When I walked past Annie’s community garden in Brooklyn the other day while visiting my daughter Emma and going to her book party, I came across Annie’s Garden, and I thought about how many hopeful and uplifting things I see in the course of a day, and how few of them make the news.

Families are reforming, rediscovering one another, people are pursuing old dreams and connections, and the notion of simpler, more gentle lives is epidemic now. Since this isn’t considered as significant as people screaming at one another in Washington, we don’t hear about it, we have to stumble up on it. But if you keep your eyes open, you will. I am no pollyanna, I can be as gloomy as anybody, but my photography – and my therapy – has helped me to see the small stories that don’t make the news but light up the sky, and my life.