Life leads one down many paths. Toward the end of my “dark night of the soul” period following my car accident, I spent three years living alone in a remote area of British Columbia.

I was raised in a remote and small seaside town on the Pacific Coast of Vancouver Island. As a child, I spent many hours exploring tidal pools and was fascinated at how much life existed there.

My father had lupus, a serious and complex autoimmune disease that attacks the tissues and organs. The inflammation caused by lupus can affect one’s joints, muscles, skin, kidneys, blood cells, heart, brain and lungs. Unknown to me at the time, while I was in a hospital giving birth to my daughter, Dad was on his death bed in a hospital three hundred miles away.

Fear can be mesmerizing and contagious. News outlets know this, which is likely why most reports are about catastrophes and suffering. We are inundated with stories about epidemics, housing and stock market dips, recessions, wars, extreme weather events, deflating economies, and more.