# 17 New Year – New Hope

‘Hope and fear cannot occupy

The same space at the same time.

Invite one to stay.’

Maya Angelou

As it’s New Year’s Eve, I have been thinking about the year that has passed and the new year to come. The last couple of years have been crazy for everyone when you think that at this time in 2020 we had no idea what was coming and how Covid would affect us all. Now three years on, we are all starting to recover although of course a great sadness remains because of all the deaths and suffering that happened. This year I feel hopeful that we will all recover more. From working in a school, I see the long-lasting effects on some of the students I work with. Not only the loss of time in the classroom but the anxiety and self-doubt that can cripple. Hopefully this year with the help and care of my amazing colleagues they will recover more and reach their full potential. I can understand this as my mental health suffered too and for the first time in my life, I became agoraphobic. I couldn’t leave the house and if I did I had a panic attack. Fortunately, with help from my family and friends I recovered and become more resilient and determined to come back stronger.

During lockdown I started writing Pandora’s Cave which is a book about hope. It is also a book about mental health. Writing it was cathartic for me and it is full of light and dark. Each chapter begins with a quote about hope.  The Maya Angelou one above is one I love and I have chosen a couple of my other favourites for you…

‘Hope is like a bird that senses the dawn

And carefully starts to sing while it is still dark.’ Unknown Author

‘True hope is swift and flies with swallows wings.’ William Shakespeare

‘Hope itself is like a star-not to be seen in the sunshine of prosperity,

And only to be discovered in the night of adversity.’ C.H. Spurgeon

Writing helps my mental health enormously. Being creative is an outlet that changes my mindset. Although being a writer means you spend hours agonising and feeling paralysed with self-doubt. I don’t think I will ever not feel like an imposter but I carry on…I didn’t know when I began writing my book, that the story of Pandora is actually about hope. Until I began researching, I thought she let out the Seven Deadly Sins and that was it.

I got the idea to write the Pandora story after going on a boat trip to Italy. We were taken into this amazing tiny cave and our guide said it is called Grotta del Pandora – Pandora’s Cave. She then said that everyone who enters must make a wish. Perplexed by this, I looked up the story when we got back and found that Hope was left behind to fight the sins covering the earth.

When Pandora is mentioned it is normally associated with a box and has been depicted as such in many paintings over the years. However, while I was researching the Pandora myth I discovered that actually it has been wrongly translated over time. Pandora released the Seven Deadly Sins from a jar (pithos) in Greek.

I’ve written a calligram, a shape poem about Pandora. As this form of poetry originated in Ancient Greece as early as 2 BC, I thought it was fitting as Pandora is from the Greek Myths and I had lots of fun trying to get the shape right.

Pandora’s Jar

Pandora the first woman who was created

  By Zeus purely to punish man

Sculpted like a statue from

  River Evinos clay

Beautiful

With big, dark eyes, satin soft skin

And a teasing, tantalising smile she turned heads

As she wore rich tunics spun by silkworms in a myriad of

The brightest colours – Scarlet, Emerald, Sapphire, Indigo and Gold.

Making men fell at her feet beguiled – bestowing lavish gifts upon her in the

Hope she would notice them. All the while Zeus laughed patiently

Waiting to take his revenge on Prometheus for giving men fire.

Prometheus, blinded by lust, asked for Pandora’s hand.

The wedding gift from Zeus was a large jar which

He told her she must never ever open.

Her curiosity overcame her and she

Opened it freeing the Seven

Deadly Sins that crept

Insidiously

Across the earth

Lust, Wrath, Gluttony, Greed, Pride, Envy and Sloth.

  What could stop their spread of destruction? Only Hope

 That remained in the jar and was released combatting them all.

Some days, hope is hard to come by. Especially if you watch the news and see all the awful things going on and look at the state of our country and politics. However, hope endures and always has done. All the quotes I used in my book are written by people that have died but had hope in their lives which helped them survive the hardships they were experiencing at the time.

We have a tradition in our family that we only started in the last few years. On New Year’s Eve, we sit around the table and write our hopes and wishes for the year ahead. These are personal and not shown to anyone else. We fold them up and put them into a glass jar and don’t open it until the following year and we unfold them to see if they have happened. Some are small – one of mine was to make time to read more books. One year, Will’s was to pass his driving test which he did. Last year, I know that my hope was to finish my book and publish it which happened. At the time I hadn’t finished writing it and didn’t know how it was going to end. I can’t remember what else I wished for.

This year my hope is to try to enjoy being in the present. I’m always thinking about the next thing which means not standing still and just being. We have a little robin that visits our garden every day and asks for food. He makes me smile and my aim is to stop constantly thinking about what I should be doing. Instead, just enjoy listening to his song and watching him hop around and eat the seed we put out for him. I am also hoping to start writing my new book.

Whereas Pandora freed Hope from the jar, we do the opposite and contain our hopes hoping they will come true. I’m looking forward to opening it later and finding out what’s in there.

I hope all your hopes and wishes come true in 2023. Happy New Year! X