How to find threads of hope
My best advice for bolstering your reserves when things feel hard
Over the past, oh, let’s just say since 2016, when the presidential election here in the U.S. stunned and frightened me, I often find myself in a particular kind of quandary.
What is happening in the larger world can feel grim, from our immigrant neighbors in danger of arrest, to growing impacts of climate change to my own deeply sad realization that a majority of Americans did, indeed, cast their ballots for this current harmful and cruel administration.
Yet, what is happening in my small world is mostly soft, calm, and an expression of my deeply-held values of community, care, and making space for everyone.
I have some big emotional experiences coming up—my son will be leaving for college in a few weeks; I’ll be traveling East for my favorite grandmother’s burial service; I’ll be formally starting my graduate school program. But for now, I’m in a window of softness, with a very snuggly beagle sleeping next to me, fur-to-skin, a quiet household, and incredibly engaging knitting.
And yet.
An integral part of my values is to see the system and to do my part to bring to life the dream of something better. To bear witness to the ways injustice impacts not only my family and me, but also to how unjust systems ultimately marginalize and impact all of us.
“Nobody’s free until everybody’s free,”
said the powerful activist Fannie Lou Hamer.
What can I, or you, do when we are each just one person, one small voice of dissent, inside a larger system?
Social media would tell me to “share my voice,” but the reality is that social media thrives on outrage.
Journalists and newspapers don’t give me much help, either. They’re focused on uncovering problems or sharing “both sides” reporting, not helping regular folks, like you and me, figure out how to help. Voting in elections, from local to national, often feels like it’s the only real power move available.
I have a small business, my knit & dye studio, and, with it, a small platform—minuscule compared to others, but more than nothing. And yet, I’m pretty sure I’ve never influenced anyone to change their minds about anything.
Where I find solace is in the thought of bearing witness.
I believe it is meaningful to really see, and not look away from, the way ordinary people are impacted by what’s happening in the wider world.
The heat so extreme that touching the pavement can cause a contact burn. Calls to FEMA for help that go unanswered because government agencies have been gutted of staff and funding. The immigrants and their families being harmed. The unconstitutional arrests.
My vote, back in 2024, didn’t stop the currently terrifying circumstances we find ourselves in, here in America, but I like to think that bearing witness does help.
When I see the injustice, when I don’t turn away, when I don’t grow numb, it helps carry some of the moral weight of what’s happening. I hold what I can, and I care for myself so that I don’t buckle under the weariness. I suppose this is a version of President Obama’s anthem, “Yes, we can,” but a slightly more world-weary one.
Because I’m a knitter, I also think about where I see this in my knitting, because if I can hold this kind of complexity in my knitting, I can surely hold it in my life, too.
I also find solace in the practice of persistence.
I’ve shared before how I’m testing a new yarn right now: a non-superwash fingering weight blend of black and white wool that gives my hand-dyed colors a heathery depth. I am deep into the testing process and have been switching back and forth between two larger-than-usual projects.
The simultaneous knitting of two large projects is unusual for me. I prefer to knit on one large project, mostly every day, and have a second project (like a sock) only for instances where I can’t devote the mental energy to the bigger project. Working on two large, consuming projects has been so atypical.
And yet, I think it’s a sign of my own growing ability to persist.
Persistence is such a critical quality. I think we’ll need more of it in the days and years to come. We’ll need to persist in our work to help reduce the harms of this cruel U.S. administration, wherever we are in the world. We’ll need to persist in staying hopeful. We’ll need to persist in finding small ways to make the future better.
It’s easy to destroy. It’s much harder to build, and it’s harder still to persist in building when others around you are destroying.
This is what knitting teaches me, again and again. To persist with the big project. To find ways to lighten my heart when I can. And to keep going.
Now, this small problem of having too much knitting is laughable in comparison to broken systems that cause injustice and harm. But, hidden inside our knitting, I believe we can find threads of hope to bolster our resolve for the bigger things.
Knitting teaches me that I can try something new and have it not result in something useful. I can learn that it’s okay to rip out a few rows (or more) and try again.
I learn that the time spent in pleasurable activity—the pleasure of memorizing a lace chart, of making soothing loop after loop—is the point after all. That the finished item is a bonus, but the moment right now is what matters. Our hearts can expand to be able to bear a bit more witness.
My nervous system was frazzled and fried from the cruelty and chaos of the 2016-2020 presidential administration, and it kicked into a disordered overdrive because of that administration’s response at the beginning of the pandemic. But my nervous system can learn. With gentleness, experience, and repetition, I can understand that it’s okay to keep going when things are uncertain. That my growing edges can expand rather than cut. That we can see the uncertainty and still manage to reach forward.
It’s just knitting. But it’s also a deep breath and a place of solace that helps me know: we can hold the uncertainty of life and equally hope for better days ahead.
Thanks for being here. I am rooting for all of us.
As historians, we are often taught that our job is to “bear witness” to what human beings do to themselves and each other. I know most of what happens in the world involves me, but not in a direct way. However, it is my job to say, “I see you and your suffering. I see your joy. I see you as a human being.”
Thank you for this moment of sanity. I'm just going to focus on my knitting today and make a peach pie. Yum.