Hope can be medicine or poison. It is medicine when it allows us to expand our inner smile as we think of it; it becomes poison when we desperately cling to a specific outcome.

Hope is medicine when it opens the imagination and invites possibility. It turns toxic when we drift into illusion, turning away from our limits and from the world as it is asking to be met.

Hope is medicine when it rises from the center of our being, revealing what is tender, true, and alive within us. It is poison when it pulls us out of the present and trades this moment for a promised tomorrow.

Hope can light the way and feed our life force, opening the heart and keeping us engaged with the now. It also can also stir anxiety when we bind our peace to a future that has not arrived.

Hope invites us to examine our beliefs, revealing how we see ourselves, how we meet the world, and how we make decisions.

Our journey is not to remain balanced and aligned at all times. Our journey is to learn, to fall, to heal, and to return. Let hope be a place we visit, not a place we hide, a place we can ground with an open heart.