1 Introduction

At this moment in history, we find ourselves and our planet caught in the grip of the toxic interlocking forces of colonialism, neoliberalism and rising fascism. Colonialism's enduring harmful influence is well-documented, including global hierarchies of power, knowledge and resource extraction; embedded racialised and geographical inequalities; and the dehumanisation, marginalisation and separation of persons from their cultures, languages, families, communities and lands (see, e.g., Adams et al. 2015; Dudgeon and Walker 2015; Evans-Campbell 2008; Hamilton et al. 2025). This influence is continuing as ‘the coloniality of the modern global order’ (Adams et al. 2015, 215) through ongoing systems of power (BlackDeer 2023). Neoliberalism, as an economic mutation of these colonial structures, privileges endless growth and consumption, relentless productivity, commodification, individualism and privatisation, reducing life to measures of efficiency and profit, deepening inequities and accelerating ecological decline by stripping our planet of its resources (e.g., Adams et al. 2019; Thomas-Jackson et al. 2025). In the wake of this ‘polycrisis’ (McNamara and Bambra 2025, 238), fascist and populist movements are rising, using marginalisation, fear and nostalgia to reassert racialised nationalism, intensifying division, fracturing communities and eroding citizenship.

The convergence of these forces is of urgent importance to systemic practitioners as it has profound implications for mental health, collective wellbeing, and our planet's survival (see, e.g., Dudgeon and Walker 2015; Evans-Campbell 2008; Sherwood 2013). Ruptured social bonds remove our collective safety nets, solidarity and sense of belonging, instead fostering isolation, anxiety and burnout. Dominant Eurocentric understandings of mental health and wellbeing are globalised, pathologising distress as personal failure and obscuring systemic harm (Adams et al. 2015; Fanon 1965). Meanwhile, the scars our planet bears, its ongoing decline and our own disconnection from nature can leave us with a profound grief and existential dread. It could be argued that the very fabric that sustains life and wellbeing is under threat.

In this context, hope can feel both out of place and out of reach. As Kaethe Weingarten states, ‘hope and despair are unevenly distributed in our lives and on our planet’ (Weingarten 2007, 15), and for many, despair, rage or cynicism can feel like the most reasonable responses.

2 Against Hope

Contemporary Western psychology has produced over three decades of empirical hope research, mostly shaped by the positive psychology movement (Corn et al. 2020), which has conceptualised hope as a measurable individual internal quality, an attribute or feeling a person does or does not have, that can drive one to attain one's goals (Alarcon et al. 2013; Gillham 2000; Snyder 1994; Snyder et al. 2005). As Everett Worthington, a prominent hope researcher, puts it, ‘hope is the willpower to change and the way-power to bring about that change’ (Worthington 2020, 3).

This definition of hope as the internal characteristic or feeling of a person reflects a neoliberal Eurocentric worldview that privileges the individual and personal agency, what Byrne and McCarthy (2007, 36) call ‘a privatization of hope’ (Edwards and McConnell 2023; Scioli 2023; Schrank et al. 2011). It conceptualises hope as a binary and linear concept, in opposition to and as an overcoming of, for example, helplessness, despair or grief (Schrank et al. 2011), thus pathologising hopelessness and despair as deficit or mental ‘ill health’. It also decontextualises hope. It detaches hope from the realities of relationships, communities, cultures and histories, leaving hope ‘uninhibited and unconstrained by the material conditions’ of the past or present (Webb 2010, 337), and not attending to ‘the aspects of a hopeful life that lie outside a hoping person's purpose and control’ (Scioli 2023, 252). It makes hope a moral virtue and hopelessness a personal failure (Corn et al. 2020; Olsman 2020).

Narrative therapist Travis Heath offers a powerful critique of this conceptualisation of hope (Reynolds et al. 2021). Heath argues that hope has been co-opted by colonial and neoliberal ideologies and the ‘cult of positivity’ (p. 14). This makes hope a commodity that can be bought and sold (e.g., through multiple self-help guides and self-improvement regimes) and that will lead to happiness for those who obtain it while sidelining those who do not, thus further widening the divide between those in the centre and those on the margins of society. Heath concludes that perhaps the question is not how to find hope, but whether this type of hope is worth finding at all.

