Hope: Daphne Grab

What's your definition of "hope?"

I think of hope as belief in good, as seeing the potential for the positive to prevail even in the face of great challenge. Hope can be a joyous fountain when something good happens: a cute guy asks you out, you get into the college of your choice or you, you know, sell a book. Then you get to look at the future as this place with a golden glow. That kind of hope is a glorious feeling.

Hope is a much more tenuous thing to hold onto in dark times. In my book Alive and Well in Prague, New York, the main character's dad has a terminal illness and is slowly losing his body to a disease. That is the kind of situation where it's the hardest to feel hope, because the future is set and it looks pretty barren.

But then that is the beauty of hope, that it can still be there, under the darkness. That's what my main character finds, much as I found when my own dad was terminally ill. Hope lies in the little moments, in being able to perform old rituals, have deeper conversations and find the preciousness in each moment you do have. Hope is in believing you can survive something that is crushing and still hold onto goodness in your life. And hope is the thing that makes those things survivable.

- Daphne Grab

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