The college writers of this book boldly chose to embrace and to write about some of the most difficult parts of their lives. They accepted to face their deeper struggles and to revisit the wounds those struggles left them. They learned to follow a key element from Native American storytelling which encourages us to balance the pain and darkness in our stories with beauty. Each of their stories here captures this life-transforming journey from bad places to better places, from pain to understanding, even from confusion to wisdom. Each of them owns their story in ways that make the story their best teacher and a positive guide to a lifetime of better stories to come. And all of this took place in an English course that was likewise transformed from a source of pain to a source of beauty, not just for the students, but perhaps also for you—the reader.