In this episode of The 10 Ninety Podcast, Mason sits down with Pieter Kort from Belleville, Ontario, Canada. Pieter lost two of his daughters—Madeleine "Maddie" Kort (13) and Joni Kort (10)—in a March 2022 rear end collision with a 70,000-pound cement truck while on vacation in Florida.

Pieter shares what he remembers from the day of the crash, the extent of his family's injuries, and the unimaginable reality of staying in a Jacksonville hospital for six weeks while his wife Jamie remained in a state of post-traumatic amnesia for five weeks. He walks through the heartbreaking process of telling his son Ethan immediately after the accident, waiting to tell his daughter Hannah until she could retain the information after her severe traumatic brain injury, and eventually telling Jamie once she emerged from her compromised mental state.

Together with Mason, Pieter talks about the remarkable recoveries of his surviving children—Hannah, who battled through a brain injury to become her high school valedictorian and is now pursuing neuropsychology, and Ethan, who returned to competitive basketball just weeks after the accident despite severe upper-body injuries. He shares Jamie's incredible resilience through her own recovery and how she remains the spirit of their family.

Pieter opens up about grief, survivor's guilt, the lies we tell ourselves in dark moments, the importance of talking about his daughters rather than pretending they didn't exist, and how he navigates nightmares and intrusive thoughts. He discusses the Dolphin and Penguin Fund they created to reduce economic barriers for children in sports and the arts, the community events they hold to remember Maddie and Joni, and why keeping their memory alive through conversation and action has been essential to his survival.

It's a heartbreaking conversation about unimaginable loss and a powerful reminder that life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% what you're going to do about it.