If you’ve ever felt a sadness you couldn’t name, episode 468 of Grief and Happiness is for you. Author Angela Ricketts shares how her son’s rare, blinding eye disease left her grieving for years before she recognized it as grief. After losing her father, she turned to clay and made Sight Stones, showing how joy and sorrow can live side by side.
In This Episode, You Will Learn:
(00:56) How Sight Stones and Angela’s book fund eye disease research
(02:48) Kai’s rare diagnosis and the disease that blinded her grandfather
(04:45) Realizing a mother’s fear was grief after losing her father
(06:00) How the creator of Seeds of Happiness inspired Sight Stones
(09:09) “Never Lose Sight”: choosing your focus when it’s hard to see
(16:43) “Share my story”: how Kai’s openness helped strangers open up
(22:52) From “the stuck place” to the happiest time of her life
(25:58) How music became Kai’s outlet as his vision fades
Angela “Annie” Ricketts is a St. Louis entrepreneur, artist, and author, and the founder of Sight Stones, a nonprofit funding research into inherited retinal diseases. She co-founded Better Life Home Cleaning with her husband, Matthew, in 2008. When her son Kai was diagnosed with choroideremia, the rare, progressive condition that blinded her grandfather, she returned to the clay worry stones she made as a child with her potter father. Each stone has a hole to look through and carries the message “Never Lose Sight,” also the title of her new book, with a foreword by John O’Leary. All proceeds from the book and stones fund research.
Angela shares a grief many people overlook: a mother’s grief over her son’s fading sight. She had no word for it until she lost her grandmother and father and felt the same weight. Clay became her way through, and a chance meeting years earlier with Mark Borella, creator of Seeds of Happiness, led to the studio where her volunteers now gather weekly. She talks openly about the “stuck place” she reached and the message each stone carries: we choose what to focus on, even when we struggle to see. Kai’s choice to share his story has led strangers to share theirs, and music has become his outlet. Today, Angela says, joy and grief live side by side, and she is the happiest she has ever been.
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Book: Angela Ricketts – Never Lose Sight
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