 Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Kate Miner. Kate Miner, as he just said. And thank you so much for inviting me here tonight to speak and perform. It's truly an honor to be here. I come from an HD family. Here they are. That's my mom and stepdad, my two sisters, and my niece and nephew. We've had Huntington's disease in our family's genetic makeup our entire lives, but we didn't know about it until the summer of 2014. That was the year my mom's sister, Diane, was diagnosed. She'd been sick for, gosh, somewhere around 15 years. But she was part of a religion that required she not go to doctors. And so she had never been seen. But after multiple car accidents and almost choking to death, she decided to seek treatment, and that's when we all found out about Huntington's disease. My husband and I were on tour at the time. We play in a folk band called Miner. In general, our lyrics are pretty upbeat and happy, and we are all smiles on stage. We had just finished a string of East Coast shows, and we're on our way to Chicago when my stepdad called and told me that my aunt had Huntington's disease. I mean, those words meant nothing to me, but I was really struck by how scared he sounded when he told me. I knew that my aunt was really ill, but he said that this diagnosis had implications for my mom and my sisters and I, and I should look into it. So I opened the internet, that dangerous and terrifying endless pit of information, and while the bassist and banjo player were arguing about where to get pizza in Chicago, my whole world changed. My mom decided to get tested as soon as we came back from our tour. She was already 18 years older than when my aunt had started showing symptoms, so we figured she didn't have it, but she was going to get tested just to be sure. But unfortunately, she did have the gene. My stepdad, too emotional to call us, simply texted the number 41 to me and my sisters from the doctor's office, and we all knew what that meant. Justin and I both wanted to have kids at some point, and my sisters as well, and my sister already had two kids, so we all decided to get tested together as sisters. Between medical appointments, Justin and I continued to write the songs, though, that would form our next album. We knew the next record was going to sound totally different, because we were totally different people as we were trying to come to terms with this new reality. While reading through an account of Shackleton's endurance voyage in a hospital waiting room, Justin came across a passage that mentioned a place called Tuanaki, a lost island paradise in the South Pacific that had seemingly vanished into the sea, and that image really resonated deeply with both of us. We kind of felt lost at sea. We were in a place of uncertainty, searching for a feeling and a time we had lost before that phone call outside of Chicago. We wanted to find a way back to yesterday. As we finished writing the album and concluded months of extensive genetic counseling, we decided to name the record after that lost island paradise. I had my blood drawn the same week the band departed for Seattle to record Tuanaki, knowing the results would be waiting for us the day after we got back. We spent every day of the next six weeks in a focused frenzy, grateful for the distraction of work, but also increasingly aware of what was waiting for us back in LA. We were forced to confront our mortality on a daily basis during the recording process, but that also reminded us to be grateful for every second that we got to spend doing what we loved most. Music has always been our emotional outlet, but the situation made it all the more important for us to try to find some sort of catharsis through our music. See, it was hard to talk about those emotions, but it was less hard to write about them. It was simpler to say in a song how scared I was of myself or my mom or my sisters dying from Huntington's disease than it was to just say it out loud in conversation. It was easier to pound on a drum extra hard than express how angry I was that this was happening. And it was more manageable to say in metaphor how guilty I felt when we got the results that both my sisters were positive and I was not. Justin and I could communicate through the music. I'd write a line about how my anxiety was making me feel like I was underwater and it was so hard to breathe, and Justin would add, let the wave wash over you, and we would both chant just consistently, there will be better days. It was the hardest and the most surreal time of our lives, but once we got a little distance from those emotional months, we slowly returned to what was our new version of normal. Miners started touring again and using our music and our band as a platform to tell our family's HD story and raise awareness about Huntington's disease. My sisters moved closer to home and these days we all spend as much time as we can together. I've lobbied in Washington DC as an advocate for the HD Parity Act and our family has worked with multiple charity organizations to organize fundraising events. We've decided not to sweat the small stuff and live more in the present moment. We've learned about possible treatments being developed by some of the people in this very room and it's given us so much hope. Our lyrics have become hopeful again. We are determined to remain optimistic in both our lives and in our music. And now we would like to share a couple of songs with you and just say thank you so much for having us here tonight.