The Weight of Hope

There is movement happening.

Not the kind I’m ready to explain yet.
Not the kind I feel safe putting into details or timelines or expectations.

Just… progression.

And I should be excited.

I should be celebrating the possibility that after all these years something might finally change.

But instead, I feel afraid.

Because hope — real hope — is dangerous.

For most of my life, hope has been a currency we learned not to spend too freely.

Hope meant sleepless nights waiting for a phone call that never came.
Hope meant reading legal language over and over trying to convince ourselves this time it sounded different.
Hope meant watching my dad hold his breath through another review, another appeal, another “we’ll get back to you.”

Hope meant picking up the pieces when nothing changed.

You learn to survive by keeping it small.
Controlled.
Manageable.

You don’t let your mind imagine birthdays together.
Or holidays without visiting hours.
Or a normal Tuesday where you don’t check the Department of Corrections website out of habit.

Because imagining those things makes the silence afterward unbearable.

So now that something real might actually be happening…
I don’t know what to do with it.

People ask questions, and I hesitate.

I say I can’t share yet.
I say we’re taking it step by step.
I say nothing definite — because saying more makes it feel fragile.

Hope after decades doesn’t feel like joy — it feels like standing on thin ice.

Every step forward comes with the quiet voice in the back of my head saying:

Don’t believe it yet.
Protect yourself.
You know how this goes.

And then comes the guilt.

The strangest part of all of this is that I almost feel like I’m betraying myself — or even him — by letting hope in.

Because what if I let myself picture it?

What if I imagine him sitting at my kitchen table?
What if I let my son know there’s a real chance Papa could come home?
What if I finally allow my life to rearrange around the idea of freedom?

What if it doesn’t happen?

I don’t just fear disappointment anymore — I fear having to grieve a life that almost existed.

Again.

So I downplay updates when people ask.
I keep my excitement quiet.
I stay cautious even when my heart is racing.

Not because I don’t believe in his innocence.

But because after decades, hope doesn’t feel safe.

Living in this space is exhausting.

You want movement, but movement wakes emotions you’ve kept buried just to survive.
You want progress, but progress forces you to acknowledge how much time has already been lost.
You want justice, but justice suddenly feels close enough to hurt.

Hope is supposed to be healing.

But for families like mine, hope has been the beginning of heartbreak so many times that our bodies don’t recognize it as comfort anymore.

We recognize it as risk.

Still… it keeps sneaking in.

In the way his voice sounds a little lighter on the phone.
In the pauses where neither of us wants to say too much out loud.
In the careful way we talk around the future instead of about it.

I try to push it down, but it keeps showing up anyway.

Maybe hope doesn’t ask permission.
Maybe after long enough, it survives whether we trust it or not.

And maybe the hardest part of all of this isn’t waiting for freedom —

It’s learning how to believe it might actually come.

Please keep my family in your thoughts and prayers as we continue to move forward. Your support truly matters more than I can explain, and we feel it every step of the way.

One day closer.