3 min read

“Hope is what you’re left with…”

Living through this pandemic feels a lot like surviving on hope. As Ira writes “hope is what you’re left with when there’s absolutely nothing else there.”

At the end of yet another heartbreaking, chaotic, painful pandemic week, I am concerned our collective hope reserves are running low. Our communities are enduring continuous traumas, our democracy remains in a precarious state and moments of joy brief and fleeting.

We are all tired— and that is okay. This is called weathering. The outcome of our bodies and spirits continuously absorbing systemic violence. We are all tired but we are still here, even with little else but hope.  

I’ve been asking friends lately where they have been sourcing hope and have gotten many blank stares over Zooms and FaceTimes. So I am restarting my newsletter with a dedication to sourcing hope.  

What am I reading?

Welcome to Sabrina’s personal newsletter. Last week my friend Ann Friedman celebrated eight (8!!) years of her fantastic newsletter (subscribe, it is great!) and it inspired me to revisit practices I miss— specifically my personal writing practice and curating content. This helped me decide to restart my newsletter, it’s been a minute and you may not remember signing up for this and want to opt-out. If so, that is cool!

If you choose to stick around, great! The forthcoming newsletters will be delivered via Action Network. I will not be starting a Substack as that is a platform that is increasingly used to foster misinformation, harm women and people of color and for men to monetize their bad opinions. I decided to move this Tinyletter as it is owned by Mailchimp, a company that recent reports indicate seems to be a toxic hellscape too.  No platform is perfect but I’m comfortable enduring a little friction migrating a list if it means I’m supporting a business at least trying to do better even if it means restarting this will be a bit of a clunky process.  You feel me?

Sourcing Hope

But an in-the-weeds analysis on tech platforms is not why I'm here today. As promised, here is a very incomplete list of places, spaces and people I am sourcing hope from in these scary, lonely and stressful pandemic times.   I am sourcing hope from solidarity and leaders who are making sure that, even in a pandemic, people feel seen, free and protected.

I source hope from Red Canary Song’s work and solidarity statement. I've long sourced hope from Hollaback & Asian Americans Advancing Justice’s free bystander trainings they have been offering over the course of the entire pandemic.

I source hope from those who continue to show up and fight for our democracy. There are two major attacks on voting rights unfolding in Texas right now. These two bills stand to be the worst voting rights legislation in Texas since Jim Crow. I am sourcing hope from the organizing efforts coming out MOVE Texas. And as always, I am grateful for Stacey Abrams for calling that this was coming.

I source hope from leaders who show up for survivors. The amazing activist and leader Allison Turkos launched the Survivor Storytelling Survey. An inspiring volunteer effort to create support mechanisms for sexual violence survivors and create a deeper understanding about the experiences of sharing sexual assault and sexual violence stories. This work is so necessary and important. If you’d like to contribute, the survey is live here and the outcomes will be publicly shared. Tell me, where are you sourcing hope?

Brina in Action

If you’d like to catch me out here in these Zoom streets there are many options next week. As an introvert, I am shocked I let this happen to my calendar but here we are!