3 The Urgent Case for Hope

Hope is an ontological need … I am hopeful, not out of mere stubbornness, but out of an existential concrete imperative. (Freire 1994, 2)

Yet, as humans we have been drawn to hope across centuries and cultures. Kaethe Weingarten (2010) reminds us, hopelessness is serious, as hope has been shown to be a fundamentally protective and transformative resource (Koehn and Cutliffe 2007). A substantial body of empirical research has shown hope to be predictive of a wide range of psychological, social and subjective well-being outcomes, better physical health, overall better quality of life and even a longer life (see e.g., Stevens et al. 2018; Murphy 2023; Northwehr et al. 2013). Hope has also been shown to be significant in managing challenging life circumstances, for example, coping with illness and disability and managing pain (Rasmussen et al. 2023), and even predicts better outcomes in serious illness (e.g., cancer) (Corn et al. 2020). In mental health, hope is increasingly recognised as central in recovery (Schrank et al. 2008, 2011). People living with mental, physical or addiction challenges have been clear that they wish to have hope and to be supported to re-gain and maintain hope, including hope for recovery, for participating in valued social roles and relationships, and for living purposeful and meaningful lives where they are contributing to their communities (Davidson and White 2007).

Therefore, as systemic practitioners, we often aim to foster hope when those who consult with us find themselves hopeless and unable to see the way forward. In these therapeutic contexts, hopelessness is not only a clinical concern but also an ethical one. White (1997) and Reynolds et al. (2021) emphasise the importance of practices that resist burnout and despair through collaboration and relational ethics. Reynolds advocates for practitioners to act as ‘bringers of hope’, arguing that creating spaces where hope can emerge is a moral responsibility. She describes this as a ‘spirited presence’, a commitment to amplifying even the smallest acts of resistance and justice-doing into a ‘believed-in hope’ (Reynolds et al. 2021, 3). In this sense, hope becomes a relational commitment, essential for sustaining ethical engagement in the face of suffering and injustice (Giroux 2004).

The ethical and activist imperatives for hope also extend beyond the therapy room. Many scholars and activists such as Berry (Cohn 2014), Freire (1970), Reynolds et al. (2021) and Giroux (2004) argue that hopelessness can undermine core commitments to justice, equity, inclusion and sustainability. From this perspective, despair, cynicism, nihilism or perfectionism can get in the way of meaningful engagement and collective action (Reynolds et al. 2021), allowing us to opt out of confronting systemic injustices (Cohn 2014). Freire (1970) offers a powerful counterpoint to such despair, inviting those who face the dehumanisation resulting from unjust social orders to not become resigned, but instead to hope and let this hope fuel the pursuit of denied humanity.

Therefore, although traditional conceptualisations of hope require critical re-evaluation, hope's psychological, physiological, existential and relational value remain compelling. Hope also continues to serve as a vital resource for relational and ethical practice in therapy and beyond. Maybe, in response to the polycrisis we face, we can resist a neoliberal decontextualised optimism or a commodified individualised hope, and instead reclaim a different hope beyond the colonial-capitalist order. A hope that offers a meaningful response to our current times.

4 Doing Hope Differently

What then might such a reimagined hope look like? Maybe a hope inseparable from our relationships with one another and our world and grounded in connection and reciprocity; a hope that is more contextualised and nuanced; an active hope; an inclusive hope that challenges binary and normative understandings; a hope with space for those ‘unnamable sparks of hope that, like feelings of love, are impossible to capture in words’ (Hayward, in Schrank et al. 2011, 230); a hope that takes ‘account of complexities, and uncertainties, with openings’ (Solnit 2016, p. xiii-xiv); and hope that allows new meanings to emerge.

5 Relational Hope

Caring relationships have consistently been identified as central to the development and sustenance of hope (Cutliffe 2004; Cutcliffe and Barker 2002; Cutliffe and Herth 2002; Cutcliffe and Koehn 2007; Koehn and Cutliffe 2007; Olsman 2020). In making a meaningful connection, conveying acceptance, really listening and understanding, hope is kindled (Cutcliffe 2002). Indigenous worldviews, similar to systemic practice, have relationality at their centre and can guide the way to a more relational hope that acknowledges that everything and everyone are connected (BlackDeer 2023). Against individualistic perspectives on hope, a decolonial and Indigenous worldview can frame hope as a relational and communal phenomenon, a hope guided by interconnection and interdependence. Kaethe Weingarten (2000, 399) states that ‘matters of life and death are too hard, too onerous, too painful to “do” alone’, but instead should be a matter for the community. She suggests a parallel of mutually interwoven tasks—for those suffering, the task to resist isolation; for those who are witnessing suffering, to refuse indifference (Weingarten 2007). A relational hope also includes our relationship with nature, and with our planet. Learning from Indigenous worldviews we can include the more-than-human in our understanding of hope (Falco et al. 2025), gaining not only a sense of belonging but also responsibility and accountability in our reciprocal relationship with and connection to the Earth that can fuel and sustain hope (BlackDeer 2023). Thus, hope can be held, given and received in a mutual and reciprocal way (Schrank et al. 2011). On the way to hope, there is a need to deeply invest in relationships, to build trust, to foster belonging and mutual understanding, to be fully human to one another and in our world (see e.g., Cutcliffe 2002; Talseth et al. 2001).

