Hope is a Verb: Staying Human in Uncertain Times

In this solo episode of Grief and Light, Nina Rodriguez reflects on the ambient grief many of us are carrying in response to global, political, and collective uncertainty.

After taking a pause to tend to her own nervous system and grief, Nina shares a reflection rooted in presence rather than answers, exploring what it means to keep creating, caring, and staying human when the world feels overwhelming and dissonant.

Drawing on grief literacy, nervous system awareness, and the story behind Claude Monet’s Water Lilies, this episode gently reframes hope not as a feeling, but as an action, something we practice in small, everyday ways, even when clarity feels out of reach.

This is an episode for anyone feeling frozen, disconnected, or unsure how to move forward without turning away from reality.

Referenced in This Episode:

• Essay: The Grief of Uncertainty in Unprecedented Times
• Podcast Episode

This Episode Explores

• Ambient and collective grief in times of global and political disruption
• Nervous system overwhelm, freeze responses, and grief fatigue
• The dissonance of daily life continuing during crisis
• Hope as a verb rather than something we wait for
• Art, creation, and meaning-making during times of war and uncertainty
• Claude Monet’s Water Lilies as a historical response to personal and collective trauma
• Staying engaged without becoming consumed
• Choosing presence, care, and humanity in small, ordinary ways

This Episode Is For

• Those feeling overwhelmed by world events and political realities
• Grievers navigating uncertainty without clear answers
• Creators questioning the role of art, work, or expression during crisis
• Anyone feeling disconnected, frozen, or unsure how to “show up” right now
• Listeners seeking grief-literate reflection rather than solutions
• Grieving hearts seeking messages of hope

Connect with Nina Rodriguez:

• griefandlight.com
• @griefandlight
• Resting Grief Face on Substack

Chapters

• 0:00 Preview & Intro Song
• 0:37 Navigating Grief in Uncertain Times
• 1:21 Naming the ambient grief and dissonance
• 5:37 Reframing "unprecendented"
• 7:07 Lessons on Hope and Resilience from Monet's Water Lilies
• 9:41 Co-Creating a Hopeful Future

Transcript

Hope is a verb and one of its love languages is art. This runs parallel to another belief I hold that more often than not, we have the potential to be someone's answered prayer. Our lives, our choices, our kindness, our care can become the very thing another person needs to survive and theirs can become ours. You just lost your loved one. Now what?

Welcome to the Grief in Life podcast where we explore this new reality through grief-colored lenses. Openly, authentically, I'm your host, Nina Rodriguez. Let's get started. Welcome back to Grief in Lights. And if you're new here, welcome. My name is Nina Rodriguez and I am your host. Today's episode is a solo episode. And I have been on a bit of a pause lately, tending to my own grief around what's happening in the world, globally, locally, politically, all the things.

And during that time, I kept returning to writing, looking for something meaningful to share with you. So today's episode is a reflection about grief, creation, and the choice to stay human in uncertain times. How do we get through these times that we are living in? So if you're listening and you feel the weight of it all, I hope this episode holds you gently.

Hope is a verb. Grief right now is not just personal, it's ambient, it's collective. It lives in the background noise of our days, humming beneath the circling back emails, the errands beneath the conversations that make us wonder if we are the only ones feeling the sense of dissonance. This grief has settled like humidity in the air. It's the kind of grief shaped by world events and political realities and the firehose of breaking headlines.

by the visible and invisible violence enacted against those who are most vulnerable in our society and communities. By the sense that something fundamental is unraveling while we're still expected to participate in our daily life as if everything is fine, just fine as the world seemingly burns. For many of us, that grief feels as though it has reached a crescendo, a tipping scale of our nervous systems from overwhelmed to collective, freeze, fawn, or shut down.

There are even memes on social media about the 2026 coming in with a heavy dose of sleepy energy because we're seemingly all yawning and exhausted. This lack of energy likely being a symptom of a nervous system needing repair, tending, and rest. And yet, we are asked to continue showing up at work, trimming fiscal budgets, making those sales calls and small talk, and planning for a future that keeps shifting. Somehow.

we're expected to continue making decisions as if the fabric of our existence isn't unraveling before our eyes. That dissonance, the gap between what is happening inside of us and what is expected of us, can be deeply destabilizing. Internally, for many of us, alarm bells are ringing, yet externally the world seems to carry on just fine, making many of us wonder, do others not see what is happening?

Am I overreacting? Do they not care? And are we supposed to pretend things like this are normal until we just can't anymore? As a grief guide and podcasters whose work centers grief, I have struggled to find my words for much of the last month. This is not unfamiliar territory, but it has felt heavier than usual. That struggle was further complicated by what I often refer to as holiday grief hangover.

where an emotional and physiological crash tends to follow the holidays. So it's that slump after a big milestone or holiday. And in this case, it's the end of one year, beginning of another. In the best of circumstances, that period can be tender and disorienting. And this year, it felt especially loud to the point that I have been unable to pick up my microphone until now and hit the record button. Still.

Beneath the fog and the fatigue, I felt a persistent pull to offer something of value without bypassing the reality that we're living through or to try to silver-line it away. I wrote about this same thing this same time last year and recorded a podcast episode on the grief of uncertainty in unprecedented times. And I will link that in the show notes. And yet here we are again experiencing waves of disconnect and disruption.

perhaps even more intensely, at least for those of us who are paying attention and refusing to look away. Those who are acutely aware of the erosion of safety and dignity and humanity for so many with no clear end in sight. I don't have a single answer to any of this. What I do have and what I can offer is perspective that began to surface after moving through a familiar cycle of disbelief that led to panic and fear,

then to anger, then to disbelief, searching for answers, nervous system regulation, turning off the fire host of information, stepping away from all of this consumption of information, and then tuning back into the mundane rhythms of daily life, practicing presence in small, ordinary ways, a full cycle. And from that place, something begins to emerge.

