BLUEBERRY OATMEAL BREAKFAST SKILLET COOKIE (VEGAN).

This post was created in partnership with Le Creuset. All opinions are my own.

So I’m reading this book about hope. It’s been a cynical kind of a year thus far (blueberry oatmeal breakfast skillet cookies aside), and the year that preceded it didn’t do much to help 2017’s cause. But I’m reading this book about hope because if I can’t feel that there is even a glimmer of something adjacent to hope out there, well, then, I won’t have any words left at all. I first heard about this book during a late night car ride home. As I was doing my three-point-turn parking rigamarole, heart hung heavy with the weight of one terrible news byte after another, I heard an NPR interview with a writer named Rebecca Solnit.

Solnit was waxing poetic about big picture, about why hope might now be considered practical. I was intrigued. I’ve long admired Solnit’s writing—she speaks about people and geographies and cultures with as much heart as insight, without losing any sense of rigor. That’s my kind of writing. Solnit was there to share words from her book Hope in the Dark, which was written in the wake of 9/11, published in 2004, and reprinted twice since then. From a place of critical empowerment, Solnit examines what it means to be hopeful in times of utter despair.

I was dubious. I’m wary of buzzy, new-agey words like “hope” and “blessing”, which often smack of spiritual bypassing (a kind of psychospiritual sublimation, wherein unfortunate events and decisions are rationalized away by some claim to divine order). My early twenties were full of spiritual bypassing, and I came away from those years feeling stifled, the truths I had to tell muzzled deep within me. I’m a big fan of saying it like it is, and while I don’t always achieve that goal, these days I do my best. But for Solnit, ok—I’d let her talk to me about hope in the darkness.

I started the book a few nights ago, hot on the trail of finishing Marina Abramović’s memoir Walk Through Walls—which is a story for another week. I was eager for an equally fulfilling work of nonfiction, as I find reading true stories, stories that offer some modicum of, yes, hope, to be deeply restorative. So I leapt headfirst into Solnit’s world.

I’m still at the start, but one of my favorite passages locates hope in the spectrum of optimism and pessimism. Solnit writes:

“Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It’s the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand. We may not, in fact, know them afterward either, but they matter all the same, and history is full of people whose influence was most powerful after they were gone.”

What sticks with me most is this: “Hope is … the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who what what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand.”

In other words: Action is always necessary. We never have the luxury of passivity. Never.

As I struggle to find the right avenues for resistance, for the daily actions that make me feel there is meaning and purpose amongst the madness (did that *really* happen at the Oscars on Sunday?! is there anything we can actually get right?), this call to action feels reassuring. Solnit goes on to contextualize how small but mighty movements throughout history have created underground webs of potentiation, which might erupt into spontaneous uprisings and effectual changes at any time. And while the big milestones are important, it’s the underlying current of ongoing action and change that really matters.

I am breathing easier reading this book, understanding a bit more of my place in time and history and country right now.

I’m also breathing easier knowing that, come the weekend, there will be ample opportunity to bake up this incredibly easy, vegan oatmeal breakfast skillet cookie, packed with almond butter, maple syrup, coconut oil, and fresh blueberries. What’s it like? It’s like an oatmeal cookie and a scone met at a vegan bar that serves oil pulling shots and had a baby. The best part (aside from digging in to breakfast with the same passion you’d devour an ooey, gooey chocolate chip cookie)? Baking it in Le Creuset’s new Toughened Nonstick 4-quart braiser pan, which is free of harmful compounds like PFOA and will never chip or flake.

I love the pan so much that I had to get one to give away to you, too, along with a small 8″ Toughened Nonstick fry pan—ideal for frying up morning-time eggs or quick grilled cheese sandwiches.

You all know how meticulous I am about eating foods and using products that don’t have any weird chemicals in them, which is exactly why I feel so good about using Le Creuset’s new Toughened Nonstick line. It’s the only nonstick I own. And I can’t wait to give some to you!

The 2-piece giveaway is worth $290 USD and is open to US residents only. Enter using Rafflecopter below, and leaving a comment telling me what you’d make in your pans—and also how you’re finding hope in the dark these days.

a Rafflecopter giveaway