There are different responses to unexpected hardship, and when Marion Sheppard began to go blind, she cycled through many of them.

She pitied herself and cried long and hard, because this wasn’t right — this wasn’t fair. Her hearing had been severely impaired since early childhood and she’d endured schoolyard teasing about that, so hadn’t she paid her dues? Done her time?

She raged. “Why me?” she asked, many times. It’s a cliché, but for a reason. She really did want to know why she’d been singled out.

She trembled. This was the end, wasn’t it? Not of life, but of independence. Of freedom.

She spent months wrestling with those emotions, until she realized that they had pinned her in place. Time was marching on and she wasn’t moving at all. Her choice was clear: She could surrender to the darkness, or she could dance.