Hope

Hope is what I want to end 2024 with and take with me into 2025.

For all of us there is the analytical and the practical. There is the part of us that wants to be observed, witness, be heard and held. These relational offerings bring what Irving Yalom described as an Instillation of Hope: “creates a feeling of optimism about one's future and the ability to cure that which need not be endured and endure that which cannot be cured”. I am forever grateful to my clients that allow and trust me to hold them whilst they may be dealing with uncertainty, want to process abuse, grief or trauma from the distant past or in the current. My role for clients is an important one, I know this. I must be the holding vessel when there feels like no hope. In our current world that feels for all of us quite hopeless. So in the therapy room it can feel that two of us are rowing a boat. Sometimes it can be a choppy therapy journey, but the client knowing that they are not alone provides the container and we hope that eventually they move on with whatever their life or manage to cope with whatever circumstances brought them to therapy.

Indeed 2024 has not been an easy year. I lost a dear close colleague and friend in 2024 - Ronete Cohen - due to cancer.

Ronete and I met through Pink Therapy. I had been at an evening with Dominic Davies and her best friend Henry Strick Van Linschoten supporting them the evening before a Pink Therapy Conference in about 2008. One of many connections and friendships. I recall Henry warmly saying to me, ‘you must know Ronete Cohen’, as we had so many intersections in common.

The next day we did meet at the BDSM & Kink in therapy Pink Therapy Conference, when I was a newly trained therapist, and that is when our friendship began. It always felt as if we knew each other for much longer than we had; we had many threads and experiences in common. Sometimes our politics clashed but we got through. We understood each other. We talked about her beautiful Jewfro (Jewish curly hair), the fact that if I grew my hair, it would be as curly as hers. We shared many laughs, political discussions, good food, and late-night conversations. We had a lot in common, both had struggled with feeling like the outsiders in our Jewish family and community. We were both somewhere on the gender and sexuality diverse spectrum. I am wandering away from what I was originally writing about.

Hope is what Ronete has left me with.

She was a unique, beautiful human being. Intelligent - and her personality was rich and warm. Her smile and laugh just exuded warmth and love. Many people in my life have told me that I wear my heart on my sleeve. So did Ronete and that is why we became good allies, colleagues and friends. She was my one of my cheerleaders and embraced gender process, which was important from a Jewish community and cultural perspective. She was one of the strongest women I have ever met. Cracking into hysterical laughter at the most inopportune moment, which I am always guilty of. I feel she has left me with that sense of hope and so I honour her with one of my favourite poems on the theme of hope.

Wishing you season’s greetings, Happy Chanukah and a Happy, Hopeful 2025.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers
By Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

Source: The Poems of Emily Dickinson Edited by R. W. Franklin (Harvard University Press, 1999)