Pink Floyd released Hey Hey Rise Up. You don’t need to understand the language to feel the meaning.
As humans, we are conditioned to feel empowered by hope. It gives us courage. It keeps us going despite the odds. While we are outnumbered, fighting for something that is bigger than ourselves is always worth it.
This video got me thinking about how many Ukrainians will be facing the residual of the Russian invasion of their country. Frankly, after what the Russian soldiers have done to them, I don’t care if they are haunted for the rest of their lives for slaughtering babies, children, women and men who were just trying to live their lives. Homes were destroyed, hospitals were destroyed, schools, you name it, because they were “just following orders.” My other website Wounded Times has readers from Ukraine and Russia. I cannot imagine anyone approving of this invasion being a reader of mine.
For right now, the Ukrainian people are being empowered by hope and they are passing it on. For the millions who left Ukraine, they are being taken care of by other countries because they know, it could have been their country attacked by Putin. Some of the Ukrainian people have returned to Ukraine, even though their homes have been destroyed. They want to be in their own country. They return in the midst of a war because they have hope.
When the war is over, they will need help to heal but if all they find is doom and gloom, they won’t receive it. Be ready to help them recover as another survivor because you speak the same language even though you did not experience what they did, you’re living with the results from other causes.
What if you do not have hope? What if no one gives you reason to hope for your life changing? It can be draining to search for help and if you don’t find it, read nothing hopeful or anything that inspires you to keep searching, what do you have left? For all the times you were facing the loss of hope before, things turned around and somehow you hung on long enough for it to happen.
That’s what I’m doing right now. Remembering all the times things seemed so totally hopeless I didn’t have much reason to get up out of bed. When I least expected it, least thought I deserved it, it happened even though I had given up on myself.
The thing is, even when I am struggling to hang on, I am empowered to offer hope and that is healing for me. It is in my DNA after 40 year to feel useful, no matter how many are reached because even one life is worth it. I would rather #empowerhope even when no one other than survivors can understand it because I speak in a language we feel.
Help people find hope even if all you can offer is when it happened to you before and you are struggling again, because you are also helping yourself remembering. After all, you speak the same language as they do.
Kathie Costos Author of The Lost Son, Alive Again and Stranger Angels
