As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, Katherine reflects on the complicated emotions of this Fourth of July.

As the mother of an adult daughter with significant disabilities and someone who has spent more than four decades advocating for community living, employment, and self-determination, she celebrates the extraordinary progress our nation has made while also sharing her growing concern about recent policy shifts affecting disability rights.

This deeply personal episode explores what freedom has meant for Mikelle's life—from becoming a homeowner and entrepreneur to building a life surrounded by friends, neighbors, and a dedicated support team. It also considers how current discussions surrounding disability policy, community living, and civil rights invite us to ask an important question:

How do we protect the freedoms that generations before us worked so hard to achieve?

Rather than choosing between patriotism and advocacy, Katherine reflects on how the two belong together. Loving our country means celebrating its accomplishments while continuing the work of ensuring that every person, including people with disabilities, has the opportunity to live, work, belong, and determine the course of their own lives.

Join us for a thoughtful Fourth of July conversation about freedom, belonging, responsibility, and the promise we carry into America's next 250 years.

What happens when a tattoo artist with social anxiety joins the support team of one of the world's first nonverbal podcasters? You pull up a chair, pour a cup of coffee, and discover that community grows one conversation at a time.

In this heartfelt episode, Mikelle introduces listeners to Rachael, one of the newest members of the Shining Beautiful team. Together, they share stories about friendship, finding confidence, and the unexpected ways people change one another.

What begins as a conversation about supporting Mikelle quickly becomes a story about mutual growth. Through neighborhood coffee dates, sharing laughter, selling Mikelle's handmade bracelets, and meeting new people together, Rachael discovered that support is not simply about helping someone else. It is about becoming part of a community where everyone learns, contributes, and grows.

Mikelle has always had a gift for bringing people together. Whether she's giving away one of her bracelets, introducing a new friend, or simply inviting someone to sit and share a cup of coffee, she reminds us that belonging is built through everyday moments of generosity and connection. Along the way, Rachael found her confidence growing, while Mikelle welcomed another friend into the circle that surrounds her life.

As Katherine guides the conversation, the three reflect on the beautiful reciprocity at the heart of authentic support. The people who come to support someone with a disability often discover that they, too, are changed. They become better listeners, stronger advocates, more confident in themselves, and more connected to the communities around them.

Whether you're a family member, direct support professional, educator, advocate, or someone who simply believes in the power of human connection, this episode is a reminder that the strongest communities are built through relationships—not transactions. True support isn't measured only by the care we provide, but by the friendships we create and the ways we grow together.

Sometimes all it takes is a cup of coffee, a handmade bracelet, and someone willing to say, "Tell me your story."

This episode celebrates something we don't talk about enough: the reciprocal nature of support. We often describe direct support professionals as people who give. But in reality, the best support relationships become partnerships. Each person brings gifts. Each person teaches. Each person leaves the relationship changed.

At The Shining Beautiful Series, we believe that belonging isn't something one person gives another. It's something we build together, one relationship at a time.

Dr. Peter Smith on Family Discovery and Customized Employment

In this warm and thoughtful episode of The Shining Beautiful Series Podcast, Mikelle and Katherine sit down with longtime friend and customized employment leader Peter Smith from the Centre for Disability Employment Research and Practice in Australia for a casual conversation about families, Discovery, and the importance of truly getting to know a person before trying to build employment opportunities around them.

Rather than focusing on assessments and paperwork alone, Peter shares insights from his evolving work around the Family Discovery Model — an approach that values the lived knowledge families carry about their loved one's interests, routines, strengths, relationships, and potential. Together, they discuss how employment professionals can grow alongside families and job seekers by listening closely, building trust, and learning from everyday life.

The conversation stays grounded and practical, exploring:

• why relationships matter in employment success
• how families often notice gifts and interests that others miss
• the challenges created by constant turnover among support staff and employment specialists
• and how meaningful jobs are often discovered through simple conversations, shared experiences, and community connection

At its heart, this episode is about slowing down, keeping things human, and remembering that customized employment begins with understanding the person — not just searching for an available job opening.

Friendly, hopeful, and down to basics, this conversation offers encouragement for families, employment professionals, and anyone working to build more meaningful and inclusive employment opportunities

In this encore episode of The Shining Beautiful Series Podcast, Mikelle and Katherine revisit an important conversation with Debra McLean and Emily Harris from Washington Initiative on Supported Employment on how person-centered planning can create a pathway — and even a prophecy — for employment success.

As families, educators, providers, and systems across the country navigate workforce shortages, Medicaid pressures, and growing uncertainty, this conversation feels more relevant than ever. Debra and Emily explore how truly listening to a person's interests, gifts, relationships, routines, and vision for the future can shape meaningful employment outcomes and stronger community connections.

Meanwhile, life here at home has been full as well. Mikelle and I have spent the last several weeks painting, refreshing, and updating her home — the kind of everyday work that quietly reminds us how important it is to build lives people genuinely love living. Sometimes podcast schedules fall behind while real life takes center stage, and perhaps that, too, is part of person-centered living.

This thoughtful encore reminds us that employment is never just about a job. It is about identity, belonging, purpose, and creating a life rooted in choice and community.

Join co-host Katherine Carol for a powerful mid-month update on Colorado Medicaid cuts—and what they mean for families, care teams, and the future of support.

The sky feels different these days.

Here in Colorado, we're watching another kind of storm roll in—not one you can see building over the mountains, but one you can feel in policy decisions, budget sheets, and quiet conversations around kitchen tables.

Through lived experience, we explore what it takes to build and sustain a care team over time, what families risk losing, and what communities across Colorado are quietly navigating right now.

