Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

- Emily Dickinson

Some years back, I completed a Professional MA in Coaching Leaders through Transition and Change. Back then, I could never have guessed what the world might look like when our species arrived in the mid-2020s. I had no idea of the transitions we would experience on the journey here and what changes might be being asked of us coaches as a result.

However, the pace and extent of change in the world have been such that many of us have, to some degree, been left reeling. The conversations in some of my Supervision and Reflective Practice groups have certainly reflected this. So, in 2024 and 2025, I donned my explorer’s identity once again and completed a Research project focusing on exploring what Spirituality¹, in its broadest sense, might offer to the world of Leadership Coaching.

And, as part of that research, I came across Mike Perk and Charles Matthews’ excellent book HopePunk².

Subtitling their book ‘A guide for optimists bettering workplaces’, Mike and Charlie say that the HopePunk genre is for people who believe that bettering our organisations, society, humanity, and the planet is the most essential purpose we can have. The term itself comes from a 2017 Tumblr post by author Alexandra Rowland, who declared, ‘The opposite of grimdark is hopepunk. Pass it on.’³

Emerging as a reaction against the bleakness and cynicism of the grimdark gaming subgenre, HopePunk celebrates radical kindness, defiance, and optimism in the face of despair.

I don’t want to expend too much energy in exploring how Grimdark’s bleakness and cynicism might translate from Warhammer 40,000© into a byword for the human world in which we carry out our coaching. Suffice to say, the core elements of its harsh, amoral world, with a focus on conflict and survival, might not be completely unrecognisable to some of our clients as they reflect on their working landscape. It certainly mirrors the language that some of my clients use when they’ve reached a place of feeling psychologically safe enough to give attention and voice to their deepest physical and emotional responses to the world that they inhabit.

And it is in that moment that I, as their coach, may need to whisper: ‘The opposite of grimdark is hopepunk. Pass it on.’ And, as a coach supervisor, it’s a whisper I find myself offering more and more in individual and group conversations. And what truth might that whisper contain?

‘Hope,’ say Matthews and Perk, ‘is the force of will and creativity that can imagine better outcomes against all odds…(Meanwhile) to be Punk is …to exhibit the self-belief to be our full true selves, without fear of failure, being shamed, or feeling isolated.’⁴

It’s a whisper that, in the words of a dear friend of mine, ‘can move molecules.’

The contrapuntal whisper at the heart of Emily Dickinson’s poem re-casts hope not as optimism, force, or strategy, but rather in the form of a connection with felt presence. As a living, relational force that perches itself somewhere ‘in the soul’ and begins to sing a tune that is transformative in its ability to offer new ways of reading ourselves, our relationships and our systemic context.

And for me, in both supervision and in coaching, when we invite our clients into that understanding, we enable them (and indeed ourselves) to uncover a surprisingly powerful developmental lens. A lens that can, in adult developmental terms, expand our meaning-making to a place in which the potential levels of ambiguity, perceived naivety or excessive moral certainty that critics often suggest to be Achilles heels in the HopePunk mindset can be more readily navigated.

Before exploring this any further, let’s briefly talk about counterpoint. In musical composition, it’s a device that allows two melodic lines to move with their own integrity while sounding together, creating a richness neither could achieve alone. Paul Simon’s Graceland, for example, uses counterpoint to stunning effect, particularly in tracks featuring Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Take, for instance, ‘Homeless’, where Simon’s lead line moves in one emotional direction whilst the choral lines move in another; the result is a layered clarity in which distinct voices, each true to themselves, weave into something fuller than any could offer alone.

In coaching or supervision, contrasting perspectives or energies can work together in a similar way. Perhaps one lens offers steadiness whilst another brings provocation; sometimes one softens and another sharpens. When brought together with sensitivity and held side by side, they illuminate one another- counterpoint allows difference to resonate, revealing patterns and possibilities that were previously hidden. In this interplay, clarity can deepen, complexity can become more easily navigated, and a fuller, more truthful picture of the client’s developmental experiences can begin to emerge and take shape.

And so, for me, the contrapuntal resonance between Dickinson’s thing with feathers and HopePunk’s forcefully creative will is a sound that might offer a potentially powerful transformative frame. Offered as an integrated coaching or supervisory perspective, the blend may well offer a fuller field of awareness, which may facilitate our clients to confront reality as they see it, whilst also preparing themselves to step with agency and imagination, toward the reality that they feel might yet become.

