The kindness of strangers: In one of my darkest periods, a few compassionate words helped turn my life around

I was standing at the traffic lights with the weight of the world on my shoulders when a man approached. He will probably never know the impact he had on my life in the kindness of strangers series My cousin had recently died in a terrible accident and I had been the one who had to identify the body.

It was one of the darkest periods of my life, on seemingly every front: I was in the midst of a divorce; it was during the global financial crisis and the company I worked for was badly struggling, making every day feel heavy with uncertainty and stress. Everything was a mess and I was emotionally…