Hi! You're listening to The Rare Life. I'm your host Madeline Cheney, and today I'm thrilled to kick off Season 2. As a reminder, each season is structured around themes. If you want a little more information about that and you haven't already, please go to the preface episode. That is where I explain a lot more about the podcast, the purpose of it and how it works, and a little bit of getting to know you. In a nutshell, each season's theme is a loose theme that mostly guides the topics for the professional episodes, my solo episodes, and parents' special topic episodes. And the story episodes are much looser in their themes. So Season 2's theme is our personal journey. It is all about the way that our children and their medical needs, and their special needs have affected us as people. I'm really excited about this topic. I think it's really fascinating to explore how it's changed us, for better or for worse, and most often a combination of the two. A few episode topics include grief, self-care, trauma counseling, and mindfulness. Per tradition, I will give you a glimpse into the first four episodes of Season 2. Our first parent story episode is The Story of Claire with her mom, Katie. Claire has a very rare and lethal form of dwarfism. Among other things, in this episode, Katie shares the heart-wrenching experience of being told that their daughter Claire would not survive childhood. Katie is hilarious and she's real, and I really enjoyed this conversation with her. Her special topic episode is the following episode, and she shares all about anticipatory grief as she has experienced with her daughter...