As systemic practitioners, we can cultivate relational hope. We can be carriers of hope for those who consult with us, especially when they are unable to access hope themselves (Reynolds et al. 2021). We can foster ‘surrogate hope’ (Deegan 1988), supporting loved ones to be carriers of hope for those who need it (Herth 1993; Sælør et al. 2014), until they are able to ‘(enter) into hope’ again (Talseth et al. 2001, 255). We can facilitate the hope that can come from peer support and from the ‘surprise, power and inspiration’ (Schrank et al. 2011, 233) people derive from meeting someone else who has been in the same life circumstances and has managed similar challenges. We can use the therapeutic space to explore the hope that can come from a spiritual sense of belonging within and being in nature (Adams et al. 2015; Dudgeon and Walker 2015; Falco et al. 2025).

6 Reasonable Hope

Weingarten's (2010) concept of reasonable hope was first considered in relation to life-threatening and life-limiting illness (Weingarten 2000) and later expanded to consider contexts of social injustice (Weingarten 2007). She argues for a contextualised hope, fully engaged with the realities of what is, claiming that for hope to be actionable it must prepare us for what lies ahead, while making sense of what already exists. Reasonable hope is described as both moderate and sensible, aiming to co-create realistic goals and the pathways towards them, without denying that the future remains open and uncertain. Crucially, unlike hope understood as a noun, reasonable hope cannot be viewed as something quantifiable ‘within’ the individual (Weingarten 2010), but instead is something we do in the world. Rebecca Solnit (2016) in her book Hope in the Dark similarly states that hope is ‘not the belief that everything was, is, or will be fine’ (p. xiii). Solnit positions hope as an invitation to act despite clear evidence of tremendous suffering and destruction.

As systemic practitioners, we can co-construct reasonable hope with those who consult with us. We can bear witness to what is, to the realities of suffering and hardship people experience, engaging fully with the contexts and histories of these hardships (BlackDeer 2023; Paradies 2016). Alongside this, we can richly explore their hopes for their lives, within the context of these experiences (Paljakka and Stone Carlson 2024; White 2007). In their systematic review, Koehn and Cutliffe (2007) found that a key to maintaining hope was helping clients keep hope grounded in the local, everyday and immediate context of their lives. Eaves et al. (2016) also challenge what we can hope for—in the context of chronic illness, they encourage a hope beyond specific medical outcomes or cures. Instead, they describe a ‘transcendent hope’ for a meaningful life. Hope does not need to be an ‘everything will work out fine’ hope, and instead, we can accompany people in constructing reasonable hope that is alongside the realities of their lives and grounded in what they give value to and what gives meaning to their lives.

7 Active Hope

Macy and Johnstone's (2012) concept of active hope frames hope as a subversive force, a ‘moving towards’ despite hardship and uncertainty. Moving away from a neoliberal hope as a passive emotion or optimistic outlook, a decolonised hope can instead be viewed as a deliberate, disciplined practice rooted in action and requiring human effort and an agenda of work (Berry, in Cohn 2014). Hope then is something we do, not something we have or feel. As Rebecca Solnit (2016, 4) states, ‘hope is not a lottery ticket you sit on the sofa and clutch’, but ‘an axe you break down doors with in an emergency’. This hope is not a guarantee of future success, but a source of energy for action in the present. Hayes and Kaba's (2024) assertion that ‘hope is a discipline’ stresses the intentionality of this hope, where hope is created moment by moment through our choices and actions rather than deferred to a distant future (Lovins 2020). Hope, in this sense, becomes a form of resistance, a commitment to justice and a discipline of care.

