I recently read a really great article in Poets & Writer’s magazine. The article was called “Dangerous Writing” by Tom Spanbauer. He delves right into the heart of storytelling and his goal of getting his students to write about their most emotional and life changing events. He writes “to be human is to be engaged in an enormous battle within yourself.” He challenges people to understand their battles and use if for our writing. Everybody has a battle within themselves so why don’t we come together to create stories from our own personal narratives. He poses the prompt “Write about a moment after which you were different,” to his students.  This prompt stumped me. I had a few different things to choose from that I think changed me forever but to find the most relevant at this moment was hard. I remember when my dad got sick in 2011. He was always the strongest person in my life, he was the anchor for the entire family. When he got sick I saw him in ICU in a hospital bed. curtains drawn around him. Nurses poking and prodding his bruised skin looking for a vein. People rushing in and out from behind those white curtains. No one can take these memories from me or erase them.  I remember sitting around his hospital bed trying to keep a straight face rather than break down in front of him. I remember sobbing on the phone for my brother to come to the hospital. He was unconvinced that it was serious.  I watched as the medics carried him down our stairs and out to the ambulance, the second time around, exactly a year from the first accident. I think about these memories every time I look at my past. These memories define me but they also give me an opportunity to stretch my roots and further my journey forward. These stories of mine are incredibly rich to share with other people. They’re dangerous but they’re needed.