A word about hope...
For many people who experienced trauma (or trauma after trauma after trauma), too often at the hands of people/systems that were never 'supposed to' hurt them, hope is not an easy thing to grab a hold of... https://twitter.com/BrookeM_Feldman/status/1200447021771042816

For starters, a common trauma response is hyper-vigilance (always on guard, always prepared for the other shoe to drop).
It is hard to experience holding true hope when you've been rewired to expect/prepare for things not working out in your favor...

Also, if you're starting from square one w/no employment, housing, money, car, social support...
Or from behind square one w/stigma, discrimination, racism, classism, etc standing heavy on your chest...
Well, that's pretty damn overwhelming & can suffocate the hope out of you...

So when we think about supporting people living with addiction and the concept of hope being a powerful ingredient, we have to recognize what we are working with.
For too many, the place where hope dwells was shattered...

And it takes time to put that back together again.
It can take SEEING evidence that things can/will get better.
And it often takes having people/systems in their lives who don't behave as the rewired brain has come to expect them to behave...to not fail them.