When life delivers blow after blow, some people crumble. Others find a way to keep standing, even when the ground beneath them feels unstable. Marisa Renee Lee belongs to the latter group. Her story is not one of avoiding pain but of meeting it head-on and still choosing to believe that dawn will come. Through personal tragedy, chronic illness, infertility, and the slow work of rebuilding, she has developed a philosophy that anyone can borrow. Here are five concrete ways she has found hope in darkness, drawn from her own lived experience and the wisdom she shares in her books.
Who Is Marisa Renee Lee?
Marisa Renee Lee is not a self-help guru who dispenses advice from a distance. She is a woman who has walked through some of the hardest experiences a person can face and emerged with her joy intact. Her mother died of breast cancer in 2008. Between 2020 and 2023, she lost a cousin to COVID-19 and another to domestic violence. In 2024, she became one of more than 20 million Americans living with long COVID, a condition that left her struggling to walk around her own house. Alongside all of this, she endured infertility and pregnancy loss.
Rather than let these circumstances define her, Lee leaned into her grief and wrote two books: Grief Is Love: Living With Loss and Waiting for Dawn: Living With Uncertainty. She holds a dual degree from Harvard College, served as a deputy director in the Obama White House, and now runs Beacon Advisors, a social-impact consulting firm. She lives in New York with her husband Matt and their son Bennett, whom they adopted in 2022. Despite the weight of her experiences, she describes herself as a deeply joyful and hopeful person. Her life is a living example that hope in darkness is not naive optimism. It is a deliberate choice made over and over again.
Way #1: Refuse to Let Circumstances Redefine Your Core Identity
The first strategy Lee offers is a radical one. When long COVID left her barely able to move, she refused to accept that version of herself as permanent. She made a conscious decision to separate her temporary condition from her essential self. In her own words, she chose to see her illness as “this is who I am in this moment” rather than “this is who I am forever.”
This distinction matters more than most people realize. When hardship strikes, the mind often collapses the present moment into a permanent future. A person who loses a job starts believing they will never work again. Someone who experiences rejection assumes they are unlovable. Lee’s approach interrupts that cognitive error. She acknowledges the pain of the moment without letting it rewrite her entire identity.
Psychologists call this cognitive defusion, the ability to observe a thought or feeling without becoming fused with it. Lee practices it instinctively. She refuses to let grief, illness, or loss change who she is at her core. This is a skill anyone can develop. The next time you face a setback, try saying to yourself: “This is what I am experiencing right now, but it is not who I am.” That small linguistic shift can create enough distance to let hope in.
How to Apply This in Your Own Life
Start by writing down three words that describe your essential self, words that remain true no matter what happens. Maybe those words are “curious,” “kind,” and “resilient.” When difficulty arrives, return to that list. Remind yourself that your circumstances may change, but your core does not have to. Lee’s example shows that this practice is not denial. It is a deliberate act of self-preservation that makes hope in darkness possible.
Way #2: View Parenthood and Other Long Shots as Acts of Hope
Lee and her husband faced years of infertility. They had no answers, no timeline, and no guarantee that they would ever become parents. Yet they never stopped believing they were meant to be somebody’s mom and dad. She describes the decision to pursue adoption as an inherently hopeful act. It required them to keep moving forward without knowing the outcome.
This principle extends far beyond parenthood. Any long shot, whether starting a business, changing careers, healing a relationship, or recovering from illness, requires a similar leap. The outcome is uncertain. The odds may feel stacked against you. But the act of trying is itself a declaration that the future is not fixed.
Lee’s story offers a concrete example. The call about Bennett came the day after he was born. No paperwork had been signed. Yet she knew in her gut that this was her child. That certainty did not come from external guarantees. It came from an internal decision to trust the process. For anyone waiting for a breakthrough, the lesson is clear: you do not need to see the whole path to take the next step. Hope in darkness often looks like simply refusing to stop moving.
Practical Steps for Embracing Uncertainty
Identify one area of your life where you have been waiting for certainty before acting. It could be a creative project, a relationship, or a health goal. Commit to one small action this week that moves you forward, even if the outcome remains unclear. Lee’s example proves that action can coexist with uncertainty. You do not have to know how the story ends to write the next page.
Way #3: Learn From the Emotional Honesty of Children
One of the most surprising sources of wisdom in Lee’s journey has been her toddler son. She noticed that Bennett does not suppress his feelings. He experiences big emotions, lets them shift quickly, and moves on without shame. Adults, by contrast, tend to freeze their feelings, labeling themselves as “angry people” or “anxious people” rather than seeing emotions as temporary visitors.
Lee realized that she could borrow this fluidity from her son. Instead of resisting sadness or fear, she could let those feelings pass through her without attaching a permanent story to them. This insight is backed by research in affective neuroscience. Emotions have a biological lifespan of about 90 seconds when they are not reinforced by thoughts. Most of the suffering people experience comes not from the emotion itself but from the narrative they build around it.
Watching a child process feelings can teach adults to stop clinging to their pain. The next time you feel overwhelmed, try treating your emotion the way a toddler might. Acknowledge it fully. Let it be big. Then let it shift. You might find that hope in darkness becomes more accessible when you stop trying to control every feeling and simply allow it to move.
