Introducing: The Next Day
Hope
…and how that affects our next day
By: Gardenia Spiegel
Hey everyone - this is a new corner for us to make space for what’s next.
Whether it’s stepping into a new role: motherhood, a second-chapter career change, a first job, or ending a chapter: retirement, marriage, empty nesting…We’re all at different stages of our lives, but we intersect at the inevitability of the next day.
Seasons are filled with many storylines, and as we turn pages, this will be a place to believe that we have the fortitude to complete the journey we set out to have - even if we’re different now, or, maybe the journey has changed. Or both.
My name is Gardenia Spiegel.
I am a mother and writer.
Each month. I’ll pick a theme and relate it to what is topically going on in the world, and how it relates to us.
I often get to the next day by reading, so I’ll share a book and an article that connects with our theme, and why it has struck my interest.
This month; let’s look at Hope and how that affects our next day.
The election happened. It’s nearly a month later and I think it’s safe to say that many of us are still recovering.
This voting cycle has revealed many painful truths about America, and her relationship with Black women. I have found myself soul searching, while also coming to terms with some undeniable truths.
I got up the day after the election because I had to take my daughter to school, so pragmatism was a leading factor. I did not feel like the world had ended, but I knew my place in the world, the one I believed that I once occupied, had shifted. The world hadn’t changed, I had. I haven’t quite figured out what that means yet, but I pause a little every day to ask myself the question: Now what?
I am challenging myself to consider what is next, because there will be a next. I think that’s what hope looks like to me.
How do you find Hope
…in the next day?
Consider these words:
Article: For Black Women, ‘America Has Revealed to us Her True Self’
by: Erica L. Green and Maya King of the New York Times
Being a Black woman in America takes Hope. What the next day looks like is different for all of us. We may shift our journeys in retreat sometimes, but we continue to defy the system by simply being here. I find Hope in the reporting of Green and King, two young, Black, female journalists, and their commitment to sharing our stories with truth, eloquence, and fearlessness. They remind me that I am still here. And that I am determined to finish what I started. Read more here.
by: James Baldwin
Nostalgia. This is the first Baldwin book I ever read. The poetic warmth and honesty of this story, of forever being an outsider, has stayed with me. I miss his unapologetic, erudite, fierceness, and his inclination to escape far away from this American landscape. I keep his words close when I need to be brave: “Artists are here to disturb the peace.” ~J.B. Read more here.
I hope this helps get you to the next day. See you next month. ~g
Written by: Gardenia Spiegel, a mother, writer, and creator of Book Nook.
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