From the Heart

28 April, 2023 | From the Heart

From the Heart is a space for the reflections of our staff on issues that matter to them, to our network, and most importantly, to those we walk alongside.

Jocelyne Nicolas, our Communications Specialist, reflects on finding hope in a world that sometimes seems overwhelming, on gratitude and grit, and why her role with RCN has been a gift through trying times.

I’ve been thinking about hope a lot lately. Faced with growing unrest and great economic and social divides in the world, it’s become harder for me to keep a sense of possibility or a sense of faith that all will right itself in the end. I don’t want to give up on hope just yet, so I’m doing what any communicator does: asking others what they’re doing, collecting stories and insights, and trying to make some sense of it all.

I recently attended a Climate Change Connection presentation at Résidence Despins. While I was supposed to be there to quietly observe and write an article for our newsletter, I couldn’t help but ask, “With all that you know and all that’s happening, how do you find hope? How do you find the energy to keep going?”

Both speakers had a quick and simple answer: they’re focusing on solutions. Kurt is a policy expert; he finds solace in researching the best way forward and creates the framework, structure and cost-analysis to present to governments, businesses and organisations. Susan works with students, and she finds hope in their engagement. They get most engaged when they’re talking solutions, not problems. The science is scary, the potential path forward gives them hope.

A friend of mine, Tessa, is the CEO of Siloam Mission and I asked her the same question a few months ago as we discussed transitional housing. “How do you keep getting up every day and fighting for things that we shouldn’t have to be fighting for? Where are you finding hope?”

Tessa had a simple answer, too. “Oh, I’m not finding hope. That’s not a real thing for me. I believe in grit. I wake up every day, knowing who I am, what I believe in and I work as hard as I can to move us forward. I can’t keep doing this job if I’m just hoping it will get better. I have to know that I’m working hard to make things get better.”

In the communications world where I reside, times are challenging, as well. My colleagues in other sectors are left absorbing hate, racism, anger and insults as they manage social media channels and work with media. It’s hard to remember that reasonable, kind and compassionate people exist when all you see is negativity.

Working in communications at Réseau Compassion Network hasn’t been that for me (and I knock on wood aggressively, hoping it will never be so). I have the distinct privilege of having a job that is good for my mental health. Every month, I interview front line staff who are called to do good, to treat others with dignity, to walk alongside and not dictate solutions, and to lean in and be curious about the lives of people that society has sometimes left behind.

So while I struggle to find hope sometimes, I’m learning that I can always find gratitude. I can be thankful for and in awe of the people who work in our network. I can be thankful that there are helpers everywhere (even if we don’t always see them). I can be thankful that I work in a sector where hope and grit live alongside each other, and where we’re all lifting each other up the best we can. I can be thankful that compassion still reigns in many quiet places. It’s hard to hope for peace, for nuance and for rationality, but it’s surely easy to hope that all of us, a coalition of the willing, will continue to do what we are called to do, and that it will be enough.

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