May 16, 2024
When today's guest, Heather, lost her
precious 4-year-old son, Jake, 13 years ago, her life was turned
upside-down. Jake (or Jakey as he was often called) was medically
fragile and suffered from chronic seizures, as well as additional
medical complications, but Heather never allowed herself to think
that he would die. Heather left her job as a special ed teacher and
dedicated her life to making Jake's life the best it could be.
Shortly after Jake died, Heather and her family realized that not
everyone had the resources and skills to help their own medically
complex kids. They started a non-profit organization
called Jake's Help from Heaven. The nonprofit
works with families to provide items not covered by insurance that
will give them opportunities to thrive. Some items are big and
life-changing and others are quite small, but their goal is to come
from a 'place of yes' to help every family possible.
As rewarding as the organization has been, Heather found that
much of her time had to be dedicated to planning fundraising events
instead of spending time with the families. This made Heather begin
to think about trying to do things differently. What if instead of
sponsoring numerous events throughout the year, they simply asked
their donors for money and used their time and energy to tell
stories instead? These stories have become 'The Place of Yes' podcast. Some of these
stories are about Jake and their family and others are about the
families Jake's Help from Heaven had assisted. Still others are
about people living in grief each day. All of these stories,
however, are about people using their grief for good.
When Heather thought about having to move forward after the
devastating loss of Jake, she discovered this about herself. She
says on her podcast, "All I can say is, you can dig deep, figure
out where you are, and figure out where you want to be, and for me,
I found the answer was in a place of yes." She longs to make the
world a better place for chronically ill children and now for
grieving families as well. Through the nonprofit, and now the
podcast, I know that she will do just that.