Friends, colleagues and even acquaintances have long asked Dr. Hamza how she manages to be so optimistic. More recently, she has sparked interest because of her positive contributions to education during the pandemic. The truth is that this light is the product of profound darkness. Dr. Hamza reflects upon her early life experiences and how the bitterness, resentment and grief of those events conditioned her to cling to the positives in life in order to overcome adversity, in forms large and small. The strategies which equipped her to cope with unexpected tragedy are ones which we all ultimately possess and can enable us to each be a source of light in the darkness. Dr. Shereen Hamza is an Integrative Physiologist with an interest in understanding the communication between body systems in health and disease. She completed her PhD in Physiology with Dr. Susan Jacobs Kaufman at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. She then went on to complete postdoctoral training with Dr. John Hall in the Department of Physiology & Biophysics at the University of Mississippi Medical Centre in Jackson, Mississippi, USA. Dr. Hamza’s work in the field of in vivo Integrative Physiology spans several areas of investigation including portal hypertension, obesity hypertension, diabetes and combined heart and kidney failure. One of her methodological specialties is direct nerve recording in vivo and she has developed novel approaches for the assessment of nerve activity in experimental models. Dr. Hamza is also extensively involved in undergraduate, graduate and medical education at the University of Alberta and is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2019 Remote Teaching Award of which she was one of only 10 recipients campus-wide in recognition of her efforts to optimize online education delivery during the Covid-19 pandemic. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx