Meet Isabelle Blackwood: A Journey Begins
Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Drug Prevention Power Hour. Now, it says this podcast is hosted by Jake White. In case you missed it, I’m not Jake. I’m Reagan McDonald. Think of me as Jake’s younger, cooler, funnier replacement for this episode and many more. Now that we have that squared away, I’d like to introduce you to a freshman at the University of Kansas majoring in applied behavioral science, concentrating in adults with disabilities and minoring in business.
She’s currently serving as the chair of the Kansas Governor’s Behavioral Health Subcommittee. She currently splits her time in between working as an intake coordinator at a mental health facility and a service dog trainer at Cares Inc. And while she’s all of those things, she’s also been friends with me, yours truly, since kindergarten, back when we played together at recess during our prime. Please welcome to the Vive 18 podcast, Isabelle Blackwood. How are you today?
Pretty good. Yeah? Good. You’ve just gotten back to school after a very long Christmas break. Are you excited for classes? Have you started class yet or when do you start?
Yep, yep, I started today. Tell me a little bit more about you rather than just like the stats of what you do for prevention. Go ahead and tell me a little bit more about like what makes Izzy Izzy.
Isabelle’s Personal Story and Motivation for Advocacy
I kind of started my prevention journey you could say from a very young age. I’ve grown up working in my family service dog school, helping lots of individuals with disabilities. And along with those came a lot of mental health hurdles with our individuals with disabilities. We serve a lot of veterans with PTSD, people with depression, anxiety, ADHD, autism, so many things. And so I was exposed to the ins and the outs of mental illness from a very young age as I volunteered at the service dog school since I was little started a full-time job there in eighth grade. So my exposure and passion around mental health really started very young even though I really didn’t know that that was going to lead my life where it is today. When I was in seventh grade my oldest brother committed suicide and not only that I grew up with an alcoholic parent.
And so doing prevention work became my outlet for my own mental health. I lost my brother in seventh grade. And at that point, I hadn’t had a relationship with my alcoholic parent in three years. And so those things definitely started to take a heavy toll on my mental health, which is why I started to look into prevention work my freshman year. And it honestly just became one of the biggest parts of my life. it, you know, coupled with the service dog work, they are both probably, you know, my biggest passions in this world is helping individuals with disabilities, helping individuals with mental illness and just advocating for them, helping them, preventing what causes it, just all of those things. So yeah, that’s kind of a little bit about me and my passions.
No, that’s, thank you so much for sharing. It’s just really inspirational how you’ve been able to use like all of this quote, bad stuff in order to really like turn it around and impact so many people, you know? Your passion is really derived from like true experiences and real life stuff. And it’s just really amazing to see that like come to fruition in a really good way that helps other people. Can you touch a little bit on how did you get into prevention once you got to your freshman year of high school?
Discovering a Passion for Prevention
Yeah, so in eighth grade, my school counselor had kind of seen that I was struggling and needed an outlet. And he had kind of introduced me to suicide prevention. And it really just sparked a flame like that. And ⁓ I just immediately became passionate and interested in it because of my high school counselor introducing it to me. And we started a club when I was in eighth grade for kind of peer to peer prevention work.
And then obviously I left eighth grade and joined our high school and I left that behind because our eighth, our middle school and high school are not combined. And so I completely had to leave that club behind and prevention work kind of just stopped for me beginning of freshman year and my mental health really, really went downhill.
And then I they started advertising for clubs in the school and I had seen a flyer for a club called white link youth leaders in Kansas Which was a substance abuse prevention program as well as a suicide prevention program, which as I already mentioned those two things are Extremely impactful in my life is both addiction and suicide and so I kind of mulled it over I didn’t really know if it was the right time for me to join something like that if I was in absolute right headspace to be able to be in a situation where I would have to constantly be exposed to conversations about the two hardest aspects of my life.
