“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.” – Barbara Kingsolver
Hope Quest
a Personal Hope Book Project
Next IN PERSON Group Begins:
Postponed Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024
Location: TBD (may need to move to online)
Send me an email if you’d like to be notified about the next Virtual or In Person Group!
Hope When It’s Hard
Hope—it is a word that is so common, perhaps even overused. We take it for granted. And yet, sometimes it is fragile and elusive. We can make it through the toughest times if we have or can find hope. If we can’t, it can be very hard to go on.
What do you hold onto when life is hard or times are tough? How do you find hope? Can hope be nurtured? Can we find it in new places when we’ve lost it where we used to find it?
Could you use a little more hope in your life?
In this group you will spend 6 weeks with HOPE--seeking hope, pondering hope, exploring hope, identifying ways you and others in our group have discovered hope. We will explore the terrain where hope is hard to come by, hard to find—when there is loss, when times are uncertain, in various struggles of life. Perhaps many of us are feeling the need for more of it as a pandemic called Covid ‘19, that began in 2019, caused a lot of havoc, still reverberating years later.
We will take this journey together, and yet each will be encouraged to take it in the direction that makes it most personal for you. My desire is that, by the end, our grounding in hope will be just a little more firm, or, from the Barbara Kingsolver quote above, that we would be a little closer to living “right in it.”
Elements of the Group Process
Weekly theme: Each week we will consider a particular aspect of hope or a circumstance in which we try to find hope. These themes will be determined, in part, by the themes that seem to most resonate with the group—including those you select when you first sign up.
Group Learning: We will start each session with opportunity to share brief reflections and thoughts you might have had during the week related to hope and our learning. There will be time at the end of each session to show your page and share a few thoughts (if you want to) regarding your process and what resonated for you.
Quotes: For each session you’ll have one or more quotes to ponder and on which to base your art making. You might create art around an already prepared quote, incorporate in some other way, or simply let the quote and theme for the week inspire you and then send you in your own direction.
Art-making: Each week we will make 1 page (or 2, if you want) of art related to hope. The important thing is that you always use the same size of paper. Other than that—the sky is the limit—you can paint, draw, doodle. Maybe your own creation will be the main art on the page. Maybe the quote will be the main thing, and you will add colour or design around it.
You Make a Book: On the last day we will bind the pages together into a homemade book (I’ll explain when we get there), and you will have this book to look back on and support and encourage you in the future.
A Journey of Finding and Holding onto Hope
What Past Participants Have Said:
“Great class overall! Suzanne is great at what she does and makes the course comfortable for participants.” —Past Group Participant
“Hope is such a generic topic. Hope Quest puts some parameters in place for different ways of thinking about hope, which can be really helpful when hope is missing from your life and you're not sure where to start to get it back.” —Past Group Participant
“Each session left me calmer than when I began, and I felt like I had tackled important conflicts/issues and could relax.” —Past Group Participant
“I especially liked having the topics each week (and getting the list beforehand). Some weeks, I had an idea of where I was going beforehand and other weeks, I needed the discussion / quotes at the beginning of the session to help spark ideas.” —Past Group Participant
“Art-making kept my attention on topics and comments.” —Past Group Participant
“Art is the highest form of hope”
—Gerhard Richter.”
How to prepare for this group
Plan to attend most of the sessions, especially the first and last one.
Personal reflection and noticing—think about where you’re needing more hope, notice how and when it shows up for you.
Art Supplies—Not needed. All materials will be provided for this IN PERSON group, so you don’t need to bring anything. However you may have some personal items you’d like to bring and add to your book. Some examples:
Quotes & Poems: Do you have some of your own favourite quotes, poems, sayings or song lyrics related to hope.
Images: I will provide some, but you might also find some that speak to you—online, in magazines. Feel free to bring them along.
Details about this Group
Participant Numbers—Min. and Max.: This group will need a minimum of 5 or 6 participants in order to go forward. Number of attendees will determine specific location, which will be sent to you a few days before we begin. If there are not enough participants, we may postpone for a few weeks until it can be filled. (If postponed dates don’t work for you after registering, you can choose to receive a full refund, or apply the payment to the next Hope Quest, or other Resilient You Art Therapy services.)
CONFIDENTIALITY: Attendees must agree to hold in confidence any information they learn about other attendees in this workshop. Names or personal details about their stories or art will not be discussed elsewhere.
Next In Person Hope Quest begins:
Postponed Oct. 15, 2024, 6:30 p.m. MT
Location: TBD (may need to move to online)
Questions? Feel free to Contact me.