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Mental Health

Finding Hope by Letting Go of Expectation

Sarah Hope Marshall
4 min readDec 30, 2021

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Today is December 30, 2021, and society is at the turn of yet another year. The past two years have been challenging for everyone. Combine a dangerous global pandemic, turbulent cultural events, increased crime and gun violence here in the United States, and a series of a natural disasters and it all adds up to a very difficult season. Year-end memes are abundant online today, and social media is full of short, pithy posts about keeping expectations for 2022 low. It is hard to breathe a sigh of relief about closing another year when Covid-19 cases are hitting record highs. Everyone I know has at least one person in their circle with this virus right now.

I also have done my fair share of complaining about the ways the pandemic has impacted my life. Yet I know I am one of the fortunate ones. Myself and my family members have escaped serious health impacts of Covid-19. But I missed the opportunity to be on campus for the last year of a graduate program. 2020 was the year I took a sabbatical from working to study a topic I was deeply interested in at a school I had only once dreamed of attending. I studied for endless hours in a rocking chair in my little home office instead of in a library or collaboratively with peers.

Then in 2021, I fully launched my own business, a dream I had for years. While that…

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Sarah Hope Marshall
Sarah Hope Marshall

Written by Sarah Hope Marshall

Founder: Profound Hope Industries. Helping individuals, organizations and community be well and do well through workshops, training, and consulting.

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