How to Make a Hope Kit

What are my reasons for living?

This is one of the key questions of suicide prevention. In such moments when the dark becomes too deep to bear and pain becomes suffocating, what we need is not just reasons not to die but even more so, reasons to continue to live. What reasons do I have to continue to choose life, to draw breath into my lungs one more time, in spite of the reality that life may bring difficulty and pain?

A hope kit is tool designed to help answer these questions. It is a collection of items and reminders of why life is valuable and worth living. It serves to remind you of reasons for hope, even when that hope may feel hard to grasp.

In my own experience, this is a tool best made in a preventative capacity, and not in the middle of a mental health crisis. If you or a loved one are in crisis and are having thoughts of suicide, please reach out for help. You can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (800-273-8255) at any time, or call your local mental health crisis line or 911.

How to Make a Hope Kit

Get a box (or any other container) to hold the objects in your hope kit. You can decorate it as much or as little as you’d like. Some people really enjoy turning this into an art project to make the box itself into a thing of beauty.

Gather or create items to place in your box that remind you of hope and of your reasons for living. These may be things that give you hope in this moment or that have brought you hope in the past. Some ideas include:

• Photos of family, friends, and loved ones

• Photos or representative objects of special experiences or moments you have had or hope to have. This may include vacations, places you’d like to travel, activities, particularly fond memories, etc.

• Letters, notes, or printed emails that have been meaningful and encouraging to you

• Bible verses or inspirational quotes

• Printed song lyrics or poetry or even a recording of music you find hopeful or soothing

• Articles, books, or magazines you find meaningful or inspiring

• Jokes that make you laugh

• Art you have created or that someone else has made for you

• Significant objects

• Any other items that will offer you reasons for living

Additional items you may want to include. If you’re in a good and hopeful place as you assemble your hope kit, it may be worthwhile to write a letter to your future self about your reasons for living and ways you’ve found to cope in the past. If you’re working with a therapist and have a crisis or safety plan, it may be valuable to keep a copy in your box. Also, you can include things that would serve as a distraction to suicidal or distressing thoughts, even something as simple as a Sudoku or crossword puzzle, if you enjoy such activities.

Keep your hope kit easily accessible, and look through it when you need a reminder of why your life is precious. Because it is.

A few important notes:

Though it is a helpful tool, a hope kit is not a replacement for professional mental health care. If you or a loved one are struggling with depression or suicidal thoughts, please reach out for professional help using one of the crisis lines above, or through your doctor.

I love the physicality of creating a tangible hope kit, but apps now exist to create one virtually to have on your phone. I’ve not used them personally, but you should give it a try if that would better meet your needs. The two I know of are called “Virtual Hope Box” and “Hope Box.”

Hope Is An Audacious Thing

Over the last several months, I’ve been meditating a lot on the nature of hope. It may seem ironic, really, that a book about depression would spark such thoughts, but as I’ve told and retold the stories of the Companions, I can’t help but circle back to what kept them alive in the dark.

If, in the midst of our suffering, we had nothing to turn to that was bigger than our pain, no reason to expect an end to our agony, no whispers of the possibility of redemption, we would have much reason to be pitied. In a world like the one we live in, where pandemics strike and justice goes unmet, I need hope to be more than wishful thinking or a spiritualized cliché. I need a hope that’s deep and robust enough to withstand the darkness.

I’ve returned often to a story I heard too late to include in the book. Martin Luther, the great Protestant Reformer, struggled with depression on and off throughout his life. One of those seasons came after his teenage daughter, Magdalena, died in his arms. It’s a heartrending scene. As you can imagine, Martin and his wife Katie were devastated. But as the carpenters were nailing the lid on Magdalena’s coffin, Luther yelled, “Hammer away! On doomsday, she’ll rise again!”

Every time, it sends chills down my spine.

When I hear a story like that, I can’t help but think of hope as an audacious thing. It plants itself in the darkness and defiantly insists that, in the end, light will have the last say. Hope stands in the midst of burned out ruins and refuses to accept a blackened shell as the end of the story. And it can stand by a graveside, as the hammers still ring, telling death not to be proud.

Such hope does not remove our pain. (And it does not cure depression.) But it does prove strong enough to sustain us in the midst of the greatest of suffering. Hope gives us the strength to stare the darkness in the face—and still defiantly insist, “This is not the end.”

There will come a day when sorrow and suffering and sin will forever be undone. A dawn will rise where there is no more death, no more tears, no more sickness. There will come a day when our joy will be complete, a day when nothing will take that joy away from us.

Hope reminds us of this Day. Hope sends roots down deep, to keep us tethered when we are battered by life’s storms. Hope gives us the courage to keep breathing, to keep loving, to keep seeking joy where it may be found, even in the valley of the shadow.

My friends, I know so many of you are bearing your own weight of grief. It may be the death of a loved one or an unresolved illness. It may be chronic depression or anxiety. It may be unemployment or disconnection from your loved ones. There is a fair share of suffering.

But yet there is hope. Defiant and audacious hope. And that hope will not disappoint us.