent of our economy from structural inequity to structural equality.

Change the narrative. Challenge the dominant superior-inferior ideologies that, by valuing some people over others, create disposable people and make war inevitable.

Turn to history. Our spirits are buoyed by stories of others who faced equal or greater challenges, yet continued on to make a better world. Not the kind of myths about superheroes that make it harder for us to act, but the real stories about ordinary people who acted despite uncertainties and in the face of real danger. Sometimes their actions failed, sometimes they bore modest fruit, sometimes they triggered a miraculous outpouring of courage and heart. Today, when we join forces with the Poor People's Campaign* and with WILPF’s efforts to make the UN Treaty Abolishing Nuclear Weapons a reality, we stand on the shoulders of untold numbers of people in the civil rights and nuclear disarmament movements who joined together to take action and persevered against all odds. The point is that our efforts, combined with and multiplied by millions of people across the globe and over time, transform the world. 

No action is too small. Even one small step on the journey changes our perspective on the landscape. Action, either practical or symbolic, overcomes the inertia and apathy that accompanies the absence of hope. We don’t have to do everything, be everything, or be impossibly eloquent and confident and certain in a way that nobody is. Remember the incalculable numbers of people before us who slogged through decades of small, seemingly insignificant, and sometimes frustrating actions—and persisted despite the odds and obstacles.

Don’t be intimidated by “those who have power.” No matter how much power they have, they cannot prevent us from living our lives, thinking independently, speaking our minds, and following the still small voice that whispers the truth to our hearts.

Pair a deep-seated sense of social justice with pragmatism. People are not necessarily either with us or against us. There’s a vast amount of our neighbors who are not ideologically driven but they may still have strong opinions about some issues and be willing to work on beginning reforms in those areas. Consider that the Social Mecurity, Medicare, Voting Rights, and Affordable Health Care Acts were all reforms that proved, over time, to add up to a kind of revolution.

Reframe issues to effectively reach more people. Our brains allow us to have both conservative and progressive worldviews on different issues. Instead of negating the opposing positions of others, we can tune in to their worldviews and reframe issues based on what’s important to them.

Know when to step back. When we feel red-hot rage—no matter how justified—take a breath, look at the spiraling anger of others, and decide not to ratchet it up. We can be impatient with evil and, at the same time, be patient with people.

Hold our leaders accountable. Politicians will tell us this is not the time to ask for anything that costs money, that our country is in debt or at war. History proves otherwise. In 1935, even in the depths of a depression, people held their leaders accountable and got the Social Security Act passed; during the Vietnam War era, they got the Civil Rights, Medicaid, Medicare, Elementary & Secondary Education, WIC program, and Economic Opportunity Acts passed. And now, if we hold our politicians accountable and get President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief plan passed, countless lives would be saved and millions would be lifted out of poverty.

Believe that, in the long run, justice will win out. Join the Poor People's Campaign and one or more of WILPF's seven issue committees and cast your lot with others who believe it is possible to reconstitute the world.

*WILPF US is all in as an organizing partner of the Poor People’s Campaign