Changing the Narrative When We Start 'Hope Scrolling'

Dear friends,

As you probably know by now, I'm a serious scroller. Not a doom scroller though. I tend to think of myself as a 'hope scroller'. As I scroll through social media, I'm looking for signs of hope. I'm looking for mensches doing mensch-y stuff. I'm looking for cute kittens. I'm looking for indications of who and how and what we can be. I'm also looking for topics to shout about in my emails to Republican senators and other politicians (be noisy!), but mainly, I'm looking for all the good things surfacing in a tsunami of bad.

Canadian leadership - not quite what we'd hoped for.

I'm not gonna lie. I was really hopeful about our new(ish) prime minister here on the Canadian side of things. For one thing, he isn't the Maple MAGA dude, and that counts for an awful lot. I was also banking on the fact that Prime Minister Carney is smart, funny, experienced in successfully managing financial disasters, and seems to be a pretty decent guy. I was hopeful that he'd stand up to Trump (he might be doing this, in a calculated way). I was hopeful that he'd save us, as a nation, from financial collapse (he may do this yet). I was hopeful that he has what it takes to keep fascism at bay (he seems to be on the right path, but it's early days). And, I was hopeful that he would put his clear understanding of how to fight climate change into policy (not looking likely).

Prime Minister Carney shows up a lot when I'm scrolling these days, and, it seems to me, that, Mr. Carney, like every political leader before him, seems hyper-focussed on extracting whatever Mother Earth has left in her to keep the Canadian economy alive. In his "Build, Baby, Build" approach to Canadian financial independence, he seems determined to add fuel to the raging fires that are burning our country to a crisp, gleefully embracing the very mindset that has led us into this climate mess and poses a very real existential threat to all life on earth. He seems hellbent on supporting the extraction industries at all cost, while only paying lip service to Indigenous rights, and kicking any hopes of environmental protection to the curb. Naturally, he blames it on Trump (who wouldn't?).

Not only was I hopeful about Mark Carney becoming our prime minister, but I actually campaigned locally for our provincial NDP before the election last fall. Once again, we were facing a stark choice between a once-upon-a-time nicely progressive party for the people and an ultra-rightwing party made up of transphobic, racist, conspiracy theorists. The NDP are certainly not perfect, but they have brought in many good social policies, they are fierce supporters of trans rights, and they had quite a few really good candidates (many of whom, I am relieved to say, won their seats). Unfortunately, our NDP premier, David Eby is also happily jumping on the EXTRACT EVERYTHING NOW train in reaction to Trump's threats. Pipelines going in, old growth forests coming down. LNG, mining and all the other planet-killing industries are being met with wild enthusiasm "to save the economy".

Is it a lack of imagination?

Imagine being so lacking in imagination that, when forced into a situation where we urgently need to look at doing things differently, instead, these dudes decide to do things exactly the same way, but their solution is to fast track it all. I mean, Trump has made it clear that he wants to screw us over, and we know that Canada needs to cut economic ties with the US as best we can and find new ways of doing. I'm no economist, but what if we took this opportunity to build a strong, fair, green economy? What if we took this opportunity to transition our economy to one that respects Indigenous rights and the environment and the poor? What if we took this opportunity to move away from the old unsustainable systems that got us into this mess in the first place, and built new systems based on kindness and care and equality for all life on earth? After all, we're Canadians, and we're supposed to be kind, and caring, and believe in equality (or so we tell ourselves).

Imagine!

Imagine if we were a nation that built pipelines that brought clean water to the dozens of Indigenous communities still waiting, instead of dirty oil and gas. Imagine if we were a nation that built a national grid of clean energy, coast to coast to coast. Imagine if we were a nation that built a jobs sector based on forest stewardship. Imagine if we created good paying jobs cleaning up our oceans, coast and coast and coast. Imagine if we were a nation that built enough non-market housing where no Canadian ended up unhoused due to their financial situation. Imagine if we were a nation that built a robust local food network that supported local farmers and food producers all across this vast landscape. Imagine if we were a nation that built green transit networks to connect us to each other, coast to coast to coast. Imagine if we were a nation that invested enough in our socialized health care so it wasn't always in crisis.These things take imagination, but they are not impossible. And, if the leaders lack the imagination to see beyond extracting the bejeezus out of this beautiful country, then it's up to us to imagine harder and better and noisier.

Building the world we want to live in.

