Hope by Rox Nicholl

Hope is not glitter and sparkles. Determination is not always weird artistic montages and rousing music. Life is not the movies.

It’s okay to want to give up. What’s not okay is to actually give up.

Through the journey, there are always small natural pauses. It’s easy to rush through these moments, to use the time to try and “get ahead”.

But sometimes, we need to breath. Let the pause be a pause. Give ourselves the moment.

Sometimes hope is reaching out and finding another with a story just like our own.

Where it felt like nothing would ever come out right, where the System was crushing us, our children, our hopes and dreams into teeny tiny pieces.

Sometimes hope is seeing that others have known this frustration, and weariness, and bone-chilling exhaustion, and have come out the other side.

Because there is the other side. It’s not all glitter and sparkles, because our kids still have … interesting lives.

But it is worth fighting for.

So when you feel like it is all too much:

- Find a moment to rest

- Find a reason to fight

- Find the next right thing to do, and just focus on that.