Sometimes our best learning occurs in most unexpected ways. It was an artist’s journey that provided important lessons from the most unlikely teachers. Through portraiture, Kathryn Beck was working to celebrate the beauty in each individual placed by society in a giant category of “special needs.” As a professional photographer and a believer in the importance of her project, I volunteered to accompany Kathryn as she interviewed and took her photographs of potential Illumination subjects. What I discovered as we interviewed unique, wonderful, and happy individuals who happen to have various struggles, is that those of us not lumped into that “special” category have a lot to learn from these special teachers.