Rachel Hale

speaker

178 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Mar 2026 last heard 25 Aug

Rachel Hale’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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The Excerpt · At this summer camp, disability doesn’t mean sitting out · 25 Aug 2026 podcast

Yeah, this is a camp for kids who for maybe the other eleven months of their year are really having to build their life around medical appointments or sometimes around having to say no to activities that other kids would be able to go to or having to be in in quarantine because of a condition.

So this is like this one place where for the first time there

able to kind of relax and so are their parents because it's a place where parents can drop their kids off and know that they're really being taken care of with that extra care that their kids need.

I think the biggest thing that I understood from the kids who I interviewed is that it really gave them a sense of confidence.

And beyond that, it connected them with other people going through something similar to them.

Maybe not someone with the exact same illness, but someone who also knows what it's like to grow up having things be different, someone who also has experienced going to normal school and having it be really hard sometimes.

But in some

Cases it's also connected people with other experts in their medical community.

There was one family I interviewed who ended up being recommended a clinic that ended up really being in their own backyard in Cleveland from another camper there who had experienced the same illness.

So it's connecting people with the community, but also giving them a confidence and sense of independence that maybe they wouldn't be able to get at home with mom and dad.

Maya had grew up always wanting to go to summer camp, but a traditional camp really wasn't built for someone like her.

She was diagnosed with Axenfeld-Reiger syndrome at six months old.

It's a rare genetic disorder that gradually took away her vision over time, but also stunted her growth and caused muscle and joint pain.

And in addition to that, she had a selective mutism anxiety disorder, which would sometimes run

render her kind of speechless, making it hard for her to interact with other kids her age.

So for a variety of reasons, her mom would have never felt comfortable sending her off to a normal summer camp.

But her mom remembered that a friend had sent their daughter to Camp Simcha and thought that it would be a fit.

And she ended up going for eight summers afterwards.

And I spoke with her when I visited camp and it was really amazing to hear from her about kind of

Her journey of how her relationship with camp evolved as she got older.

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