Do not whine... Do not complain. Work harder. Spend more time alone.

Joan Didion

Writer Joan Didion gave this advice to herself in “Blue Nights,” a 2011 memoir written during one of the darkest periods of her life, following the death of her daughter Quintana Roo only a few years after her husband, John Gregory Dunne, passed away. Like many people struggling with grief, Didion was looking for a way through it, and from that place of darkness, we can glean a bit of light. In life’s most difficult moments, we all search for a path that helps us persist. In the face of great adversity, to simply carry on can be an act of courage.