It is always inspiring to meet people who have overcome incredible adversity; conditions so full of sadness and pain that we, living in our relatively care-free lives, can barely comprehend let alone live out.

However such encounters do give you a glimpse at just how powerful the human spirit can be.

And if you need an example of spirit pushing through when all hope seems lost, then look no further than this week’s story about Helen Birch, the woman whose partner committed suicide when she was eight weeks pregnant.

READ MORE: Pregnant mum's fight to regain control after death of her partner 

IN OTHER NEWS: Student completes exams weeks after brain surgery

To experience such loss at what is such a tumultuous stage of your life must be one of the hardest conditions to put your body through, on par with the exertions that intrepid explorers such as Sir Ranulph Fiennes put themselves through during their expeditions of Everest or the Antarctic.

You imagine that such a profound kind of sadness would crush someone entirely, dragging them down into a mire of despair and suffocating the life out of them.

The pressure put on the body by such emotional trauma is not immediately apparent though. There are no polar winds to scour the skin, no frostbite, no loss of limb.

But there is a loss of feeling, an absence of sense. The damage is internal, scouring away at the soul of a person until nothing remains but a husk. 

It took the healing hands of Helen’s family, children and an extensive support network to nurse her back to health.

And the difference between who she is now, and who she describes then, is nothing short of remarkable.

In a similar vein is the story of a student who completed her final exams just two weeks after having a brain tumour removed.

Sarah Tomlinson battled through the pain because she did not want to fall behind in her studies, even though she was often reduced to tears because of the agony, and endured countless sleepless nights.

And the result? A completed degree, finished research proposals and case studies, as well as awards for Most Inspirational Person and Leavers Queen at her University ball.

Evidence if ever it was needed that the light often follows the dark, and becomes all the more brilliant for it.