And perhaps it is by allowing this resonance to infuse our own coaching or supervisory stance that those of us who offer this work might find new opportunities presenting themselves to us. And in my own practice, I’m exploring four practical ‘contrapuntal weavings’ in which both I and those with whom I work can embody a hope-filled response to the world in which we find ourselves.

1. Hope as an inner orientation | Hope as a chosen stance

Dickinson tells us that the thing with feathers ‘perches in the soul.’ I don’t want to get into some kind of debate around the body and soul dichotomy; theologians have argued about that for centuries. Rather, for me, the point that Emily is making is that hope begins as an inner orientation. A quieting of our interior posture, one often emanating from parts of us that proponents of Internal Family System thinking might call our inner Firefighters and Managers and steadying our capacity to see.

Of course, for HopePunks, once we steady that capacity, it needs to seep into our chosen stance within the world. Hope, they argue, is not naïve or passive. It’s not something that should remain as simply an orientation; it needs to become a deliberate stance that we choose to adopt, even when circumstances give us no reason to do so. As Nikita Mor, writing in the Thought Catalog website⁵, puts it:

There will come a time when you will let yourself give in to a life-changing epiphany, and you will realise that soft is strong. Soft is changeable. Soft is malleable. Soft is adaptable. Soft is natural. Soft is you, the real you, and when you remember to be soft again, you will finally, finally be free.

Soft is strong. And it perches in the soul. Perhaps as supervisors and coaches, we might, as Jung is attributed to having put it, when meeting our clients, human soul to human soul, embody a thing with feathers and hold the space for them to soften. And in softening, emancipate themselves from whatever areas of Grimdark they might currently be experiencing.

2. Hope as a constant accompanying presence | Hope as embodied emotional resilience

Hope, says Emily Dickinson, 'never stops at all.' She sees it as a continuous, wordless tune that makes itself heard above the most cataclysmic foreground noises, but I think that might be a bit harsh. Maybe the thing with feathers simply uses words that we humans don’t understand. Maybe it’s singing with what Van Morrison called the ‘Inarticulate speech of the heart’⁶ - a notion he says that he adapted from a G.B. Shaw comment (uncredited) about:

That idea of communicating with as little articulation as possible, at the same time being emotionally articulate.

Now there’s a competency for coaches and supervisors to ponder. Emotional articulacy, offered to our clients in a way that never stops at all. I’d love to explore that idea with anyone who’s interested.

Meanwhile, over at Hopepunk, we can find for example, Rapelang Rabana saying:

Early on, I started to doubt this thing of living on autopilot…My ability to stay close to uncomfortable questions allowed me to keep questioning and to be a fly on the wall of my own life. I’m living my life, but I can also step out of my feelings and my mind and just look at myself.⁷

A millionaire by the time she was 25, Rabana now co-leads Grindstone Ventures, a female-led African venture capital fund. Born and raised to embody hopeful resilience by parents who themselves were born into poverty yet fought and overcame class structures, she embodies the notion of emotional resilience in her mindful, confident approach to life.

And so perhaps there’s another potential competency for us coaches and supervisors to ponder. An understanding of Hope that’s not simply about positivity but invites our clients to keep questioning in a manner that makes their own lives an object of developmental observation and inquiry.

3. Hope as an intimate relationship | Hope as actively embracing failure.

I love how Dickinson talks in relational terms about hope. There’s such a strong visual portrayal in her words. Hope ‘perches’; think about that for a second. It implies intimacy, conjures images of conversations on high kitchen stools between friends. There’s not a lot of formality in the image.

And hope doesn’t get ‘abashed’. Abashment, according to Google, is an acute, negative emotional response to a perceived threat to one's social image or competence. Seen through the totally subjective lens ground out and polished by the life I’ve lived, it can be a response to a perceived threat to self-worth; negative professional, family or social evaluation; awareness of what I believe to be uncontrollable internal inadequacy, or failure to live up to whatever external standards to which I believe I should be subject.

Hope is an internal companion, inherently human, and one that, once discovered, is instrumental in accompanying and sustaining any of us through whatever beautiful or terrible moments, events and situations that life unfolds

But hope roots itself in intimate relationship, inviting me to approach life differently.

