Robert speaks with eloquence as he grounds his research (me-search) in his personal story, a story that has a sobering way of articulating both the academic and the particular dynamic between, hope and despair, his subject of study. Robert has emerged from the depth and is now able to support others as they make a similar journey into their own experiences of the ups of life and also the downs. About the time when many of us were working on how to write and understand basic math, Robert was becoming more and more immersed in the world of alcohol and drugs. Many people struggle to separate themselves from the pull of these addictions, but for Robert, this aspect of his early life has served to provide him with the experiential knowledge that often only within the depths of personal darkness may we come to know the light of hope. After researching these phenomena, Robert does not believe hope to be intellectual, but relational – we “do” hope - meaning that no matter how hopeless we may feel at any time, we can cultivate a deeper relationship to hope and imagine ourselves to brighter and broader life experience.