When You Can’t Find Hope, Look for a ‘What If’
- Nov 1, 2023
- 6 min read
There was a time when I couldn’t imagine wanting to be alive.
Not because I wanted my life to end.
Because I couldn’t imagine it ever feeling worth living again.
Those are two very different things.
When you’ve lived through something that turns your world upside down, your imagination often stops working in the way it once did.
It no longer paints pictures of possibility.
Instead, it quietly whispers that tomorrow will feel exactly like today.
That the pain you’re carrying will always be this heavy.
That you’ll never laugh in quite the same way again.
That you’ve already lived the best part of your life.
I believed those thoughts for a long time.
Not because they were true.
Because they felt true.
When we’re hurting, our minds become very convincing storytellers.
They take today’s pain and stretch it endlessly into tomorrow.
And then the day after that.
And the day after that.
Looking back now, I realise the hardest part wasn’t the heartbreak itself.
It was believing that heartbreak was all that was left.
You don’t need certainty
People often tell us to stay hopeful.
To think positively.
To believe that everything will work out.
When you’re in the middle of deep grief or trauma, those words can feel impossibly far away.
I couldn’t believe everything would be okay.
I couldn’t even believe tomorrow or next week would be okay.
Hope felt far too big.
But one day, somewhere beneath all the noise in my head, another thought quietly appeared.
It wasn’t loud.
It wasn’t confident.
It wasn’t even particularly hopeful.
It simply asked,
“What if?”
What if this isn’t how the rest of my life feels?
What if I survive this?
What if one day I wake up and realise it doesn’t hurt quite as much?
What if there’s a version of me I haven’t met yet?
That tiny question didn’t magically change my life.
It simply cracked open a door that my fear had closed.
For the first time, I realised I didn’t need certainty.
I only needed the possibility that things could be different.
One tiny thought can change everything
When I look back now, I can trace almost everything good in my life to that one question.
Not because asking it solved my problems.
Because it kept me here long enough to discover the answers.
If I’d decided that nothing would ever change, I would never have written my first book.
I would never have discovered meditation in the way I know it today.
I would never have created courses, recorded meditations or written essays like this one.
I would never have met the people who now write to tell me that something I’ve shared helped them through a difficult day.
None of that was visible to me then.
It couldn’t have been.
I was trying to see years into the future while standing in the middle of one of the darkest seasons of my life.
The future wasn’t hidden because it didn’t exist.
It was hidden because I hadn’t walked towards it yet.
That’s something I wish every person struggling today could know.
You don’t have to see the whole path.
You only need enough light to take the next step.
Borrowing hope
One of the things that helped me most during that time wasn’t advice.
It was finding people who had already survived what I was living through.
Sometimes it was a writer.
Sometimes it was a podcast.
Sometimes it was a single paragraph in a book that made me stop and think,
“Someone else has felt exactly like this… and they’re still here.”
I can’t begin to tell you what that meant.
Not because those people gave me answers.
Because they gave me evidence.
Evidence that life after heartbreak existed.
Evidence that healing, however slow, was possible.
Evidence that people really could rebuild their lives after unimaginable loss.
Sometimes that’s all hope is.
Borrowing someone else’s belief until you’re able to grow your own.
That’s one of the reasons books became such an important part of my healing.
Whenever I couldn’t find hope inside myself, I found it in someone else’s words.
Those words carried me a little further.
Then another little further.
Until one day I realised I wasn’t just surviving anymore.
I was beginning to live again.
We heal together
One thing I’ve learned over the years is that no one truly heals in isolation.
We might spend time alone.
We might need space to think, to grieve and to catch our breath.
But eventually, healing asks us to reconnect.
Not necessarily with lots of people.
Sometimes one person is enough.
One conversation.
One writer.
One friend who simply sits beside us without trying to fix us.
One book that makes us whisper,
“That’s exactly how I feel.”
Trauma has many faces.