While Prime Minister Carney and Premier Eby fill my social media feed with their plans to expand the very industries that are responsible for environmental collapse ('cuz jobs, eh?), I am also seeing so very many examples of humans all across this planet who are intentionally creating the kind of world that I want to live in, and this is what keeps me going. Robert Reich's recent Sunday Thoughts is bursting with evidence that, while we are collectively fighting the fascist tide, we are also creating a better world - a world built on love and justice, care and kindness. Imagine that!

In her book Active Hope, the recently deceased and greatly beloved Joanna Macy talks about the "three stories of our time" - Business as Usual (yeah -how's that working out for us?), The Great Unraveling (yup - sure feels like everything we've taken for granted is being ripped to shreds), and The Great Turning (that's us! - all of us who are actively working to build something better than the Business as Usual model). When you 'hope scroll' you can find endless examples every day of millions of people rejecting the Business as Usual model, recognizing that we are, indeed, in The Great Unraveling, and stepping up to contribute to The Great Turning. There are the millions of us who have been marching, writing, protesting, screaming for peace in Palestine for almost 2 years now, and we're starting to see a shift that definitely would not have happened if we hadn't been demanding it. There are the millions of us fighting the cruelty and corruption of the Trump regime. There are the millions of us demanding an end to the fossil fuel death grip on our shared planet. There are millions of us feeling ready for a kinder, fairer, healthier world and we're all putting the work in to make it happen.

A different demographic doing things differently.

Maybe you've noticed over the past few years a new demographic of young ones in our communities. They're late teens, early twenties. Most are queer. Many are disabled. All are partially or completely unemployed. Maybe it's mental health issues, maybe it's not-quite-diagnosable physical issues, but they feel they are incapable of opting into the (precarious) job market. Maybe it was the early years of the pandemic, or maybe it's the excruciatingly painful state of the world they are inheriting that has upended their mental stability. Maybe they're too exhausted by the world for their bodies to function properly, or maybe their bodies have been adversely affected by the toxins in the environment. Whatever is going on for them, their physical and mental selves are becoming increasingly incapable of participating in the Business as Usual practice of working for someone else to make vast profits while they can barely afford a room in a shared house. I have a great deal of compassion for these kids. And a great deal of hope.

I have recently started to volunteer as a driver for a local organization called the Community Food Support. Pretty much every time I show up to the community centre to pick up the food parcels for delivery, I find myself fighting back tears. Upon arrival at the community centre, my car is immediately swarmed by these queer, disabled youth who are volunteering their time and very limited energy to rescue food from grocery stores, sort it, box it up, and load it into the cars of the volunteer drivers, doing their part to ensure that hungry members of our community are fed. These kids are creating the world we want to live in, and I'm here for it! On the Tuesdays when I volunteer to drive for the Community Food Support, I am reminded that we can have a world based on kindness and care, and we all have a part to play in making this happen and now is the time to be imagining and building and creating this new world, this Great Turning. And it is so damned beautiful, it makes me want to cry.

What the astrologers are saying

My mathematician father would lovingly (?) refer to me as a 'noodle head' whenever I started talking astrology, but that didn't diminish my faith in this way of seeing the world. For the most part, it always seems to add up for me.

Back in November 2024, Pluto went into Aquarius for real, and the astrologers are saying that this is going to last 19 years. It's a time of upheaval, shift, revolution, evolution, and massive transition. It's a time of tearing down what's not working and intentionally, actively building something better. This month, Uranus entered Gemini, and, as you can see from the screenshot above, this is when shit really gets real. Hold onto your hats for this one!

One astrologer who keeps popping up in my feed as I 'hope scroll' is Rob Brezsny I love what Rob has to say about these times from an astrological perspective. It gives me hope. It gives me strength. And, if you're a 'noodle head' like I am, I hope it gives you guidance as we enter this time of The Great Unraveling and find our roles in The Great Turning.

"We're standing at the threshold of unprecedented transformation. The coming years will test everything we think we know about reality, communication, and consciousness itself. The question isn't whether we're ready—the question is whether we're willing to wake up to our higher calling.

We're not just passive observers of this cosmic drama. We're active participants in humanity's next evolutionary leap. Every conversation we have, every idea and feeling we share, every moment of authentic connection we create is adding to the collective field of possibility.

The old world is dying, and the new one is struggling to be born. We're not just watching this process; we're midwives. So we don’t need to wait for permission to be revolutionary. We can shed any belief we might have that someone else is going to save the world.

The cosmos is calling us to be divine disruptors, sacred rebels, walking contradictions who contain multitudes and aren’t afraid to let them all dance together. Welcome to the revolution."

Solidarity forever!

Jessica