Happiness in a Storm

A door closes and a window opens:

Recurring cancer and the extensive treatment it required forced Dr. Wendy Schlessel Harpham of Dallas to give up her beloved medical practice. So she turned her sights to writing, producing book after book that can help people with cancer achieve the best that medicine and life can offer them.Dr. Harpham is a 16-year survivor of recurrent chronic lymphoma.

In her latest book, “Happiness in a Storm: Facing Illness and Embracing Life as a Healthy Survivor,” she states: “Without a doubt, illness is bad, yet survivorship — from the time of diagnosis and for the balance of life — can include times of great joy among the hardships. You can find happiness. Chances are the opportunities for happiness are right in front of you.”She suggests creating a “personal happiness list” to help you remember favorite pastimes and reintroduce former delights into your life. Or perhaps you might want to explore activities that in your precancer life, you thought you had no time for, like studying a foreign language, traveling for pleasure or spending more time with friends.“You might need to explore different ways of seeing yourself and the world around you,” Dr. Harpham writes. “In doing so, you discover new types of happiness waiting to be tapped, such as the happiness of sharing invigorating ideas and nascent hopes with new friends, or the happiness of knowing love in a whole new way.

I am not as talented as she. I am reading a lot of popular fiction. It is something I have never done before unless assigned by a teacher. (I don't count Shakespear plays as fiction)