Courage is born out of the greatest of fears.

          Courage is a valiant light, a miracle of your nature that can be gleaned out
of the greatest of disasters and tragedies. Courage is also your birthright, part of
you that is always present within, always positively charged, no matter how
 intimidating are the circumstances around you.

          To encourage yourself toward calling up and bringing out all the courage
you hold is nothing less than divine. Pulling it from inside your soul in the midst
of darkness requires more than just your humanity. It requires a going beyond,
which may feel like it takes all the strength you can summon. But it rewards you
with renewed life, and gives you the even more miraculous power to encourage
others. In times of utter powerlessness, desperation and sense of loss, many of us
who have experienced tragedies and disasters look up with bended knees towards
a higher source. We supplicate a greater power to give us back the anchorage of
peace and serenity within our hearts and souls. We look up to a force that could
save us. And when we find that force, we find that it exists right inside our pained,
hopeful selves, while it is also somehow wrapped around us waiting in the air for
the inner and the outer to join into a single force.

Courage is irrepressible.

          Courage does not mean that fear is non-existent for you. An element of fear
may exist at the base of our courage, stubbornly and persistently. However, your
courage is irrepressible, and there are ways that the fear can be subdued. To have
courage you may disregard fear, or accept it with a resolve to stand apart from it,
or even ignore it during certain moments of your life. There are sterling souls who,
somehow, not only survive disasters and tragedies; they ultimately go beyond,
and use their life experiences to give light, strength and hope to others. These
people are able to remain complete in spite of their fears, and able to inspire those
who are in danger of being trapped by discouragement. This book is about people
who discovered their inner valor; those who uplifted and continue to uplift others
with their light from within.

          My intention is not only to celebrate those people, but also to elevate them
to you as examples of the capacity and renewal that you also possess. My hope is
that you go beyond being impressed by these individuals, whom I like to call
"phoenix miracle people", and come to a place of being inspired by them. My
hope is that you find your own capacity for valor, and truly stand as one of the
world's most vital resources, one of the phoenix miracle people.

          Two aspects of my life have given me deep involvement with this subject
matter, the professional and the personal.

          The professional involves my being a physician specializing in psychiatry
who serves both children and adults. Through that role, I have tried to invoke
healing both in my home community and at times of great need, in other places
- including the troublesome aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the great Southeast
Asian tsunami, and the explosion of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines - as well
as some of humanity's "slow-motion disasters," such as the AIDS epidemic in
Africa. Through this aspect of my life, I have met an astounding number of
heroic people, not just among the care workers but especially among those who
 were hardest hit by the circumstance.

          My second route to experience with the all-important search for personal
courage is from devastation within my own family, involving one of my
 treasured children and tragic events which still feel to me almost too deep
 for words. It is a story I hope to tell with dignity and respect, and with a
sense of proportion, knowing first hand that tragedy forms a part of every
 single human life. It is a story which will undoubtedly strike deep chords
within you, but it will also shine a light on phoenix miracle people who
showed themselves to be some of  the most exceptional, the most lion-hearted
I have ever known.

          These reflections about the noble ability of people to go beyond their
most tragic experiences are meant to encourage, to reveal the grace and the
understanding that courage is always within us. And to instruct that sometimes,
even if it seems certain that we are beyond our limits and overwhelmed by
our fears, we can find life-saving, life-renewing rays of courage - not only for
ourselves, but for others too. To encourage others is a miracle of the giving
spirit. To encourage others is to give of our selves, and more, helping them
get past fears that block them from truly living.

          You cannot give anyone courage, no matter how much you may want to,
if you do not muster up valor from within first. This book comes to you with a
heartfelt prayer that it will strengthen the core of courage within you, giving you
even greater awareness of , and certain access to, your own valiant light.

Second Excerpt