007 / SYREETA CHALLINGER
Introducing Hope Heads. A series where we ask brilliant minds three big questions about how hope shows up in their lives, work, and world.
Next up: Syreeta Challinger - storyteller, coach and advocate, who has spent the last decade holding onto hope while supporting her husband Rob through life after a catastrophic brain injury.
In this short interview she speaks about hope as love made visible in the everyday, in the choice to believe there is always a way through. For Syreeta, hope is practical, grounded in the stories we tell and the small steps we take to shape change.
She shares how language can shift how we see the world and how projects like Stories for Life show the power of open, collective storytelling to spark new possibilities for people and planet.
For Syreeta, hope is love put into practice and kept alive through story.
1. What does hope look or feel like to you, in this moment, in this world?
These questions have felt so loaded as right now hope feels weaponised by the media and those that feel hopeless; helpless against the tidal shifts of change upon us. To me, hope is a radical act of love + action. Hope isn’t passive. Hope is believing that there is a better way, deciding to make it true. Believing there is a way through; it starts with every tiny action we choose to take. Hope is something that’s fuelled me daily personally for our immediate world, our day to day, as I support my husband Rob who is ten years on from a catastrophic brain hemorrhage and stroke. I taught him to draw when he couldn’t speak and have helped him learn to talk again amongst other wild roads of brain injury recovery. Life is different, yet we’re living a life on our terms; together. I’ve consistently held tight to the belief that there is a way through, there is another way and it starts with love. Choosing life. Choosing to be hopeful. And that anyone can do anything given half a chance; the possibilities are endless.
2. Where does hope live in your work or your industry, and what could shift if we let it lead?
I work in storytelling and our language, the words we write and speak hold such weight. Hope is the foundation of all my work, where I support individuals or business navigate change, to understand that our story is our strength. The shift feels tangible in my day to day, necessary to present the idea of hope another way. As nothing changes, if nothing changes. When it comes to the writing aspect of my work, its understanding a reader is changed by any text consciously and subconsciously, and we have the power to create new ways of seeing and being. That hope isn’t fuelled notions of romanticism; it's a practical tool to instigate change.
3. What is one idea, project or person that is giving you a glimpse of a more hopeful future?
The collective that created the platform Stories for Life a few years ago caught my attention and held it. We’re so used to open source science and data, yet rarely in communications and branding. They have created a resource site as a gift, a tool and reference, for how to talk about the interconnected crises caused by a flawed economic system that doesn’t prioritise people and the planet, and illustrate how a new economic paradigm can help us through the challenges we face.
Initially convened by the Green Economy Coalition, the Wellbeing Economy Alliance and The SpaceShip Earth, Stories For Life is an open inquiry involving various people, exploring the role and power of stories in helping shape a more beautiful, viable, life-sustaining world.
What could be more hopeful than that? Folk coming together, holding space, actively encouraging a new way in an easy relatable format that evolves. Stories are the very frameworks through which we understand what's possible. By making their resources open source and freely available, they're modeling the kind of generative, collaborative approach that feels and looks like hope.
https://stories.life/
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