We also talk about where we still have influence—how we can help shape implementation, reduce harm, and stay connected even when resources feel scarce.

In this return conversation, Brittany "Lenny" Gilbert joins us again—this time stepping into an exciting new chapter as she begins work on her first fiction book. Many of you will remember Brittany from our earlier conversation around Ruby and Me. Now, her storytelling is stretching in new directions, shaped by imagination, lived experience, and a deep desire to reach the next generation.

Together, we explore what it means to move from telling your own story… to creating stories for others. Brittany shares how her experiences as a writer and as a person with cerebral palsy are influencing her approach to fiction, and why representation, creativity, and voice matter.

This episode is about growth. About creative risk. About trusting that your voice can evolve—and that your story doesn't end with the first book.

It's also about something bigger: the quiet power of writing stories that help young people see themselves, imagine more, and believe in lives that are wide open with possibility.

Pull up a chair, pour a cup of coffee… and settle in for a conversation about new beginnings, creative courage, and the stories we write.

Here is the link to our first interview with Brittany and her author website.

Our first interview with Brittany: Ruby and Me.

Brittany's website

As grocery bills climb, gas prices rise, and budgets tighten, caregivers are feeling the pressure in real and immediate ways.

In this mid-month reflection from The Shining Beautiful Series, Katherine shares a deeply personal story that reaches back through generations—from a rustic mountain cabin in Colorado to the pioneers who endured hardship on the plains, cutting lumber, and in coal mines.

At a time when families are navigating increasing costs and uncertain systems, this episode explores a powerful truth: while systems may shift, it is community, resilience, and the strength we inherit that continue to sustain us.

From stories of survival and sacrifice to the everyday realities of caregiving today, this episode offers both grounding and perspective.

Because even in the squeeze of rising costs and shrinking resources, something steady remains.

What happens when we begin the employment journey not with a system—but with the people who know someone best?

In this episode of The Shining Beautiful Series, Katherine and Mikelle welcome Peter Smith, a long-time leader in the customized employment movement in Australia, for a thoughtful conversation about his emerging work on the Family Discovery Model.

Discovery has long been a cornerstone of Customized Employment, helping people with disabilities identify their strengths, interests, and ideal conditions for work. But Peter's recent work asks an important question: What role do families play in that process—and what happens when we intentionally bring their knowledge, history, and insights into Discovery?

Drawing from research, practice, and decades of experience, Peter explores how families often hold the richest understanding of a person's talents, rhythms, and possibilities. Yet too often that wisdom sits quietly on the sidelines of formal employment services.

Together we discuss:

• How Customized Employment and Discovery open doors to meaningful work

• Why families are an untapped resource in employment planning

• The ideas behind the emerging Family Discovery Model

• How practitioners and families can work together more intentionally

• What this means for people with disabilities seeking real jobs, real belonging, and real contribution

This conversation is not about learning a new "program." Instead, it's about sharing ideas across communities, reflecting on what we've learned through experience, and continuing to build pathways to employment that honor the full story of a person's life.

For families, employment professionals, and advocates, this episode offers both insight and encouragement: the journey toward meaningful work is strongest when the voices closest to the person are invited into the conversation.

Sometimes the most powerful discovery begins right at the kitchen table.

Here is a link to Peter's work on Family Discovery.

In this mid-month reflection, Katherine shares a deeply personal experience from a friend's celebration of life — a gathering that revealed what real community looks like when it has been intentionally nurtured over decades.

Drawing from the work of Peter Block and his book Community: The Structure of Belonging, this episode explores how belonging is built through invitation, small gatherings, shared ownership, and love.

This was not just a memorial. It was a living ecosystem.

Women from college days. Women from work life. Neighbors. Mothers. Children who will now grow up together because their mothers loved well.

Katherine reflects on creative community — how women weave connection through crisis, how leadership often looks like hospitality, and how the spirit of one woman continues through the people she gathered.

She also reflects on how this friend was one of Mikelle's first roommates, and how over time she has found herself a kind of surrogate mom to many of the young women who orbit Mikelle's life — women who are now carrying the torch of thoughtful, inclusive leadership into the next generation.

Community is not a program. It is an act of creation. And creativity may be our most powerful form of resistance in uncertain times.

In this special Valentine's Day episode of The Shining Beautiful Series, Katherine, Mikelle, and Maryann gather for a heartfelt conversation about what they truly love and appreciate — in their lives, in each other, and in the communities they're building together.

This isn't a sugary sweet Valentine's episode. It's honest. It's grounded. It's real.

Together, they reflect on:

• The friendships that have lasted decades

• The caregivers, colleagues, and quiet leaders who show up every day

• The small rituals — coffee time, creative work, shared laughter — that sustain them

• And yes… the subtle undercurrent of anxiety many of us are carrying in uncertain times

In a year marked by policy shifts, funding questions, and a rapidly changing landscape for families and people with disabilities, love can feel both powerful and fragile. This conversation explores how gratitude and worry can coexist — and how choosing appreciation, even now, is an act of courage.

Mikelle shares what she loves about her work and friendships. Maryann reflects on mentorship, inclusion, and the next generation of leadership. Katherine offers perspective from decades of advocacy — reminding us that even in seasons of change, we are more resilient than we think.

This episode is a reminder that love is not naïve. It is strategic. It is sustaining. It is how communities survive.

💛 As you listen, we invite you to ask yourself: What do you love right now? Who do you appreciate but haven't told? What steady presence in your life deserves your gratitude?

Still, we love. And that matters.