At year’s end, I find myself watching the sky the way I watch a lab instrument settling into signal patiently, ready for the truth to appear. On the cover of my upcoming book, Harvesting Hope, a small bird crosses the bright moon. It’s a simple image, but for me it’s a vow: to imagine, to rise, and to heal.
The holidays ask a different kind of science from us. Not equations or assays, but the chemistry of belonging—the way a kind word can change the temperature in a room, the way a small act can cascade into a better outcome for someone you’ll never meet. In the lab, we call that transduction: a signal traveling through a system and becoming something new. In life, I call it HOPE!
Hope isn’t naïve. It’s a discipline. In research, nothing moves unless we name a goal, design a method, and share our data. The same is true of community. This season, I’m thinking about how we publish our care, how we make generosity as visible and measurable as any result. The mentors who respond to a student’s late-night question. The neighbor who shows up with a spare jacket. The colleague who says, “You’ve got this—and I’ve got you!” These are not holiday extras; they are part of the protocol.
I learned early that education can be escape velocity. A single opportunity can lift an entire family’s story; a single encourager can turn a closed door into a bridge. That is why I believe in paying it forward. These gifts could be a precise intervention that changes trajectories you can track over years: a scholarship that becomes a degree, a research internship that becomes a first author credit, a hand raised in a meeting that becomes a better medicine on the shelf.
I also carry the why. My aim is to make hope productive. Set the plot, seed small chances, and tend them—check in, co-sign, make space. Track what matters quietly: who stayed, who advanced, what questions improved. When we treat care as cultivation, the outcomes arrive on their own timetable, and the harvest is enough to share.
So here is my winter wish list, for myself and for anyone who wants to join:
• Turn mentorship into sponsorship. Don’t just advise. Advocate! Put a name forward. Share the credit. Open the door and hold it.
• Measure inclusion like you measure efficacy. If you’re proud of your science, be proud of who it serves. Count it, publish it, improve it.
• Invest in first chances. A stipend, a train ticket, a lab coat in the right size—small inputs, life-size outcomes.
• Practice last-mile thinking. From day one, ask how your work will reach the person farthest from the conference room. Build for her on purpose.
• Keep ethics close. New tools arrive faster than new wisdom. Let care be your control group.
When I return to the cover of my upcoming book, I notice something else: the bird isn’t large, but the moonlight makes it unmistakable. That’s hope’s real trick. It doesn’t always make us bigger; it makes us clearer. The light shows us what to do next.
So if this season feels crowded or thin, if the year has been too much or not enough, here is a gentle experiment you may try:
• Write a note to someone who helped you make it this far.
• Offer one hour to a student who needs a sounding board.
• Set one measurable inclusion goal for your team before the calendar turns.
• Share one resource—an opportunity link, a dataset, a primer—that would have saved you a year.
In a few weeks, the decorations will come down, and the inbox will roar back. But the signal we’ve set in motion will keep traveling through our labs and classrooms, through boardrooms and kitchen tables, through the lives of people we may never meet but care about all the same. That’s the holiday experiment I trust: small acts, repeated, measured, shared. On the longest nights, I look up. A small bird, a bright moon. Imagine. Rise. Heal. And carry hope forward, one deliberate gesture at a time.
Very intresting book dear Angelique. May God continue to bless the Work of your hand. You are a intelligent girl i ever meet i my life!! All the best.