Grief without hope is a perilous journey. Hope is a primal need. Hope sparks our ability to believe that the enveloping heaviness, the soul reducing darkness, and the desperate loneliness of deep grief will eventually become manageable. Hope allows us to trust that time, in fact, might heal. Hope encourages us to imagine the possibility that our senses will once again be awakened to experience the other side of grief. Hope dares us to trust that in time numbness will give way to the warmth of sunshine and that silence will give way to music that is heard and felt once more. Just a glimmer is hope as the fog of deep grief begins to lift. A butterfly fluttering by reminding us that transformation happens. A resilient crocus poking through the snow modeling that it is possible to bloom from darkness. An unexpected smile that feels genuine and not rooted in sympathy validating that we are more than our loss. Curiosity stimulating our brains to once again consider other, more, different…quite literally moving us beyond loss and towards possibility, re engagement and healing. Hope is the reconciliation that the intense pain of deep grief is temporary even though the missing, remembering and loving is everlasting. Hope is the clarity that remaining in deep grief perpetuates suffering and that it is worth the effort to try and live forward with courage, strength and faith. Hope reminds us that it is possible to feel more than sorrow, that we are not our grief, and that we have the ability to carry our loved one’s memory with us as we continue on.