Hope helps us move forward, even when life feels uncertain or heavy.

Making room for humour helps lighten the load without minimizing the hard.

Looking for the funny, the hope-filled, and the joyful changes how we experience our days.

A key cornerstone of wellness is knowing how to have fun and find moments of lightness. The art of cultivating laughter, pleasure, and play, and knowing how to enjoy moments of merriment, is what resilient people do.

Yet when life feels heavy, humour is often one of the first things to disappear. Hope can feel out of reach. Ironically, these are often the moments we need both the most. As I share in I Hope So, “Hope keeps us moving forward, with a view to a brighter horizon even when the road is hard, while humour lightens the journey, offering moments of levity that remind us of our humanity” (Hanley-Dafoe, 2026, p. 115).

Hope helps us believe tomorrow can be different. Humour helps us make it through today. Together, they remind us that even difficult seasons can hold moments of lightness and that while life is hard, there is still room for tenderness, connection, playfulness, and joy.

Humour reminds us not to take ourselves too seriously while still holding space for compassion, fun, light-heartedness, and tenderness despite the stressors, hurt, and pain we all experience. It affords us brief moments of relief and reprieve and helps lift the weight off our shoulders.

Research continues to demonstrate that laughter decreases stress hormones like cortisol, releases endorphins, soothes away built-up tension, and provides temporary pain relief. Over time, regular laughter has even been associated with improved immune function.

Just as importantly, humour changes our perspective. It creates space between us and our stress. Mental health and well-being expert and comedian Jessica Holmes talks........

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