Adriana Xenides

The Argentine-born, Adelaide-raised Wheel of Fortune co-host will be remembered as much for her troubled personal life as she will for her game show letter spinning.

You only have to read the comments at the end of this story to know that Adriana could inspire love in others. It is not how much you can love but how much you are loved which is important. If wrestling with depression made her feel isolated and unable to feel that love from us then maybe we needed to have done it differently . Maybe depression means you cannot know how much people care. Adriana is a household name here. She had a stunning smile, a kind personality and she was a photographers' dream. There are so many stunning photos of Adriana. We have grown up with Wheel of Fortune. We all  know it and have watched it. Adriana was always a real part of that and with her co-host always made the show. When you read all the comments at the end of the news story and you hear what people are saying, then you know we all valued Adriana more than she could have known and if she was struggling then we didn't get it right in reaching out to her in the same way she reached out to us. In a way there is a parallel with the Brigitte Bardot story. Brigitte Bardot managed to bring some peace into her life by working for causes and getting in touch with nature. Adriana doesn't seem to have been able to find a path out of her inside sadness and so she is gone. Physically. Her spirit is so strong and her gift to us is even stronger because the genuine outpouring of respect and love for her is very noticeable. We now know she wasn't just anyone. We also know she wasn't tragic. Her life has spread so much goodwill and warmth and the fire is burning brightly in all of us now even though we may not have known that. What we can learn from this is we need to know better how to connect with people who feel sad and lonely on the inside even if they have a stunning smile on the outside. Her acts of kindness will live on because we now have to do her work.