The person, not the disability

⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses addiction, grief, which some listeners may find distressing.

If you need support, you're not alone. Help is available:
• Lifeline (24/7 crisis support): 13 11 14 · lifeline.org.au

Raised in a family where her brother Jeffrey had severe disabilities, Sally learned early to see people for their strengths, not their limitations. After Jeffrey's death at age 9 and a difficult move at 10, she faced isolation when confronted with peers who mocked disability. At 19, she was diagnosed with chronic lung disease and told she would have emphysema by 40. Rather...

The one-page profile that changed everything

⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses grief, which some listeners may find distressing.

If you need support, you're not alone. Help is available:
• Lifeline (24/7 crisis support): 13 11 14 · lifeline.org.au

Eighteen years ago, Cathy took a job leading a small employment program for people with intellectual disabilities, armed only with conservation qualifications and no prior experience in disability services. She discovered that a simple tool, a one-page profile capturing what mattered to each person, their strengths, and how to support them, became the foundation for everything: building teams, matchin...

The reality partner I had to become

⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses addiction & recovery and mental health & wellbeing, which some listeners may find distressing.

If you need support, you're not alone — help is available:

• SMART Recovery Australia (addiction): smartrecoveryaustralia.com.au

• ReachOut: au.reachout.com

• Lifeline (24/7 crisis support): 13 11 14 · lifeline.org.au

Melanie grew up in a loving, faith-based family with early exposure to addiction through her grandfather and mental health challenges through her sister. After 10 years in the Air Force, she entered a relationship with Rob, a man caught be...

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 Turkey, only to learn she did not carry it. The relief turned to guilt watching her sister's mobility decline. Now, as an NDIS plan nominee and researcher, Alyssa confronts the gap between what her family inherited-duty, sacrifice, resilience-and what she wants to...

The 20-year fog

Karl grew up in apartheid South Africa in a wealthy but emotionally distant Austrian-South African family, experiencing what he now understands as complex trauma rooted in his mother's narcissism and his father's clinical detachment. For decades he dissociated, unaware he was queer until his late twenties when he met a partner and came out to indifference from his family. He moved to London at 27, then Australia, but remained numb and disconnected from himself until the last two years. Only recently, after leaving corporate work and experiencing a workplace sexual harassment case, has he begun...

Daniel grew up sighted on an Australian farm, playing cricket and tennis, until his vision deteriorated over a few months at 16. Leber's optic neuropathy-a genetic condition affecting the optic nerve-meant no cure and no driving license. The initial years were marked by denial and shame; he rejected mobility aids and pushed himself to impossible academic standards. A failed Year 11 led him to accept help and split his final year of school. He pursued physiotherapy at Charles Sturt University, learning Braille and screen-reading software, gradually understanding that asking for help was not burden but reciprocal humanity. As a clinician, he...

⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses grief, which some listeners may find distressing.

If you need support, you're not alone — help is available:

• Lifeline (24/7 crisis support): 13 11 14 · lifeline.org.au

Naomi O'Byrne's story spans 27 years of motherhood shaped by her daughter Sarah's complex disabilities. What began as discovering developmental delays at five months old became a journey of medical appointments, seizures, and challenging behaviours that made traditional day placements impossible. Naomi worked full-time throughout, determined to give Sarah a mainstream childhood despite systemic resistance. When Sarah reached adulthood, Naomi's health collapsed-she developed...

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, YouTube creator and self-described "advocate, activist, or troublemaker" — for an unflinching conversation about three decades of acquired disability, the friend who saved him 18 months of bureaucracy, the wife who refused his three offers to leave, and why it has to be easier for the people who...

SUMMARY

A diving accident on a Boxing Day cricket trip changed everything — for an 18-year-old named Jason, and for Ian Harvey, the young rugby coach standing beside him. In this episode of Golden Threads, host Daniel Dougherty sits down with Ian — National Foundation Manager for the WhatAbility Foundation in Perth — to trace a 20-year journey from fitness manager to one of Australia's most quietly powerful advocates for inclusion. Ian shares two friendships that reshaped his life (Jason and Doug, both quadriplegic after sudden injuries), the lessons they taught him about honesty, friendship, and fun, and his work today...

For almost two years after his brain injury, Paul Jamieson could not eat or drink anything. When his speech pathologist finally decided he was ready to try, she asked him what he wanted. He said mangoes. He still remembers exactly what it tasted like.

Nearly nine years ago, Paul was wakeboarding on a lake in Victoria when a fall headfirst into the water caused a severe brain bleed. He was helicoptered to the Alfred Hospital, where surgeons drilled a hole in his skull to relieve the pressure. The surgery saved his life, but the brain injury had...

Two years before Julie Fisher fell pregnant with her third child, the universe set her up.

She'd just become friends with a woman named Tina, whose daughter Amy had Down syndrome. Julie had never met anyone with Down syndrome before. She watched Amy in the playground. She asked questions. And one of the answers — about how hard a postnatal diagnosis can be when nobody warned you — quietly rewrote what Julie would do if it ever happened to her family.

It did. At 12 weeks pregnant, an ultrasound flagged a marker. At 15 weeks, an amniocentesis confirmed it. Then...

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." She was 42 when she was finally diagnosed with limb girdle muscular dystrophy (LGMD) — a rare, progressive neuromuscular condition that's been quietly dismantling her muscles ever since.

In this Episode 1 of Golden Threads, host Dan Dougherty sits down with Leanne — now 60, podcaster, former...

Golden Threads: Stories of Disability & Resilience

Golden Threads is a Kintsugi Heroes podcast hosted by Daniel Dougherty, sharing honest, lived-experience conversations with people navigating disability, identity, and inclusion.

This series explores what it really means to adapt, persevere, and live fully in a world still learning what accessibility and inclusion look like in practice.

Each episode brings forward real stories — not focused on labels, but on people, relationships, and lived experience.

Topics covered:

disability, resilience, lived experience, inclusion, accessibility, identity, mental health, community, personal stories

About Kintsugi He...