Do clouds truly have silver linings? Betty Rollin answers with a resounding yes in this wise, moving, and funny book about the surprising upsides to lifeβs most challenging, painful, and seemingly insurmountable low blows. Rollin has been there. After being diagnosed with breast cancer more than thirty years agoβand again nine years laterβshe managed to find an astonishingly bright side to the darkness. She shares her often zany and unpredictable personal experiences of turning the worst into the best, and shows how others have done the sameβthriving in adversity to a remarkable degree and coming to recognize their various blessings in disguise. Steve Jobs describes how being fired from Apple, the company he founded, was one of the best things that ever happened to him. Homemaker Sally Fleming made a better life for herself and her family after a fire. Only when workaholic CEO Eugene OβKelly was diagnosed with a terminal illness did he really begin to live his life to the fullest. Bill Clinton, Charles Colson, and others describe life changes after adversity. Rollin reveals the science behind the theory of adversarial, or post-traumatic, growth. This paradox is not about denying hardship but about finding a way to benefit from it. Seeing the bright enables us to find the good, whatever form it takes, within the bad and proceed from there. Poignant, timely, universal, and inspiring, Hereβs the Bright Side proves that amid lifeβs struggles and losses, there is much to be gainedβwisdom, strength, and, perhaps most important, gratitude. βTry feeling gloomy and grateful all at once,β says Rollin. βYou canβt. Gratitude picks you up and puts you in a place where gloom cannot thrive.β
Media Buzz
Today - April 13, 2007 Diane Rehm Show - NPR - April 11, 2007
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