Cultivating “Radical” Hope When We Don't Know What Comes Next

There are many times in our lives when the path in front of us becomes unclear and difficult to see.

Perhaps a relationship has ended, our health has changed, our work feels uncertain, our children are leaving home, or something we had hoped for doesn't come to fruition. 

We find ourselves standing at the edge of a new chapter without knowing what that chapter might hold.

These times can feel particularly unsettling because so much of the certainty we usually rely upon has disappeared.

And yet, perhaps the more uncomfortable truth is that we never really know what comes next.

Most of the time, tomorrow resembles yesterday closely enough that we experience our lives as relatively stable and predictable. We make plans that we trust will unfold as we expect. We imagine where we'll be next year. We move through our days with a sense of knowing roughly where the path is leading.

And that offers us a reassuring feeling of certainty.

Until something happens that reminds us that we were never actually holding the whole map.

So how do we move through these in-between, uncertain spaces?

I've been thinking a lot about hope lately.

Not necessarily hope as a belief that everything will work out.

Not positive thinking or convincing ourselves that the future will inevitably be better than the present.

A different kind of hope. One that is practised, one that invites us into relationship with the present, and one that has room for uncertainty.

Hope without certainty

Our bodies and nervous systems love predictability. 

So when we don't know what will happen, it is natural to search for something solid. We forecast. We imagine different scenarios. We look for evidence. 

And we try to solve what isn't yet solvable.

It gives us a sense of control, when the ground beneath us feels shaky.

We often oscillate between moments of optimism: “It will all be fine”, and despair: “It will never get better.”

Interestingly, both give us something uncertainty cannot: an answer.

But hope can offer us another way. 

In my work, we sometimes speak about finding a ‘sacred third way’. A way forward that becomes available when we are no longer oscillating between the two ends of the pendulum.

Hope is an invitation to embrace the idea that: I can acknowledge and tend what is difficult or uncertain in this moment. I can not know what will happen. But I can remain available to possibilities I cannot yet see.

There is no promise in those words. The future we hope for might or might not arrive in the form we imagine.

Hope simply asks us not to mistake the limits of what we can see now for the limits of what might be possible.

I find the work of psychologist Susan Folkman on hope and coping particularly interesting. She has written about the importance of hope when we are managing uncertainty and adapting to changing realities, and about the reciprocal relationship between hope and coping.¹

Hope can help sustain us through difficulty, while the ways we cope can in turn help restore hope when it begins to fade. 

Perhaps this is part of what makes hope different from certainty.

It allows us to cultivate a relationship with more than one possibility and to stay open to what unfolds.

Active hope: from possibility to participation

I have also been returning to the work of Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone and their concept of Active Hope.

Active Hope doesn't depend upon feeling confident that the outcome we want is going to happen. Instead, we acknowledge the reality we are in, recognise what we hope for, and consider how we want to participate in moving towards it. 

I love this idea, because it brings some of our attention back from the unknowable future into the present moment.

Instead of continually asking ourselves:

Is it going to be okay?

Will this work?

How will this turn out?

We can begin asking different questions.

What matters to me now?

What can I do from here?

How can I participate in the future I want to create? 

Our relationship with the future shifts from:

Waiting to see enough evidence to believe in a future before we act towards it

to:

Noticing what matters to us here and now, and participating in its possibility before seeing the evidence.

We still don't control what happens next.

But we no longer feel as powerless within our circumstances.

Perhaps this is one of the things I find most beautiful about Active Hope.

It asks us to surrender control without surrendering our agency.

Hope becomes something we actively practise.

What becomes possible when we practise hope?

There is growing research suggesting that hope is more than simply a pleasant feeling.

Hope has been associated with resilience, coping and adaptation, and research across more than a hundred studies has found higher hope associated with lower anxiety.²

There are even indications that the way we anticipate and appraise what lies ahead can influence our physiological stress response.³ 

I find it interesting that hope seems to influence not only how we feel, but how we continue to engage with life when things are difficult.

Our circumstances may be exactly the same.

But as we practise hope, our relationship with possibility changes.

And from there we might notice something we couldn't see before. Reach towards someone. Try something different. Change direction. Say yes. Say no. Follow the breadcrumbs and glimmers along the way.

Take the one step that is visible from where we're standing, however small or even insignificant it might seem.

And continue to respond to the unfolding path from a place of curiosity and agency.

Planting seeds: practising radical hope

Perhaps this is why I've come to think of radical hope as a practice rather than a feeling.

Radical hope is a willingness to stay open to possibility even when we cannot see the path, and to keep planting seeds in the present for the future we hope might become possible. 

There is something wonderfully honest about planting a seed.

We prepare the ground.

We plant.

We water.

We tend.

We respond to the changing conditions.

But we cannot control its germination.

I think what hope demands of us isn’t dissimilar.

To participate wholeheartedly in what matters to us while relinquishing the need to know exactly what that participation will create.

To put our roots down into the ground that is actually beneath us rather than continually reaching for the certainty of a future we cannot yet know.

To remain available to possibility.

When the path ahead feels unclear, perhaps we don't need to see all the way to the destination.

Maybe it is enough to ask:

What seed can I plant now for something I hope might become possible?

And then allow the rest of the path, for now, to remain unknown.

If you're navigating a time of change or uncertainty and would like to explore how somatic work can support you, you can discover more about my work with women here.

You might also be interested in:

Finding Anchors in Times of Transition and Uncertainty

Finding Inner Rest in an Unrested World

Somatic Practices to Support You When You Feel Drained, Flat, or Numb

How to Embody the Life and Future We Desire to Create

Research references:

¹ Folkman, S. (2010). Stress, coping, and hope. Psycho-Oncology, 19(9), 901–908. DOI: 10.1002/pon.1836.

² Richardson, A. L., Long, L. J., & Gallagher, M. W. (2025/2026). Hope and Anxiety: A Meta-analytic Review. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 82, 227–247. DOI: 10.1002/jclp.70068.

³ Pulopulos, M. M., et al. (2019). Cortisol response to stress: The role of expectancy and anticipatory stress regulation. Hormones and Behavior, 117, 104587. DOI: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2019.104587.
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