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Every May, when Beltane rolls around, I want to stop and smell the lilacs, wear flowers and ribbons in my hair, and bask in the heady softness of spring. I feel brand new again—like a young girl eager to meet the world. There is something about this season that softens me. The air is fragrant with the smell of growing things. The trees dance, their leaves impossible shades of green. My garden begins to hum with life again. Borage and salvia burst from their seeds, and tender sugar peas climb their trellises. I sip hibiscus and rosehip iced tea as I write and buy flowers simply because they delight me. I don softer colors and softer clothes. I find myself in the kitchen cooking meals inspired by my garden hauls—radishes, turnips, carrots, and tender lettuces, to name a few. The world itself seems to sigh awake after sleeping all winter. And every year, around this time, I find myself thinking deeply about hope. Not the hollow, copy-and-paste optimism peddled by toxic positivity culture. Not the insistence that everything happens for a reason or that pain can simply be overcome through the proper mindset. That kind of forced positivity has always struck me as profoundly disembodied—an attempt to bypass the very real grief, exhaustion, and uncertainty that come with being alive. No…the kind of hope I mean is something older. Stronger. More sacred. I’m talking about the bone-deep belief that life continues to grow in beautiful and unexpected ways. It’s important to know that after periods of loss, stagnation, or unrequited longing, something tender can still bloom. That joy and grief can coexist. That delight remains possible even after heartbreak. That our stories are not over simply because we have suffered or because certain chapters remain unwritten. Perhaps this is one of the reasons I love romance novels so deeply. I just wrapped another semester teaching my historical romance course, and once again I found myself thinking about the importance of happily-ever-afters (HEAs). Romance novels are often dismissed as frivolous and escapist. They face the most terrible critique, at least in academia, of being UNSERIOUS. But I think it’s a mistake to dismiss a genre rooted in joy. In fact, I think romance understands something profoundly important about human survival: we need pleasure, and we need hope. The happily-ever-after is not a denial of suffering or real-life stuff. Romance novels are filled with grief, longing, vulnerability, alienation, and fear. The characters suffer. They lose things. They misunderstand each other. They struggle against social systems that attempt to constrain who they can become and who they are allowed to love. And yet, the genre insists on hope anyway. It insists that connection remains possible. That tenderness survives. That people can evolve. That intimacy and joy are worthy goals. In a world that often feels shaped by cynicism and exhaustion, I think that insistence matters. Lately, I’ve noticed a cultural hunger for stories filled with delight and beauty. People are ecstatic over the announcement of The Devil Wears Prada 2. (It me. I am people.) We swoon over films like You, Me, and Tuscany with its gorgeous landscapes, emotional sincerity, and unapologetic softness. The protagonist in You, Me, and Tuscany, in particular, feels significant because she shows that women of color are allowed to be messy and complicated and yet still capable of loving and being loved. The Devil Wears Prada 2 gives us an Andy who has aged, lived, and gone through things—and yet still manages to be glamorous and capable even as she doesn’t have it all figured out yet (except for a better wardrobe). We crave stories that allow us to imagine lives shaped not only by struggle but by pleasure, beauty, belonging, and joy, now more than ever. I don’t think this is accidental. I think people are tired of irony. Tired of doomscrolling. Tired of narratives that insist survival alone should be enough. Or maybe it’s just me. (It’s definitely not just me.) I want stories that remind me that life can still surprise us. What’s more, I think there is something deeply spiritual about that desire. And why shouldn’t there be? Working on my latest book, The Bruja’s Guide to Tarot: A Contemplative Guide to Conversing with the Cards (more on that soon), has only deepened this feeling for me. Tarot, like romance, is ultimately rooted in possibility. The cards aren’t there to tell us what terrible thing awaits us or forecast a picture-perfect future. Instead, they ask us to explore what transformations are unfolding beneath the surface of our lives right now—what we aren’t seeing in the daily hustle and bustle, but what is no less important than making our way through our perpetual to-do lists. Tarot invites us to explore our lives symbolically, to cultivate a deeper relationship between our inner and outer worlds…and to see what magic comes of it. These different ways of cultivating hope—reading romance, reading the tarot, living with an open mind and an open heart—remind us that life moves in cycles. That endings become beginnings. That growth is often nonlinear and surprising. Even the most difficult tarot cards contain movement. Possibility. Change. That, too, is a kind of hope. And maybe that’s why Beltane feels so emotionally resonant to me every year and why I celebrate it all May long. It is a holiday of becoming. Of sensuality and aliveness. Of stepping fully back into the world after the long inwardness of winter. The flowers bloom shamelessly. The earth insists on beauty again. The world does not apologize for its abundance. Neither should we. For those of us living under systems that profit from our exhaustion, cultivating joy can feel quietly radical. Especially for marginalized people like myself, delight is often treated as frivolous or undeserved. We are taught to focus on survival, productivity, resilience, and endurance. Rarely are we encouraged to pursue pleasure, softness, beauty, or ease. But survival alone is not enough for a meaningful life. We deserve wonder. We deserve rest. We deserve tenderness. We deserve futures worth imagining. That is why I believe HEAs matter. Not because life is perfect, but because hope itself is necessary to living. We need stories that remind us that transformation is possible. We need reminders that our lives can continue unfolding in joyful and surprising directions. And perhaps that is the true magic of Beltane. Not simply ribbons and flower crowns—though I love those things dearly—but the sacred invitation to believe in life again. To trust in becoming. To remain open to delight. So here, at the end of May, I invite you to lean toward softness. Buy the flowers. Read the romance novel. Dance under the moonlight. Wear colors that make you feel alive. Let yourself imagine a future shaped not only by survival, but by joy. After all, hope is sacred work, too.
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