The Return: When Hope Comes Home Again

Hope is not a visitor.
It is the tide —
leaving, returning,
each time reshaping the shore.

There was a time I thought hope, once lost, was gone forever — that I had to fight to get it back. But now I know: hope is a cycle. It leaves to teach us how to listen, and it returns to show us how to live again.

Every ending I’ve survived has carried a seed of its own renewal. Sometimes it took months to see it, sometimes years. But hope always found its way back — not as a burst of light, but as something quieter, more human.

It doesn’t ask for perfection. It asks for participation. It asks that we meet life as it comes, again and again, willing to be reshaped.

Many traditions echo this truth. In ancient Hindu cosmology, creation and destruction exist in rhythm — the dance of Shiva, whose movement keeps the universe alive through endless cycles of birth, death, and return (Zimmer, 1946). Hope lives in that same dance. It doesn’t deny the darkness; it moves with it, trusting that each step brings us back to the beginning, altered but alive.

That’s what “The Return” means to me now. Not triumph. Not certainty. Just the soft willingness to start again. To trust that even after despair, even after silence, something inside still turns toward the light.

We are never finished learning how to hope. It’s a rhythm as ancient as breath — inhale, exhale, begin again.

Ritual Invitation

At sunrise or the first light of morning, step outside.
Take one slow breath in and one long breath out.
Whisper: “I welcome you back.”
Imagine hope as a companion returning home — tired, weathered, but familiar.
Let it rest with you. Let it stay.

Your Turn

When has hope returned to you after being gone?
How did it feel to recognize it again — the same, or different?
Share a few lines — your return may remind someone else that theirs is coming too.

References
Zimmer, H. (1946). Myths and symbols in Indian art and civilization. Pantheon Books.