Light in The Darkness

by Fran Withrow 08.2026

Right after I read “Chasing Hope,” by journalist Nicholas Kristof (see June 2026 issue), I stumbled on a book by another journalist. “This is Also a Love Story” is Sally Hayden’s powerful search for love, compassion, and empathy in places where unimaginable events have occurred.

Like Kristof, Hayden traveled widely, but her search was for ways people exhibit humanity and kindness when faced with crises. She interviewed mothers in Nigeria who came up with ingenious ways to hide their children from the Islamist insurgent group Boko Haram. She spoke with men who were abducted as children from their homes in Uganda and made to serve in the Lord’s Resistance Army, a horrific terrorist group that forces their members to do terrible things. Will their families forgive those who manage to escape?

Each chapter stands alone, but they are all powerful testaments to finding goodness even in the darkest of circumstances. Rwanda is a great example. In 1994, the Hutu ethnic group began a murderous rampage, slaughtering another ethnic group, the Tutsis, with abandon. Untold survivors were left alone, their families completely wiped out.

And here is where the love comes in. Twelve university students created the Association of Student Genocide Survivors. Their idea was to form “artificial families” to support young survivors of the genocide. Paul Henri, 23, is one such father figure. He welcomed 20 “children” into his family.

Other people exhibited incredible courage and compassion when faced with these terrorists. One older woman hid up to forty Tutsis in her tiny bedroom while fearlessly facing down these assassins.

In Iraq, Hayden learned how people celebrated secret weddings despite the fact that ISIS made it almost impossible for men to meet women. 

Fear is a powerful weapon, keeping people from standing up to injustice. Yet some people in Syria overcame their fear, protesting against the terrifying Assad regime. Their courage could result in their disappearance overnight. When they vanished, their families had no idea where they were. One woman went to detention centers every day for almost a year and a half, searching for information about her son, despite threats to herself. When the Assad regime fell in 2024, families swarmed the prisons, looking for lost loved ones.

Each chapter is peppered with people who exhibited love, care, and grace during traumatic times the likes of which most of us will never face. Yet I found Hayden’s epilogue to be the most valuable section of the book. It is here that she puts her finger on a contemporary social crisis that is critical for us all. “Empathy and compassion feel dangerously lacking today,” she says. More and more of us are isolated, and the World Health Organization says loneliness is a “global health concern.”

How many of these crises might have been avoided if only people felt more connection with one another? If everyone saw our common humanity? If everyone practiced kindness?

Finding connection, reaching out, committing ourselves to hope and to love is the only way forward in an increasingly fractured world.  As Albert Camus says, “The greatest misfortune is not to be unloved, but not to love.”