Many youth who have experienced pain and trauma have learned to survive. But surviving is not the same as thriving. Humans are able to flourish only as they find hope. How can adults help youth envision positive futures? One strategy is to help youth to have a concrete vision of a future worth having. One exercise asks young people to write their life stories from 10 years out, with them being the heroes. This assignment has been very challenging to most troubled or traumatized youth. To even begin to envision something of a dream brings despair. Yet, as the young people wrote the stories of their futures with themselves as the heroes (and most powerfully, read the stories to others), this created a new container in the brain in which to place resources that would come their way and could yield hope.