“Hope is a terribly dangerous thing, for what if that which we so passionately hope for never comes to pass? What if the healing never comes, the relationship is never restored, the dream can’t be revived, and the horror of the inevitable remains horribly inevitable? These things I pondered. And yet, standing in a forest forced silent by the bitter hand of winter I was reminded that spring is never deterred despite how bitter winter’s hand might be. For it is not the ‘hope’ of spring. Rather it is the ‘fact’ of spring. And therefore we must remember that hope is fact despite how bitter the hand of life.”