Issue No. 1 presents the stories of: Jojo Murdock with artwork by Brett C. Nance @panblancocoart, Tamara Thompson with artwork by Kelly Swann @kellyswann, and Chloe Ward with artwork by Kimberly Beiley @citrusgoldfish. Supervising Editor - Jojo Murdock Art Director - Brett C. Nance We Are Awakening Giantz - a nonprofit that works with people who have lived experience in foster care. We have come together and built a community to support each other. One way we are choosing to do that is with this project - Awakening Stories - where we share about our lives and experiences during and after foster care. These are the tales that have made us into the people we are today. These moments we share with you are the good, bad and sometimes ugly truths of what we have overcome. This project is a place where we want to leave a piece of our legacy - be brave enough to let people peek into our lives and strong enough to know that even the hard parts you read here do not fully define all of who we are. We hope that maybe these stories will give people a new perspective and inspire people to find out more about how they can volunteer or help those still in foster care. Also, to give a little hope to those who are still going through it - Hope that they realize they are not alone in their journey and that there are people out there who understand what they are going through. We also want to say thank you to the Santa Barbara County Office of Arts and Culture which granted us the funds to help make this project a reality. We hope you all enjoy our first issue of Awakening Stories as much as we enjoyed creating it for you.