It's Elise Hugh. You're listening to TED Talks Daily. Jared Krasica is a children's author and illustrator. He's also a friend of mine, a man bursting with energy and joy. But as you'll learn from his talk from Ted Monterey in 2021, his love of life, learning, and teaching was born from a lot of sorrow, too.

His talk reminds us that pain can be an important part of a full life.

Since he's a talented illustrator, if you want to see what he's drawing throughout today's talk,

be sure to check it out at TED.com.

Story has always helped me understand the human experience.

Growing up, I took solace in the books that I would read,

and those book characters that I met offered me friendship.

Characters like Ralph S. Mouse from Beverly Cleary is the mouse in the motorcycle.

Snoopy Garfield.

They offered me companionship as I dealt with the trauma of my mother's lifelong struggle

with an opioid addiction.

The fact that I didn't know who or where my birth father was,

story has also helped me understand my family's history.

My grandfather, who raised me,

would hold court in the living room,

regaling me with stories of life during the Great Depression, and telling me all about his parents who had emigrated from Poland.

Now, my great-grandparents died many years before I was ever born.

But through these stories that were shared in our home, I always felt like I knew them.

Now, creating my own stories, that offered me an escape portal.

You see, it was a home that was filled with so much dysfunction.

My grandparents drank a lot.

There was a lot of yelling.

...