that despite everything, there are good people out there and people willing to fight for a good cause

This is going to sound harsh, and part of this is because I’m still processing the information involved so there are some raw nerves.

The father of a dear (male) friend of mine in Canada died two days ago. I found out today, but it wasn’t a surprise. He’d been in palliative care for the past month.

Now the thing is that this father was a bastard. A complete and utter abusive, manipulative, gaslighting piece of shit. He abused both of his children, messing one of them up to astonishing levels and the other (my friend) to the point that he has a few … let’s call it “social skills issues” and leave it at that. He also abused my friend’s wife (another dear friend) and their adoptive Chinese daughter. (The friend is a Russian immigrant, his wife is Scottish-descended, and there’s a plethora of children and step-children in the mix ranging from half-indigenous to plain white, to this adopted Chinese girl. It’s a complicated household.) But that being said, I’m not crass enough to celebrate this death, nor am I going to say that his death is what gives me hope.

No, it’s his wife that gives me hope.

His long-suffering (Ukrainian) wife, who most people thought was agoraphobic because she expressed raw terror at leaving home, who always wore a housecoat around the house seemingly as a ward against being invited out anywhere, who knew nothing of the household finances, etc. has, within two days of her terrorizing husband’s death, come out of her shell. In her eighties she’s setting foot outside the house again. She’s dressing up. She’s going to market places and gushing over puppies and children. Because it turns out her “agoraphobia” was her husband flatly denying her permission to leave the house. The housecoat thing? He insisted on it “to save laundry costs”. She’d been kept, essentially, as a terrorized slave for decades in that home and nobody knew it. (Not even my friend’s wife who has very sharp instincts for this kind of thing, herself being an abuse victim at the hands of her mother.)

But only two days after her monstrous abuser’s death, she, in her eighties (!), is stepping out into the world unflinching and unafraid and finally getting a taste of joy once more. Which is, to me, a hope-filled glimpse of the future: no matter how dark the life, there’s always hope for joy in it eventually.

I think most people are pretty great, actually.

For example, I was once hit by a car while I was cycling. Several people immediately got out of their cars to help, one of them was a nurse who stayed with me the whole time. The driver who hit me felt awful and helped me as much as he could.

Even though I burned with anger about the social / structural issues that led to my victimization, the actual people involved in the situation were all so kind and supportive.

In my experience, it’s actually hard to get people to be unkind to one another, it’s a minority of people who are inclined this way.

Another example: I was once checking out at a grocery store, and it was a self-checkout kiosk. The employee responsible for overseeing it all rung up my organic produce as conventional to save me money, she was indignant and righteous, and also looking out for me.

I have endless examples of this - love and kindness is practically beaming from people when they can afford to, when the circumstances allow them, when they’re not exhausted, burned out, or required by policy to harm you.

Even in the latter cases, a lot of people are nice to you and try to help you navigate the harmful social structure.

I am trans, and the DMV clerk was really nice to me and tried to warn me and walk me through the transphobic policies and what I could do about it.

Another DMV clerk actually congratulated me and was warm towards me when she realized I was trans.

I live in a very transphobic place, mind you - this is by all means “unusual” behavior, but I think people want to be nice, generally. They want to have positive experiences with one another, they want to be kind and warm.

The fact that there are still people fighting and we don’t fight alone.

Regarding the state of the world, remembering that during the worst periods in history, people still lived relatively normal lives.

Regarding my own corner of the universe, seeing the impact my job has on others. Engaging in my interests. The freedom to be myself. I guess it’s the little things.

Oh it looks a bit hopeless in this thread, I’m so sorry it is so hard for you all!

Here’s a bit of hope, maybe it nudges someone in a brighter direction (or if you are not spiritually inclined at least me having lost it completely might entertain you):

I’m finding hope in my animist faith. Ever since I’ve started talking to the landscape a few years ago, and overcame the fear of being a complete nutter sliding into psychosis, I have had guidance about what I can do next to make things better - it sometimes arrives in the shape of an animal visiting me, or the wind picking up as I entertain certain thoughts, or a book with relevant information.

This week I’m visiting friends and in their library I found a book about landscape healing by connecting to nature spirits, a lot of which corresponds to what I’ve experienced myself when trying to reconnect. The landscape around us has not given up on us yet, and wants to re-balance things, and we are invited to help. Destroyed water sources, sad forests, forgotten mountains can be helped not just by fierce activism, but by extending our love towards them and connecting with them as friends and neighbours.

I believe the real revolution is already happening in the hearts of millions of witches, who start connecting with each other and with all the life out there, and this movement is becoming more powerful every day. Finding back towards balance is the work of many generations, so in our current incarnations we might not see the end of it, but the work towards it is something we can do today, even in the bleakest of times. So I guess go hug a tree or speak to a rock, and I really wish that things get better for you soon!

It’s been a struggle lately to have any hope honestly, but seeing cis people in the UK come out and fight for us has lifted my spirits a bit (even if the bastards in charge are just going to keep being transphobic anyway)

The biggest thing that gives me hope is that, despite the narrative that the last bastions of freedom and humanity are in dire straits and possibly terminal, that said “last bastions” are only about a quarter of the world, and there’s huge chunks of the world that aren’t dead-set on self-destruction out there who will carry on.

Very little currently

nothing, humans are the worst creatures on this planet