In 1997, Sona Mehring created the first CaringBridge website when a close friend endured a life-threatening pregnancy. CaringBridge is now used by over 500,000 people a day, with 44 million unique visitors over the past year. Through CaringBridge, Mehring has witnessed thousands of stories of hope and connection among people struggling with stroke, cancer, and other life-changing conditions. HOPE CONQUERS ALL shares some of its most touching stories. HOPE CONQUERS ALL will contain stories from people of all ages and backgrounds. The adversities they face vary greatly, from children with cancer, to adults requiring life-saving transplants, to victims of horrific accidents, but their stories are unified-hope does conquer all. And CaringBridge is a place where hope grows. It's a site that helps people reach out and stay in touch through moments of great need. It inspires them and instills hope; it helps foster and encourage much-needed emotional connection. These intimate personal stories, which reveal the underlying spiritual presence that connects us all, will encourage people to create channels of love and support in their own lives.

'I often get asked about leadership in football, but in "real life" I can think of no greater example of what a leader is than Seán's wife, Martina. I have followed what she has done for her husband and her family and it has humbled me.' Jürgen Klopp, from the foreword. Life as we know it can change in an instant, in the blink of an eye, and it did for Martina Cox and her family in 2018. On an ordinary day in April that year, Seán Cox travelled to Anfield to watch his beloved Liverpool FC play. But he never made it to the match. A vicious, unprovoked attack left him with a severe brain injury, unable to walk or talk. Here, Martina tells their remarkable story. It is a story of inner strength and determination, of dedication and commitment. By not taking no for an answer, and with the help of their family, their community, the Liverpool spirit and tens of thousands of people across the world who were touched by Seán's story, they have achieved what was thought impossible. With Hope in Your Heart brings Seán's story up to the present day. At its heart, this is a love story – the kind of love that conquers all.

In March 2020, as a pandemic began to ravage our world, writer and professor B. J. Hollars started a collaborative writing project to bridge the emotional challenges created by our physical distancing. Drawing upon Emily Dickinson’s famous poem “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers,” Hollars called on Wisconsinites to reflect on their own glimpses of hope in the era of COVID-19. The call resulted in an avalanche of submissions, each reflecting on hope’s ability to persist and flourish, even in the darkest times. As the one hundred essays and poems gathered here demonstrate, hope comes in many forms: a dad dance, a birth plan, an unblemished banana, a visit from a neighborhood dog, the revival of an old tradition, empathy. The contributors are racially, geographically, and culturally diverse, representing a rough cross section of Wisconsin voices, from truck driver to poet laureate, from middle school student to octogenarian, from small business owner to seasoned writer. The result is a book-length exploration of the depth and range of hope experienced in times of crisis, as well as an important record of what Wisconsinites were facing and feeling through these historic times.

“Using her deep understanding of self-psychological theory and her own extensive clinical experience, Karen Krett offers us a scholarly yet down-to-earth examination of hope. For too long, hope has been promoted as an unmitigated virtue without any consideration of its dark side. Yet as Krett shows through revealing clinical examples, hope may also impede development and contribute to psychological suffering. Her book serves as a wonderful guide from hope’s dark side to the light.” Doris Brothers, Ph.D., author of Toward a Psychology of Uncertainty: Trauma-Centered Psychoanalysis and Falling Backward: An Exploration of Trust and Self-Experience. Hope saturates the cultural air we breathe: in movies, songs, advertising, political slogans and self-help books. Now, for the first time, Karen Krett, LCSW, is putting “hope” on the therapist’s couch. Krett examines the duality of hope. In childhood, hope can be the emotional glue that keeps us from falling apart, from losing the thread of life. In adulthood, unconscious patterns of hoping for what can never be often interfere with our ability to make good choices in love and work. It may seem as if giving up any hope would mean the end of us, but Krett offers a refreshingly different perspective: by breaking the hold of the dark side of hope, we can become free to direct ourselves toward hopes which can be realized.

These are spiritual messages of hope for our despairing world.

Only the worthy merit abuse. The higher you go, the lower you reach. Atheists and theists are bedfellows, for they both presume to know. An aphorism is a brief expression of a truth or sentiment, and while volumes have been written on life and death, love and loss, pain and pleasure, and right and wrong, sometimes it is a simple aphorism that can best capture the truth and express a point of view, enriching the old and bringing something of the new. In Aphorisms: Brief Bursts of Truth, author Donald Patrick Redheffer takes his love of philosophy and poetry and probes the human condition in pursuit of truth wherever it lies. With over four thousand succinct, concise bursts of truthcategorized by topic from absolutes, adversity, anticipation, and authority to walking, weather, why, and wisdomeach aphorism provides a truth that is brief and to the point, never allowing belief or desire to change the focus. Explore within these simple marriages of thought and language a provocative, sometimes profound, and always incomplete reflection of truthfor fiction surrounds truth, whereas aphorisms capture its essence. My writings come from a place Enriched by heart and mind, Where one stares into empty space For hours at a time, Pursuing the sublime.