Some people have lived through childhood experiences that changed the way they see the world.
Others have survived illness, betrayal, grief, abuse or unimaginable loss.
None of our experiences are identical.
And that’s okay.
We don’t have to understand every detail of someone else’s story to offer compassion.
We simply have to recognise that pain is pain.
The greatest comfort I found during my own darkest days wasn’t advice.
It was connection.
Knowing I wasn’t the only person who had ever felt this broken.
That simple realisation carried me through many difficult mornings.
It’s also why I continue to write.
Because if one person reads these words and feels a little less alone today, then every difficult experience I’ve lived through has found another purpose.
Looking for reasons
People often ask me what finally changed.
The truth is, there wasn’t one dramatic moment.
There wasn’t a morning when I suddenly woke up excited about life again.
It happened much more quietly than that.
I began collecting reasons.
At first they were incredibly small.
My daughters.
My sister.
The thought of another sunrise.
A walk through the forest.
The possibility of writing a book one day.
The curiosity of discovering who I might become if I didn’t give up.
None of those reasons felt big enough on their own.
Together, they became enough.
I think that’s important to remember.
We don’t always need one enormous reason to keep going.
Sometimes we simply need enough small ones to carry us through today.
Tomorrow can take care of itself.
The life I couldn’t imagine
If someone had shown me my life today while I was sitting in the middle of that heartbreak, I don’t think I would have believed them.
Not because it was impossible.
Because my pain had convinced me that happiness belonged to other people.
Now I know better.
The books I dreamed of writing sit on shelves.
The meditations I once recorded in the hope they might help a handful of people are listened to all over the world.
I’ve found peace in quiet mornings, writing, yoga, gratitude, nature and the simple routines that once seemed insignificant.
Perhaps most importantly, I’ve discovered a relationship with myself that I never had before.
None of this happened because life suddenly became easy.
It happened because I stayed.
Long enough to discover that there was another chapter waiting for me.
A chapter I couldn’t see while I was still standing in the middle of the previous one.
If today feels impossible
Perhaps you’re reading this because life feels unbearably heavy right now.
If so, I don’t want to tell you to think positively.
Or to pretend everything happens for a reason.
Those words wouldn’t have helped me.
Instead, I’d simply ask you the question that quietly changed my own life.
What if?
What if this isn’t the end of your story?
What if there are people you haven’t met yet who will become important to you?
What if there’s work you’re going to create that only you can create?
What if there’s a version of yourself waiting on the other side of this that you can’t yet imagine?
You don’t have to believe those things completely.
You only have to leave the door open a fraction.
Because hope doesn’t usually arrive as certainty.
It arrives as possibility.
Sometimes no bigger than two simple words.
What if?
One Thought to Leave You With
You don’t have to believe everything will be okay. You only have to believe that it might.
Journal Prompt
Think about one small “what if?” you could allow yourself to believe today.
Not a huge dream.
Just one gentle possibility that feels almost, but not quite, impossible.
Write about what life might look like if that possibility became true.
Continue Exploring
Listen
A gentle guided meditation to help you reconnect with the quiet possibility that life can feel different again.
Book Prescription
Feeling: Hopeless
When I couldn’t find hope in myself, I often borrowed it from other people’s words.
I’ve gathered together a collection of books that helped me through some of the darkest days of my life. If this essay resonated with you, I hope one of them might become a companion on your own journey.
Join The Monday Letter
Every Monday I share a reflective essay about healing, self-worth, relationships and creating a life that feels like your own again.
If these words gave you even the smallest glimmer of hope today, I’d love to welcome you.
If Today Feels Especially Heavy
If you’re reading this because you’re going through an especially difficult time, please don’t carry it on your own.
Talk to someone you trust. Reach out to a friend, a family member or a healthcare professional. Sometimes the bravest thing we can do is let someone else walk beside us for a while.
And if all you can hold onto today is one tiny thought, let it be this:
What if?
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