Final Thoughts: Hope, Kindness, and Gratitude

As I write this, it’s July 1, 2023. This is my final editorial as editor-in-chief for Social Work, and as I look back on the past four and a half years, I am stunned by how quickly the time went by. I am also stunned by how many crises have occurred since January 2019. We have seen the ongoing killing of Black men and women by police violence become out of control, perhaps most dramatically seen in the murder of George Floyd. We have experienced a pandemic (or syndemic, if you read my editorial of November 2021) like none we have seen in the past 100 years, one for which we were woefully unprepared. We have seen multiple wars bring violence across the globe resulting in desperate refugees and immigration crises around the world, with the war in Ukraine also profoundly disrupting petroleum and grain markets. Climate change is worsening, with violent weather shifts becoming more common. Roe v. Wade was overturned with the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, and LGBTQI2S+ rights have been intensively attacked with numerous state laws. The list seems never ending and daunting.