What I Do While I Can Walk | Alyssa Chhim-Michelle | Golden Threads
What I do while I can walk Alyssa grew up in a Cambodian Australian family shaped by her parents’ escape from genocide. In high school, she learned her father and sister carried the spinocerebellar ataxia gene. After years of uncertainty, she found courage to test for the gene herself through a partner’s unconditional support in […]
Beyond the Label: How I Learned to See the Person, Not the Disability
Stories about growing up with disability, mental health, and what it means to see the person first. Sally Pymer was diagnosed with chronic lung disease at 19, told she’d have emphysema by 40, and spent decades running from that truth. But growing up with her brother’s severe disabilities taught her something the world forgot: how […]
Jeff Parker: From Weightlifter to Blind Advocate — 36 Years of Showing Up
SUMMARY At 25, Jeff Parker was a weightlifter in country New South Wales. A week later, he was paralysed from the waist down by a tumour in his spinal cord no doctor had seen coming. In this episode of Golden Threads, host Daniel Dougherty sits down with Jeff — now 61, blind, an NDIS advocate, […]
Leanne Watson: Three Acts, a Diagnosis, and a Life Built on Community
Leanne Watson sees her life in three acts — and the third one started the day a freshly minted GP finally took her seriously. For nearly a decade, doctors fobbed her off. Lose weight. Build glutes. You’ve had three kids. One specialist had her parade in her bra and undies and said she “looked fine.” […]
Why I spent years refusing the one thing I needed most
Daniel lost his sight at 16 to a genetic condition he couldn’t control. But his story isn’t about overcoming disability. It’s about learning to see differently, finding strength in asking for help, and building a life of purpose beyond what he thought he’d lost. ⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses mental health & wellbeing, which […]
The Signs We Missed: A Mother’s Fight to Save Our Boys
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses grief & loss and suicide & self-harm prevention, which some listeners may find distressing. Losing a child to suicide is a grief that never truly heals. Mia Bannister shares her journey of turning pain into purpose. Mia Bannister lost her son Ollie in 2024 to suicide after a long […]
How Two Teenage Sons Saved Their Dad’s Life
A man who spent 27 years in banking felt like the most unhappy person his coach had ever assessed. His two sons sitting beside him on the bed saved his life. This is how Lawrence Atkinson rebuilt, and why he now runs free barbecues across Australia for men in crisis. ⚠️ Content advisory: this episode […]
I Won’t Die: My Promise and The Journey #kintsugiheroes #podcast #resilience #gritdiaries #survivor
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎙️ ABOUT KINTSUGI HEROES ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Kintsugi Heroes is a not-for-profit Australian podcast network sharing real stories of resilience, disability, and transformation. Named after the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold — the philosophy that what’s been broken can become more beautiful for the mending — every episode honours the cracks, the rebuild, […]
You’re Not Alone: Menopause Uncovered with Sonya Lovell
Since 2021, Sonya Lovell has been raising awareness, challenging societal stigmas and taboos, and lobbying for better education and resources for everyone who is transitioning through menopause. Sonya is the host of the popular podcast Dear Menopause, having interviewed leading local and global experts and commentators in the fields of menopausal health, mental health and […]
She Grew Up Without Her Mum, So She Gave the World This
Grit Diaries Podcast: Sarah De Jonge, founder of A Thousand Hearts, on kindness, grief, resilience, and the science of why being kind actually heals. From losing her mum at four to building a global kindness movement — this is a story about love, loss, and the small handmade gestures that ripple across the world. Sarah […]