It wasn’t long ago that I was the poster child for everything that is the opposite of hope; wretched, forlorn, despairing,  despondent. I was in such a dark place that I had, finally, lost even the smallest shred of hope. I wasn’t living. I was spiritually empty. Hope was a four-letter word that was not in my vocabulary.

Now I run around like an angel of mercy spreading the word: there is HOPE! Don’t give up, don’t despair, if I can be saved so can you. And I mean it. When I speak in meetings or groups where people are suffering and sick and sad, whether it be from addiction or depression or just the hard knocks of life beating them down I always try to share a little bit of hope with them. Not false hope, not you-can-do-it cheerleading rah-rah-rah hope. Real hope. From a real person. Who had none.

I was without hope of even the smallest glimmer. I was broken and empty. I could barely get out of bed and, some days, I didn’t. I thought I had lost everything worth living for, most especially the love of my family. I had no self-worth, no purpose and no will to live. This did not happen overnight. It was a slow descent into this hell and at the core of it was my self-hatred, which began in childhood and was fed by the very people who were supposed to nurture and love me. There was no unconditional love in my childhood. There was plenty of shaming and criticizing and scolding. The good little girl could never be quite good enough. So I learned to turn everything inward. The self-hatred, depression and suicidal thoughts started very, very young. The drinking to self-medicate started later and turned on me when my mother did, around my fortieth birthday. Her final betrayal sealed my dark, hopeless fate and put her stamp of approval on my innermost belief; that I wasn’t worth it.

It would be a decade before I began to climb out of the hell, out of the despair and grief of the losses suffered. A decade during which I came close to dying more times than I dare to think about now. And it would be even longer before hope arrived, the tiniest piece of hope, like a speck of dust, in the words my daughter spoke to me one September day;”I need my mother.” Hope. That I had a purpose. That I was needed. That I was worth it.