During our third visit to the detention center, I was paired up with Mitch and two other story partners. It was clear that the two other partners knew each other, which helped conversation flow naturally. We told stories about helping people out or being helped ourselves to start before moving into stories about our happy places. One major theme that cropped up in our group was that of family. It was clear that to everyone involved, family was very important. This was especially clear when we were telling stories about our happy places. An interesting thing I noticed was the precedence of “found families”, or a group of people that aren’t biologically related to you but treat you like family anyway. My partners from the detention center and myself both shared stories of this sort of found family dynamic. One of my story partners chose this story of found family to be the one he dictated to me to type up. It seems to me that family, biological or not, was a big motivator for my story partners to get there lives back on track. I felt like these similar experiences helped me understand more about the people I was sharing stories with, and a little more about myself as well.