This episode of the Stories That Sparkle Podcast reflects the essence of this whole project that I started in early 2025. Kate is a woman I met over fifteen years ago when I lived in Santa Fe. We worked together for a year and a half and became close friends. Separated by life, time, and distance, we have not seen each other in thirteen years. As part of my drive to record and amplify other women’s stories and voices, we reconnected and picked up where we left off like it was yesterday.

Kate shares a story (which she chose from a list we ran through) that she has only shared with family and close, intimate friends. She offers details that she has rarely, if ever, shared with anyone about her experience of loving her son Jax who was born premature, and who lived for 92 days. She decided to do this so she could share the lessons she learned and help that one person out there hear something that may give them hope, support and care. It was a honor to be with Kate the day we recorded this and it is a privilege to share her story with all of you today.

This is the tenth recording session of the Discoball Tour and the fourth (and last) one I did in Santa Fe, NM. It exemplifies the epitome of the power we all carry within us—our stories, and the contribution we make to our shared humanity when we share them.

So, I invite you to get comfortable, sit back, and listen in.

LINKS

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The Discoball Tour DocuSeries on YouTube is a companion video blog for the podcast episodes I recorded during my 30-day cross country drive to record eighteen women’s stories in ten different cities. Subscribe to my channel for all new releases: YouTube.com/@hellarader (pro tip: you can listen to podcast episodes on YouTube as well…they will be next up in the channel following each docu-series episode).

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