“In my own worst seasons I've come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. And then another: my daughter in a yellow dress. And another: the perfect outline of a full, dark sphere behind the crescent moon. Until I learned to be in love with my life again. Like a stroke victim retraining new parts of the brain to grasp lost skills, I have taught myself joy, over and over again.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, High Tide In Tucson: Essays From Now Or Never

This is my goal for 2014 and my theme. I love how poignantly Kingsolver understands and addresses the hardship of dealing with despair and depression and shows in her writing that the remedy for this sad state is not easily or quickly won, but comes bit by bit and little by little until the brain is restored and perhaps even improved upon. Here's to finding and focusing on glorious things and people in this world and getting better one day at a time.