But eventually I did decide to join and I thought okay even if I don’t enjoy this even if you know it’s not the right thing for me it’s it’s still a good thing. It’ll still benefit me some way so I ended up joining it and Obviously you joined it with me We joined at the same time and at the time we were really the only underclassmen in it it was a fairly new club new organization and I’m honestly so thankful for that because You and I got to shape why link to be exactly what we needed and wanted it to be and so we really Moved that club into what we thought our community needed what we thought us as individuals needed and it was honestly just the best thing. Y-Link opened a million doors for me and I honestly would be nowhere in prevention had I not joined Y-Link my freshman year.
Yeah, absolutely. I just think back to seeing the flyer on the wall of the Commons and being like, I don’t really want to do that, but it’ll look good on my college apps. And little did I know all the ways that YLink would just propel me and propel you into just so many more opportunities. And I just think it’s really beautiful how we sat in that meeting in Mrs. Affleter’s room at the end of freshman year. why do you want to you guys decide to become officers. I don’t really know. Like, it looked like it’d be good.
Yeah, we went rom being like, yeah, I have no idea why I’m doing this to now I enter a room and I will tell you my whole life story. We were just talking about how I’m an oversharer. I will tell anyone my life story and why I’m here because it’s given me such a safe space and like, YLink was my safe space freshman year. And so I really like wanted to be that safe space for other people and share my experiences and my journey. And that just would not be possible without YLink.
Yeah, absolutely. And like our sponsor will tell anyone that when we showed up that first day, like really quiet, didn’t really wanna like share with anyone. And now like we’ll get up on stages in front of like hundreds of people and just like talk about things that, you know, some of my best friends don’t know these things about me. Like, especially now that we’re in college, like that sort of thing. But now like all of these people do and it’s something that Y-Link has just, it was such a great stepping stone for everything that we were gonna end up doing and I just, I could never speak highly enough about the organization. so now that we’ve kind of established like what Y-Link is, how you got started with everything,
Can you explain some of the projects that you’ve done throughout the years, whether it be high school, now that you’ve gotten into college? And we’ll just kind of dig deeper into a couple of those if you don’t.
Impactful Projects and Community Engagement
Yeah, so I guess I’ll start at the beginning. When we first joined Y-Link, our first projects were called Fifth Quarters. Because when we first joined Y-Link, Y-Link was pretty equally substance abuse prevention focused as well as mental health awareness focused.
And so one of the huge events that was substance abuse prevention focus was called fifth quarters and it was events that happened after a home football game after a home basketball game that would allow students a safe place to be around each other and have fun so that they don’t booze cruise and use was that Laurie’s saying keep kids off the street and out of the backseat. Yeah, so we would have fifth quarters which were we’d open up the football field and have yard games we keep kids off the streets and out of the backseat. Yep, yep.
We would have pumpkin painting. would have crafts. We would have card games. We would have these themed events that our high school allowed us to utilize the facilities for until like 11 p.m. at night on Friday nights. And then that expanded to Saturday night lights, which were Saturday night activities, which a local business in the community let us utilize their space for. And it just allowed students to have a safe place, you know, to have fun because especially when you live in a small town there is nothing to do and so typically that leads to kids getting into trouble and so we allowed students to you know be able to hang out with their friends and not get into any trouble they weren’t driving around they weren’t you know how going to parties they were just with each other and we have a high school of a little over 300 kids I think around there and at like our first event of the year was always a luau with a big event on our football field after the first home football game and we’d have tons of yard games and we would always have over hundred kids at that luau. We rented out the pool at one point.
We had a huge turnout at the pool and it was kind of a back to school fifth quarter. So that’s where our projects really focused and then from there Reagan and I really Reagan and I you and I were really focused on mental health awareness and suicide prevention. So we started doing more at advocacy events like we had a mental health event at the high school where we had a local business owner who owns our yoga studio come in and talk about her experience with anxiety and We brought in fidget toys. We we brought in speakers to the school We went and spoke at so many events around the state. So we really got focused in the suicide prevention Because we were seeing that a lot of the time the substance abuse in the youth in our community were as result of mental illness. And so we talked to each other and we were like we want to start at the root of the problem, which is mental health.
