Emily Dickinson gives us a vision of hope when she says, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul….. Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.”
She is telling us that hope doesn’t take from us, it gives. No matter how dark the night or how far the shore, there is always a reason to go on when there is hope.
I like hope. Oh, you can’t abuse it or nothing gets done. We all know that action is necessary; you can’t just sit and hope. But you can bring it with you wherever you go and bring it forth so you can use it.
Some people give up hope. They say, “I’m too young or I’m too old, too rich, too poor, too innocent or too guilty.” We can’t wave a magic wand over circumstance but we can catch our wandering thoughts and put them back under our control. If hope is ‘the thing with feathers’, our thoughts are the things with mighty talons that can grab us and destroy us or gently carry us to a place where hope is.
Just when you think all hope is lost, sometimes a great thing happens. When I think there is no hope left in family court, that no one cares and all attorneys are corrupt, I received a surprising email.
Hope may surprise us by its disguises and its rawness. Where some see despair here, I see hope:
Hi,
I’m trying to contact Ann Bradley. I’m a lawyer in Southern California very interested in exposing the corruption in Family Law. Please let me know how I can contact her regarding interesting cases in Southern California that deal with horrific custody battles and judges that don’t follow the law.
