This is NPR's Life Kit.

I'm Cat Chow.

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to live through this pandemic.

So much is happening in the world, our country right now.

Most of us have seen our daily routines drastically altered.

In this might, in some ways, make our own lives seem stagnant.

How do we form hope? And how do we hold on to it?

How do we keep moving?

I post this to the poet Maggie Smith, whose new book asks just these questions.

I wrote Keep Moving during my darkest, sort of most unsure time.

And then unbeknownst to me, it was published during a year where I think we're all sort of wandering

in the dark feeling along the wall for the light switch.

And needing to draw on those best parts of ourselves,

you know, our resilience and courage in order to get from day one to day two to day three.

And keep moving Smith compiled a series of essays along with a collection of motivational phrases

or notes to self as she's called them.

She says it was her way of trying on hope.

Even though it didn't fit well, like it was scratchy and oversized and I hated it

and I couldn't wait to take it off because I just felt bad.

And sometimes we just kind of want to lauriate and how bad we feel

and it just feels so unnatural to try to feel better and to talk ourselves into feeling better.

But it started to work.

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