Here's the Bright Side

January 1, 2007
Award-winning television journalist Rollin, formerly an NBC correspondent and author of Last Wish
and First, You Cry
, urges readers to see the "bright side" of life's disasters. While there is nothing new about finding a silver lining in a cloud, this thought is only comforting if it comes from a credible source—and here, Rollin's voice is comforting. People know she went through two mastectomies back in the days when breast cancer was an unmentionable disease. The first doctor she saw ignored her cancer, but she shows how that terrible experience opened up new perspectives for her. Even the experts, she reports, find that trauma doesn't just produce stress, but "post-traumatic growth." People who've survived catastrophes may develop better self-perceptions and better relations with others. They may adopt a more meaningful life philosophy. Disaster can be a sort of wakeup call. Rollin is not religious; she never rationalizes bad things happening to good people by referring to God's mysterious ways, but she is relentlessly positive