From the Editors
We often think about hope as a feeling deep down inside that drives us to believe that better is possible. While true, hope is also an action. It’s something that we can embody and work towards. Hope doesn’t just randomly occur inside of us. It lives. In order to survive, it manifests itself through our words, our connections, and our attitudes. By resisting the circumstances that wish to render us hopeless, we aren’t just being hopeful; we’re also letting everyone else around us know that another option is possible. The day we lose hope is the day we lose ourselves, our history, our action.
Hope Lives in Our Words begins with the belief that hope is not passive—it is an active, imaginative force. It lives in our ability to create, to dream beyond what we see, and to trust in what we cannot yet grasp. Hope is individual, but also collective—a power we hold together strengthened when we speak, write, and share. Life has a cyclical nature, in that we constantly move through despair and back into light, again and again. Even in our darkest hours, when the night feels endless, we are reminded that dawn always returns—and the chance to tell our stories with it. Hope is not a frantic grasping, but something more patient, more rooted—like in the words of Rainer Maria Rilke: “ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring.” This book, and the following messages from our community, are a celebration of that kind of hope—the kind that grows in us slowly, surely, and together. The following quotes were contributed by members of the Girls Write Now community—including mentees, mentors, speakers, staff, partners, teaching artists, and more. We hope these words inspire the hope within you and encourage you to share and spread hope of your own.
— Azia Armistead & Kathryn Destin, Writers & Girls Write Now Coordinators
