Dear SheHopes...

Dear SheHopes,

I can’t believe you are almost four years old. People ask me all the time how SheHopes began. I have to smile because you are so much more than I ever could have dreamed, even though you were never the plan I had for my life.

After going through the pain of my first marriage falling apart and becoming a single mother to my three little boys eleven years ago, I was lucky enough to meet someone who helped me heal in the very best way possible. When we married, we knew that we wanted to expand our little family one more time. We wanted a baby girl.

The idea of SheHopes began through the stories friends had told me about what life was like for women and girls in India and Kenya - before I had even visited each country. It was through traveling to Southern India and East Africa, sitting with women and girls, and listening to their personal stories that SheHopes was born. I met women who had to make the heartbreaking decision of which child to sell to provide for the rest of the family. A mother in India handed me her beautiful baby girl and asked me to take her home with me - to give her a better life. I couldn’t un-hear their stories. I couldn’t unsee the fear and hopelessness in their eyes. I had to give that precious baby girl back - Now what was I going to do about it?

When we found out that I would most likely never again be able to become pregnant, I was crushed. I went through a full year of mourning the death of all of those hopes and dreams as I worked on SheHopes from my kitchen table. I was angry at God. I felt betrayed by my own body. I felt sick to my stomach from still grieving the loss of the life that I had envisioned for myself and my family - even as I got out of the car on my second trip to Kenya, and walked to the grassy area behind the secondary school we were visiting and saw 700 beautiful teenage girls waiting for me to teach them self-defense. It was during that class that I felt an impression on my heart as I looked into the eyes of the students who were learning how to escape from danger - These are your girls.

During that trip to Kenya we taught over 1,200 women and girls how to protect themselves through self-defense and began the work of providing girls sanitary supplies so they could stay in school.

When we arrived at the orphanage where we work in India, I also felt the same impression on my heart as I was surrounded by the hugs and kisses of the precious little girls greeting our return - These are your girls.

My heart gradually felt better, As the grief lifted, the excitement for the future of SheHopes - my new “baby” - grew. I cared for SheHopes, worked tirelessly around the clock, and watched it grow. I traveled to India and Kenya four times each, began work in Rwanda by visiting twice, and was planning the next trips for 2020. More job training! More self-defense classes! More girls staying in school and lives being changed! We weren’t just stopping the wheel of oppression - we were breaking it!

Then the most unexpected thing happened in January. I was pregnant.

I burst into tears of joy as I told my husband. I couldn’t believe it as I cradled the area where our tiny little Miracle was growing. In that moment everything changed. We told our boys - and they were ecstatic. We told our extended families. I messaged the SheHopes Board and warned them that I probably wouldn’t be going on trips this year, and began working on what a year without trips would look like. We bought the baby a tiny pair of shoes. We announced it on Facebook. Everything had changed. The hopes and dreams we’d had for our little family for so long really were coming true.

And then the cramping started. Then the spotting. I curled up in bed terrified, sobbing, and begging the baby to stay. Please stay, Baby. We love you so much. We want you so much. Please stay.

Then the contractions and bleeding began.

As I was miscarrying I sang to the baby the same song I used to sing to each of our boys from the very beginning - You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray. You’ll never know, Dear, how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away.

I was completely gutted. I remember wondering if I would ever laugh again. It has taken me weeks to even begin to feel a little like myself again, and even now I can only describe it as having bad moments and good moments, and the good moments are finally starting to outweigh the bad. Once again, the feelings of anger, betrayal, and loss are very real.

In the four years that you have existed, I have never spent that much time away from working on you. I took time off to rest, recover, and letting my heart begin to heal. I met with our SheHopes Board. They are an amazing group of women who recognize that while SheHopes may be my “baby”, they are the Aunties and Godmothers who will love you and help you grow into so much more than we could possibly dream. We made plans for 2020, we talked about our dreams for you in the future, and I am back to planning our trips for this year - and that work is slowly bringing me back to myself.

I can’t shake something that I heard recently. HOPE is never free. Hope always costs something. Sometimes it costs $5 to give a girl in Kenya enough washable sanitary supplies so she can stay in school for an entire year. Sometimes it costs $118 for a cast iron sewing machine so a single mother in India can learn a job skill and provide financially for her children. Sometimes it costs $2,500 for a trip around the world to show schoolteachers how to teach self-defense to the girls in their classrooms.

And sometimes, my dear SheHopes, the cost of hope is letting go of the hopes and dreams you had for your life - so you can crawl through the darkness toward the tiny light of a new hope that is far beyond what you could have ever imagined.

That is what you have done and continue to do for me, and I promise to help you do the same.

As always - Here’s to HOPE…

~ Ginger Lobdell, Founder & Storyteller