We often describe moments like the ones we're living through as unprecedented times, and in many ways they are. But what if it's more helpful to reframe that language? What if these are unprecedented times for us? Meaning, humanity has faced versions of this before. Different in form, but similar in essence. These are periods of immense upheaval, moral rupture, and collective fear.

uncertainty about what comes next and somehow humanity has survived. In some cases, even found ways to create meaning, beauty, and progress amidst chaos. So if we zoom out far enough, and I'm envisioning like looking at the earth from out of space, what becomes visible is not that this is a never before seen reality, but that this is part of a long human lineage of disruption and response.

I say all of this with a very healthy dose of nuance, of course. This is not a denial or bypassing of what is happening right now. It's actually quite the opposite. It's a way of pulling on a thread that runs through the past, present, and will eventually run through the future so we can reclaim our sense of agency as we move forward. The same way we carry grief with us, moving with it rather than past it,

We can also move with the wisdom of those who came before us. I know this can sound abstract, so let me offer a concrete example. About two years ago, I traveled to Paris and visited one of the museums that I'm not going to try to pronounce, but it's the one that houses Claude Monet's Water Lilies. Standing inside of the oval rooms was in and of itself a heart-opening experience. It was amazing. But what stayed with me the most was the story behind these paintings. During World War I,

Monet struggled deeply with the act of creating art while unimaginable suffering unfolded around him. In a letter from 1914 written while he was working on the water lilies in his home in Giverny, he expressed a profound sense of guilt and shame and I quote, Yesterday I resumed work. It is the best way to avoid thinking of these sad times. All the time I feel ashamed to think about my little researches into form and color.

while so many people are suffering and dying.

Monet was not removed from the war's impact. His family was directly affected. His younger son Michael was called up for service in 1915 and his stepson Jean-Pierre also served in the French army. His eldest son Jean died in 1914. Monet remained in Giverny hearing the distant gunfire from nearby battlefields while members of his household were evacuated or sent to serve.

Out of that grief and uncertainty, Monet painted not only the water lilies, but also the Weeping Willow series, which was a tribute to the fallen soldiers. Eventually, Monet made a decision. He chose to create a grand series of the water lilies as a gift to France, intended to memorialize the end of the war in 1918. These paintings were meant as a counterpoint to the brutality and destruction.

as a space for peace, contemplation, and beauty in the aftermath of devastation. Today, they live permanently in the museum, housed in rooms designed specifically to hold them. And what stands out to me the most is not just the art itself, but the deeply relatable human experience behind it. Like many of us, Monet did not know what to do in uncertain times. Like many of us, he felt guilt, confusion, fear, and still he chose to paint.

He chose art, he chose the water lilies, he chose hope. Remembering this brought me back to a phrase that I return to often. Hope is a verb and one of its love languages is art. This runs parallel to another belief I hold that more often than not, we have the potential to be someone's answered prayer. Our lives, our choices, our kindness, our care.

can become the very thing another person needs to survive, and theirs can become ours. We tend to imagine solutions as singular sweeping moments of divine intervention, a final turning point, a one-and-done solution. But, so long as we are human, we will be subject to both the beauty and the limitation of the human condition. By nature and divine design, we will always encounter hardship, disruption,

grief, joy, hope, love, and moments that feel miraculous. Our task is to learn to thrive in the end of life. Even if the world were to somehow arrive at a perfect equilibrium, disruption would eventually follow. Change moves like a pendulum. Order, chaos, new order. Or as Hegel's dialectic says, thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

To be clear, our North Star should always be fostering the better parts of our humanity, including sovereignty, freedom, and justice for all. That commitment must remain unwavering. And we also need to get better at how we relate to disruption itself. When we don't, the worst of humanity tends to take root. It is a paradox. To move towards peace and justice, we must remain vigilant.

engaged and participatory. We cannot opt out of our communities even when it feels unbearable. A few days ago, I shared Monet's story as a reel on social media alongside videos that I had taken of the water lilies. That post today has nearly reached one million people. And I don't share that as any type of vanity metric, but as evidence that that message is resonating with people.

How many people needed to feel seen, understood, and perhaps given quiet permission to keep creating? If you look at that post and even take a moment to look at the comments, they are so touching and full of hope. Maybe our existence in this moment is not just about surviving some abstract quote-unquote earth school, as certain spiritual frameworks suggest. Maybe we are also here as creators. And what happens next?

What we build, what we protect, what we imagine forward is up to us. You, me, us. The next iteration of our shared humanity will not arrive overnight. It is formed in the smallest moments in choosing hope again and again, in spending less time and energy doom scrolling and panicking and spending more energy on deciding

the right shade of green for your water lily, or outlining your next essay, or making something, anything, that speaks life into this world. Each of those choices creates ripples that extend far beyond what we can see. And today, I choose to speak of hope. I believe that the present and the future that we will co-create asks us to speak life into ourselves and into one another.

to slowly shift our collective discourse from panic and despair towards imagination and intention in shifting towards what we want to create next. It may or may not happen in our lifetime and that's okay. It has always been a long game. May our existence and all of its imperfection be a ripple moving steadily in the direction of love and hope because hope after all has always been a verb.

That's it for today's episode. Be sure to subscribe to the Grief and Light podcast. I'd also love to connect with you and hear your thoughts and your stories. Feel free to share them with me via my Instagram page at griefandlight. Or you can also visit griefandlight.com for more information and updates. Thank you so much for being here, for being you. And always remember, you are not alone.