This quote from a song by Leonard Cohen was one of my inspirations for my latest book The Color of Light.

The quote reminds me of a story by Rachel Naomi Remen in her book, My Grandfather’s Blessings. Remen is a physician as well as a therapist, and one of her patients was a young man with osteogenic sarcoma of the leg. Sadly there was no choice; the leg had to be removed. The man went through a period of depression but finally with Remen’s help began to heal and find reasons to be grateful.

Two years later the man met with Remen again, and she took out a picture he had drawn during his darkest hours. The picture was a vase with a crack down the middle. With a black crayon he had drawn the crack over and over to express his image of his body. The vase would never hold water.

When the man saw the picture, he told Remen that it wasn’t finished, and he pulled out a yellow crayon and colored around the black crack. Then he said: “You see here. . . this is where the light comes through.”

In The Color of Light at Amazon some of my characters also learn that there’s a crack in everything, but light can come through the places inside us that are cracked by pain, grief and loneliness.

Where does the light come through for you?