The counterpoint in HopePunk, through the voice of Sahil Lavinga8, articulates the difference like this:

For years, I considered myself a failure. At my lowest point, I had to lay off 75 per cent of my company, including many of my best friends. I had failed.

The owner of Gumroad, a digital platform for artists, musicians, and other creators, continues:

It took me years to realise that I was misguided from the outset. I no longer feel shame in the path I took to get to where I am today – but for a long time I did.

The HopePunk take on failure is the creation of an invitation to embrace, but not to celebrate, and that feels to me like a stance that might, to paraphrase Perk and Matthews:

Enable your client to be more Punk and try new approaches, stances, experiments and so on, without the fear of retribution if they don’t work out.⁹

And so perhaps we are uncovering another potential supervisory or coaching competency on which to ponder. An embodiment, through relationship, of the level of mutuality that allows for shared vulnerability that encourages failure to be embraced in an honest and accepting audit, but not performatively celebrated as an attempt to manipulate our client’s meaning-making.

4. Hope as Non-Transactional Gift | Hope as Ethical Resistance

In Emily’s beautiful framing hope 'never asks a crumb of me.' Not even in the most extreme situations. Rather, it perches and sings without looking for anything at all in return. Hope, she says, is non-transactional. In the world inhabited by ourselves and many of our clients, this is indeed a rare commodity.

And hope is unearned; though it’s not presented by her as an external gift from a supranatural source, but as an internal companion, inherently human, and one that, once discovered, is instrumental in accompanying and sustaining any of us through whatever beautiful or terrible moments, events and situations that life unfolds.

I wonder if this might hint at yet another potential supervisory or coaching competency on which to ponder, that of our representing, or saving a chair for, the notion of living a non-transactionally based life. Of course, we’d need to understand and embody that notion pretty comprehensively ourselves first, and that’s not always an easy thing to do.

In another poem¹⁰, Dickinson calls hope a ‘strange invention’ moving with ‘its unique momentum’, ‘unremitting’ yet ‘never wearing out’. And in doing so, it’s as if she opens a doorway into HopePunk’s contrapuntal sound.

To be Punk is to push back against the oppression born from the need to control and the inequality that this creates. It’s about standing up to and stripping away the complexity, and with that finding the space and freedom to express one’s true self.¹¹

Or, in the language of author and developmental psychologist Robert Kegan, ‘experiencing a self-authoring transition’¹². Kegan views this as a crucial developmental milestone in adulthood, moving from being defined by external expectations to constructing one's own internal values and direction. Perk and Matthews might prefer the term ‘being more Punk’.

And ‘being more Punk’ is all about ethical resistance. Resistance to cynicism. To dehumanisation. And to the Grimdark despair that can find its way into our coaching and supervision conversations more times than we might deem to be usual these days. Maybe ‘being more Punk’ as a supervisor or coach might lead us away from asking our clients to reflect on questions such as 'What outcome will this hope get me?' and towards others such as 'What kind of leader do I choose to be in the face of this?' 'What is the ethical stance I want to embody?'

And maybe in that notion lie the seeds of another potential coaching or supervisory competency on which to ponder.

About the author

Ian Mitchell, through Harthill, offers integrative coaching and supervision rooted in presence, meaning-making, and the active weaving of inner work with whole-context awareness. Alongside his long-time colleague Siân Lumsden and others, he co-facilitates an AC-accredited developmental programme for coaches drawn to the possibility of working in this way.

References

1 For the purposes of my research I have defined ‘Spirituality’ as ‘the place where transcendence meets immanence’ – in whatever sense we might understand and integrate both of those notions.

2 Perk, M & Matthews, C, HopePunk, USA, Creative Commons, 2022.

3 Rowland, A, Sourced from her Tumblr blog Extravagant and Unlikely by Perk & Matthews.

4 Perk (2022) p7.

5 Mor, N, Being Soft Is Not A Weakness, It’s What Makes You Strong, Thought Catalog, March 2019.

6 Morrison, V, Inarticulate Speech of the Heart, Warner Brothers, 1983.

7 Perk, (2022) p48.

8 ibid p109.

9 Ibid p111 (adapted)

10 Dickinson, E, Hope is a strange invention, 1877.

11 Perk, (2022) p94

12 Kegan, R, In Over Our Heads, Harvard University Press, 1995