An Exercise in Emotional Fluidity
Set a timer for 90 seconds. During that time, allow yourself to feel whatever is present without judging it or trying to change it. When the timer ends, take three deep breaths and ask yourself what you notice. Has the feeling shifted? Has it lessened? Most people find that the intensity drops simply because they stopped fighting it. Lee learned this lesson from a four-year-old, but it works at any age.
Way #4: Write Your Way Through the Fog
In April 2024, Lee was sick with COVID and consumed by fatigue. Her editor suggested that she write about what it felt like to be ill, just to see where the words would take her. Within a couple of days, Lee had produced 10,000 words. That raw outpouring became the foundation of her book Waiting for Dawn.
Writing served multiple purposes for Lee. It gave structure to chaos. It allowed her to externalize her pain rather than carrying it alone inside her body. And it transformed her experience from something that was happening to her into something she could observe and shape. This is not a technique reserved for professional authors. Anyone can use writing to navigate uncertainty.
Research supports the therapeutic value of expressive writing. A landmark study by psychologist James Pennebaker found that people who wrote about their deepest thoughts and feelings for just 15 to 20 minutes a day for three to four days showed measurable improvements in both mental and physical health. The act of putting words to experience helps the brain make sense of混乱 and reduces the emotional intensity of memories.
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How to Start Your Own Practice
You do not need to aim for 10,000 words. Set a timer for ten minutes. Write about whatever is troubling you right now. Do not worry about grammar, spelling, or coherence. The goal is not to produce a polished piece. It is to let the fog clear enough that you can see a single step forward. Lee’s experience shows that hope in darkness often begins with a sentence you did not know you were going to write.
Way #5: Accept Where You Are While Believing You Can Give Enough
Perhaps the most counterintuitive lesson Lee has learned is that hope and acceptance are not opposites. When her energy was at its lowest, she had to stop fighting her limitations. She learned to surrender to her body’s needs and accept help from others. At the same time, she refused to believe that her reduced capacity made her a lesser mother or a lesser person.
This dual stance is difficult to maintain. Many people swing between two extremes: either they resist their circumstances entirely, exhausting themselves in the process, or they give up completely, sinking into despair. Lee found a third path. She accepted where she was without letting that acceptance become resignation. She believed that what she could give her child, even on her worst days, was enough.
This approach has a name in psychological literature: radical acceptance. It was developed by Marsha Linehan as a core component of dialectical behavior therapy. Radical acceptance means acknowledging reality exactly as it is without judging it. It does not mean approving of the situation or giving up on change. It means stopping the fight against what cannot be changed so that energy can be redirected toward what can.
Putting Radical Acceptance Into Practice
Identify one area of your life where you are currently fighting reality. Maybe you are angry that your body is not healing as fast as you want. Maybe you are frustrated that a relationship is not progressing. Take a deep breath and say to yourself: “This is what is happening right now. I do not have to like it, but I can stop fighting it.” Then ask yourself: “What is one small thing I can do from this place of acceptance?” That question is where hope in darkness begins to grow.
Frequently Asked Questions About Hope in Darkness
What does “hope in darkness” really mean?
Hope in darkness does not mean pretending everything is fine. It means choosing to believe that light is possible even when you cannot see it. Marisa Renee Lee describes it as refusing to accept the status quo when you believe something better exists, while also honoring the pain of the present moment. It is a middle ground between denial and despair.
How can I find hope when I feel completely hopeless?
Start small. Hope does not have to be grand or dramatic. It can be as simple as deciding to get out of bed, drink a glass of water, or call one friend. Lee’s example shows that hope is often found in actions rather than feelings. Do the next right thing, even if you do not feel hopeful. The feeling often follows the action.
Can hope and grief coexist?
Yes, and Lee’s entire philosophy rests on this premise. In her book Grief Is Love, she argues that grief is not the opposite of hope. It is a form of love that continues even after loss. You can grieve deeply and still hold space for hope. The two emotions are not enemies. They are companions on the same journey.
What if I try these strategies and still feel stuck?
Feeling stuck is normal, especially after prolonged hardship. Lee herself spent months unable to walk without difficulty. The key is to keep adjusting your approach rather than giving up entirely. If one strategy does not work, try another. If writing feels impossible, try talking to a trusted friend. If acceptance feels too hard, try simply naming your feelings out loud. Progress is rarely linear.
How long does it take to rebuild hope after trauma?
There is no set timeline. Lee’s journey has spanned more than fifteen years, from her mother’s death in 2008 to the publication of her second book in 2024. Some days are easier than others. The goal is not to arrive at a permanent state of hope but to practice returning to it again and again. Each return builds resilience. Over time, the intervals of darkness may shorten, but the possibility of hope never disappears entirely.
Marisa Renee Lee’s life is a testament to the fact that hope in darkness is not a luxury for the lucky. It is a skill that can be learned, practiced, and passed on. Her five strategies, refusing to let circumstances redefine you, taking hopeful action despite uncertainty, learning emotional fluidity from children, writing through confusion, and practicing radical acceptance, form a practical toolkit for anyone navigating hard times. The darkness will come. That is not optional. But choosing hope is a decision you can make, moment by moment, even when the dawn feels far away.
