A week ago Sunday, I attended a wonderful talk by J. Scott Rutan, a highly esteemed writer, teacher, and practitioner of group psychotherapy. During the talk — offered by the Northeastern Society for Group Psychotherapy — Scott handed out a list of healing factors, and invited everybody to rank the healing factors in order.
This was a difficult task, because all of those healing factors are very important. However, I had no difficulty identifying what healing factor I rely on the most: Hope.
I hope it’s okay if I quote from my first blog post with “hope” in the title, written almost exactly three years ago today:
I hope I can express, in my first post about hope, how important hope is for human beings who struggle, cope, bruise, and heal.
I hope you understand that I’m saying that hope is important to all of us.
Hope is:
- a word that comes up in therapy, every day.
- something I hold for every person I encounter.
- according to Emily Dickinson, “the thing with feathers.”
I hope there’s hope in the three photos I took yesterday.
Michael loves raccoons, so I bought him this mug yesterday. I hoped that he’d like it and he did!
I hope we all survive the coming winter and don’t swallow too much snow.
I hope Scott Rutan, everyone else who helps me create these blog posts, and my readers know how thankful I am for them.
I hope this week brings good news to all who hold hope for the USA.
I hope you find hope in this:
I hope you comment about your own healing factors, below, and accept more thanks from me.