As systemic practitioners, we hold a responsibility for remaining engaged with active hope. Reynolds et al. (2021, 2) describe this active hope as ‘the hard work of trying to resist despair and resist abandoning people to personal suffering and to collective contexts of injustice’. When we as practitioners feel overwhelmed by the suffering and hardships people bring to our therapy rooms and that we witness in the world, and we feel the intractableness of the problems at hand, we need to hold a self-reflexive awareness of our privilege and responsibility and maintain an ethical commitment to remain engaged and active in response.

8 Non-Binary Hope

Challenging Eurocentric psychological understanding of hope and despair as binary opposites, with hope as the antidote to hopelessness, sadness, rage or uncertainty, a more decolonised hope can instead be seen as ‘rooted in grief and rage, but pointed towards vision and dreams’ (Solnit 2016, xiv). Hopelessness, despair and rage are sending their own messages about what we need to understand and pay attention to in our lives and in our world (Weingarten 2007). Engagement with non-binary hope requires attending fully to these and making room for complexities and contradictions. Rather than waiting for ‘ideal conditions’ where feelings coming from hardship abate, Freire (1970) describes struggle as generating hope ‘as it goes along’.

As narrative and systemic practitioners, we can appreciate that hope and hopelessness do not exist in inverse proportion but rather in dynamic coexistence (Flaskas 2007; Flaskas et al. 2007; Perlesz 1999; Wright and Burkholder 2024). The concept of the constellation of hope and hopelessness (e.g., Flaskas et al. 2007) invites practitioners to witness and hold both states simultaneously, recognising that those consulting with us (and we ourselves) may feel hopeless while still engaging in hopeful actions or maintaining a hopeful sense about ourselves, our relationships, the world and our futures. Practitioners are called to remain open and curious about the balance of hope within families and communities, to build compassionate connections across differing experiences of hope and to avoid defaulting to ‘practices of hope’ that bypass the emotional realities of hopelessness, despair and rage (Paljakka and Stone Carlson 2024; White 2007).

9 Non-Normative Hope

To challenge the neoliberal idea that there is a ‘good’ or ‘right’ way to hope, with achieving the measurable status of ‘high hoper’ as the ultimate goal, it has been argued that we need to make room for hope to instead be complex and idiosyncratic, influenced by each person's individual and family histories, current and historical relationships and wider social contexts (Flaskas 2007; Sælør et al. 2014; Weingarten 2010). Hope often emerges in ‘raw, idiosyncratic, uncertain, pre-goal and ungraspable’ (Schrank et al. 2011, 232) forms, difficult to define or measure, yet deeply meaningful to those experiencing it. Hope can frequently be found where it is least expected and even the smallest experiences of joy and pleasure can awaken hope (Davidson et al. 2001). The experience of hope and how hope is expressed vary significantly between people and contexts, influenced by their particular life circumstances and personal challenges (Sælør et al. 2014; Schrank et al. 2011). Expressions of hope can often be informed by local understandings and hard-won wisdoms held by communities (Adams et al. 2015; Dudgeon and Walker 2015).

Such a non-normative hope requires of us as systemic practitioners to remain attuned to the nuanced and personal ways in which hope is understood and expressed. Ultimately, this invites us to consider hope not as a static attribute, but instead as a dynamic process, as something that could be lost, could recede out of reach, but could also be reawakened at any moment in the most unexpected of ways. It requires us to see someone's relationship with hope in any one moment as ‘unfinished’ and always evolving, and to remain alive, open and curious about what hope looks like and how it is expressed differently for each person.

10 Open-Hearted Hope

Traditionally Western notions of hope can be seen as resolving uncertainty and providing optimism. From this perspective, ongoing uncertainty can banish hope and lead to fear and despair (Koehn and Cutliffe 2007). Solnit (2016, xx) calls this despair ‘premature … a form of impatience and certainty that forecloses possibility’. Here then, the uncertainty of our circumstances provides the very basis for hope—the future is open, uncertain, unpredictable, but therefore influenceable and full of possibility (BlackDeer 2023; Jensen 2001; Hayes and Kaba 2024; Macy and Johnstone 2012; Solnit 2016; Weingarten 2010). Mariame Kaba (Hayes and Kaba 2024) reminds us that implicit in this uncertainty is the knowledge that change is constant and that this constancy offers opportunities to push forwards towards justice. History enables us to affirm this possibility of transformation, even when finding ourselves within unjust systems. Robert Jensen (2001) argues that what he calls a mature critical hope is grounded in historical contingency and complexity. Solnit (2016, xix), drawing on theologian Walter Brueggemann, notes that ‘memory produces hope in the same way that amnesia produces despair’, encouraging us to note significant historical changes over time. Hope can therefore be a disciplined, intentional and radical practice rooted in the very uncertainty and complexity of our circumstances.

