It Smells Like Hope
Adia R. Louden, MPH (she/her), is a Ph.D. candidate, writer, and storyteller whose work centers Black life, Black womanhood, and the health and well-being of Black families and communities. She is pursuing her doctorate in Maternal and Child Health at the Gillings School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with research interests including community and neighborhood violence, racial equity, and Black adolescent health. Grounded in the belief that Black communities have never lacked talent—only resources—Adia uses both data and narrative to advocate for safe environments, self-defined freedom, and collective well-being. She also participated in BLK South’s Durham-based Soulwork fall cohort, a six-week, community-led space rooted in honest conversation, spiritual practice, and collective wisdom shaped by Black theological voices. Learn More
There are both mini and macro particles and revolutions in the air at this moment, begging for our attention. Calling out for detection.
Is it spiritual warfare? Is it fascism?
Is it coffee? Is it transition?
The new year has started and swung multiple times at the lot of us, with a lot of these things. Asking us to inhale and make sense of what it is we’re breathing. As I write this, managing deep breaths and anxiety, I’ve sat with the previous posts on this sense. Trying to reflect and write here what I’ve been “smelling”.
As the world around me is constantly changing and traveling up my nose and nervous system, I am triggered with something I was told quite a bit as a young girl, but am “today years old” in understanding more.
Growing up, the church would sing it was “...built on nothing less..than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.”
In 2006, India.Arie went on to sing about its presence.
When we smell something, millions of olfactory receptors bind to the odor, signaling to us familiarity, memory, and emotions. I’ve caught my cues on terror, history, change, and uncertainty. But, I’ve sniffed something else, too. Something I’ve only smelled during other hard times I thought would humble me.
I thought the only scent present now in the midst of social, political, and economic upheaval was grief, despair, and catastrophe. But as I’ve taken more time to scope, I realize now…
It smells like hope.
Hope is defined as this feeling of expectation. A desire for a certain thing to happen. And, as a friend once told me, an active effort. Something you have to consciously choose in the midst of precarity, struggle, and fear. Something those before us chose throughout forced kidnapping, slavery, and sharecropping. Something we need and we smell…to keep going.
What does hope smell like to you?
As I sit with the scent of hope, I sniff out transparency. Stillness. Old things falling away. Empires dying. Blessings coming alive. New beginnings.
It’s time to begin again.
It’s time to hope.
Reflection Questions:
What have I been hoping for lately?
How can I build a world with more hope? How can I proceed to make hope an active effort?
What does a world with hope smell like?
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