“It’s not easy to start again after losing our health and losing so much of our familiar life. It requires so much hope – and hope can be difficult to come by when we get used to feeling so down and so sick. Because of the cards we’ve been dealt, it can be hard to find a logical reason to have hope. But I am learning that we don’t actually need a reason to have hope. We don’t need evidence or logic as much as we may think we do. We don’t even need to fully understand or define what hope is. We just need to believe that hope exists. We have to bravely decide to give in to hope, even when we can’t see it or touch it – even when we don’t know if it is there. When life is dark, we have to believe that there is something still worth living for right around the corner. This delicate belief is what will move us forward. It is what will remind us that each sunset is always, without fail, followed by a sunrise. “

Gracefully Ill: Finding Peace in the Chaos of Chronic Illness