For systemic practitioners, this open-hearted hope can be a source of energy for action, grounded in the understanding that we do not know what will happen, and that this very uncertainty creates space for us to act. This hope accommodates doubt and contradiction and embraces the unknown, focusing not on any guaranteed outcome but instead on making sense of the present circumstances and preparing for what awaits in the future through active intention and engagement (Macy and Johnstone 2012). As practitioners, we can be informed and guided by the understanding that every present moment is incomplete, and hope resides in the ‘not yet’, the possibility that something different could emerge if we act (Giroux 2004).

11 Meaning-Making Hope

Traditional linear hope could be understood as our response to the realities of our circumstances, that is, our circumstances could determine whether we will experience hope or despair. However, a systemic social constructionist-informed understanding of hope can instead enable us to understand hope as in itself meaning-making. Schrank et al. (2011) describe hope as having the potential to reconnect and integrate the past, present and future, enabling us to make sense of our experiences in new ways and reclaim a sense of agency. Hope might, for example, be found in transcending time and looking towards the future, imagining a future different from the present (Walsh and Minor-Schork 1997). Hope can also be found beyond a specific outcome, in what is personally meaningful and significant. For example, Bennett et al. (2022) found that young people with advanced cancer redefined hope for themselves by linking it to purpose, legacy and giving back. Importantly, meaning can also be found in hope for others and our wider world. For example, Herth (1993) found that older adults often extended hope towards others, including a ‘world focus’, which expanded hope beyond the self and one's personal circumstances.

Hope as meaning-making opens many opportunities for systemic practitioners. Although we bear witness to personal suffering and hardship, to wrongs and injustices, we can hold a both/and position and also fully bear witness to people's responses to these wrongs and injustices, to exceptions and counter-stories, to possibilities and the hopes people hold for their lives, for others and for the world (Paljakka and Stone Carlson 2024; White 2007). We can locate both memories and hopes for the future in significant places, objects and human and more-than-human others (Falco et al. 2025), for example, special hope objects. This allows for an expansive perspective on hope that can transcend the personal, time, space and context.

12 Conclusion: Doing Hope Together in Troubled Times

In the face of the current polycrisis that brings uncertainty, suffering and systemic injustice, ‘doing hope’ becomes both a necessity and a moral imperative, a way to remain human, connected and alive to the world. However, hope can feel difficult and out of reach. When we look too far ahead trying to envision an unimaginable future where all is different, we can feel disillusioned, paralysed or cynical. If we look at the past and present and see all that has been hurt, damaged or destroyed and that needs to change, we can feel heartbroken, enraged or overwhelmed. Beyond these two options, there lies a hope grounded in the realities of our lives and our times, but that can see the both/and in this, witnessing the stories of struggle, suffering and hardship, and also alongside these the stories, big or small, of care, love, community, connection, joy, change and progress. Hope can be the fuel for action, whereas each action we take can reciprocally fuel our sense of hope (Freire 1994; Morgan et al. 2019). We can do hope together, shouldering up one another's hope, borrowing hope from others when we need it and holding surrogate hope for others ourselves when they are in need. We can expand the terrain of what hope can be, grounded in reality, responsive to suffering and open to possibility, something vibrant and visceral, always unfinished, something we can be creatively and imaginatively alive to. When we do lose hope, maybe we can look at history and trust that the one sure thing is change (Hayes and Kaba 2024) and that hope can always return (Jensen 2001), often in the most surprising and unexpected ways (Davidson et al. 2001).

Hope is not easy; it is ‘muscular’, a choice, a discipline, a refusal to accept given realities as final or fixed (Tippett 2025). Amory Lovins (2020) invites us to make the deliberate decision to add our weight to the side of possibility, even when the outcomes remain so uncertain. Within this, there is a sense of both agency and responsibility—we can make the hopeful choices every day in our own actions that are ‘moving towards’ a preferred world that is kind, just, inclusive and compassionate, even when not being able to image an arrival at this world.