The Hope Narratives

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The Hope Narratives

Hope isn’t believing everything will be okay, it’s believing that you can do something to make it better.

The Hope Narratives is a tangible therapeutic tool that allows loved ones to sit down in the comfort and privacy of their own home and explore what it means to exist in a space where they’re constantly oscillating between hopefulness and hopelessness.

Users read through the deck of Hard Truths, then the Coping, and then the Hope cards and place those that resonate down to build a narrative that verbalises where they’re at in that moment.

They can be also used as a prompt in a traditional counselling setting, and police, psychologists and various social services have been known to use the cards to help them in their work with families – the insights are invaluable.

The Hope Narratives is a set of beautiful, thoughtfully designed cards that validate and articulate complex thoughts and feelings. The cards bridge communication gaps between family members, friends, colleagues and mental health care professionals by putting words to indescribable feelings. 

How to build your hope narrative

As per the graphic on the box, each hope narrative consists of two hard truth cards, a coping card and a hope card. 

  1. Find a quiet, comfortable space and a clear surface. 
  2. Select two ‘hard truth’ cards that resonate with you and connect them with (an internal) ‘and’.
  3. Choose a ‘coping’ card that describes a coping method you identify with. 
  4. Select a ‘hope’ card that describes a way forward that feels right for you. 
  5. Arrange the cards in order: hard truth-hard truth-coping-hope. 

The words and colours are designed to connect from left to right. They also create a stepped shape symbolising your journey — movement, progress or evolution — when the designs on the cards are connected. This is just a guide. You might use one hard truth, or three, instead of two. You might decide to simply read the cards, taking something of value from each of them, on their own terms. Any approach you choose is valid. 

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The Hope Narratives

A set of beautiful, thoughtfully designed cards that validate and articulate complex thoughts and feelings. Endorsed by Emeritus Professor Pauline Boss, who pioneered ambiguous loss, The Hope Narratives won two Good Design Awards (Social Impact and Communication Design) and have been translated into four languages.

Our work

The Hope Narratives – Case Study

In 2022, we invited families who’ve lived with ambiguous loss for up to 45 years, to share the thoughts they struggle with, the ways in which they cope and their ideas of hope.