Advocacy and Education in Farmers’ Mental Health
So we started doing events like that and we each kind of focused on our own thing. Like I know you were pretty passionate about mental health and athletes. I was pretty passionate at the point I really got focused in my work. I became really passionate about farmers mental health. And so we would go speak at the state. We would go to Y-link events around the state, speaking at our state capitol representatives. I don’t know how many times we spoke at the state capitol. So we really did as much as we possibly could. We hung out little yard signs that our health department provided at the high school. We did rubber band bracelets that we handed out every year with a new saying on them. I remember last year’s, was, if it is to be, it is up to me. Your stronger than you know was one of them. Your path doesn’t end here. So we would do rubber band bracelets and hand them out to the schools.
It’s not too late and here more specifically, my individual projects, I really got focused in farmers’ mental health. I come from a heavily agriculture-based family, and after already losing someone in my family to suicide, I really decided I wanted to go down the path of the farmers’ mental health crisis. I learned about it through FFA, and it really just opened my eyes to how serious the suicide crisis in farmers is. And that project really blew up. started, I was a keynote speaker at a statewide conference to hundreds of people and that was my first speech on farmers mental health and that really kind of blew up the project.
From there we hosted a suicide prevention training for farmers in our community and our John Deere in our town allowed us to utilize their space and they had their employees also attend the training and so I gave a little speech at it and then we had a trainer come in and train them. We had axe throwing we had food. So that was a huge event In the farmers mental health, you know advocacy goal That was a huge thing and then after that a lot of people around the state just kind of started hearing about
Our work and everything and I got asked to come to multiple different conferences. I got to speak at a Prevention agriculture conference. It was all Farmers from around that were speaking and then I came in was like well, I’m not a farmer, but I’m here to talk to you about this, you know I spoke it rural farming Conference in a town a couple hours away.
I was getting exposure all over the state, which was really exciting I got to speak to our representatives quite a bit about it it was just a really big deal to me because nobody knew about the farmers mental health crisis I mean you even asked farmers and they didn’t know and a huge problem was that There was no education and most of the farmers especially in our community are from a generation that it was not right to talk about mental health. You didn’t talk about suicide. You didn’t talk about any of that. And so the biggest barrier was breaking down that stigma and really just educating. And so all those speaking opportunities really were the project because my whole goal was to just educate and break down that stigma. I was reached out to by RFD TV, which is a huge national agriculture TV organization.
And they were working on a project for farmers mental health where they were going in and mentoring older farmers in the community on how to utilize technology so they could access telehealth because a huge barrier with the farmers was that you know especially in our community you may have to drive an hour to go see a therapist go to therapy for an hour like my therapist when I started out I was driving an hour to therapy going to therapy for an hour driving an hour back that takes three hours out of your day and for a farmer that’s just not realistic for them and so RFD TV was working on a project to teach them how to utilize telehealth. And so that was something that we kind of worked on for a while. We came up with a billboard project, which is kind of still in the works to put up some billboards on the highways in our community that just bring attention to the issue and to the crisis so that it just sparks a conversation because even sparking a conversation can reduce that stigma and lead someone to research about it and educating themselves which is really the biggest focus of this farmers mental health crisis is just educating and breaking down that stigma and starting the conversation because at this point there’s not much we can do until that conversation is started. So for me those have kind of been my biggest projects.
I served on a national board with Reagan. On that board, my project was fentanyl prevention. So we did a lot of social media advocacy and work on that. I got to go down to DC twice this last spring. Fortunately, getting to work on that project and that was just a huge blessing last summer, no two summers ago, we got to go down to Chicago and we learned so much just about public health and what leads truly to addiction and these things in communities and that education from there really just blew us up and ignited our passion to do more.
And so we’ve gotten to go to conferences really all over the country. I’ve gone to go to DC three or four times for this, Chicago, Dallas, all over the state. So there’s been tons of projects and opportunities. again, none of it would have happened had I not joined YLink my freshman year. But yeah, that’s kind of a rundown of my everything, I guess it’s just minimal. Like I don’t really think I could ask any follow up questions. Anyways, false make some point. No, I could go off of like the just being able to go to all these conferences and just the stuff that like we were able to learn and the conversations we were able to have in like Chicago and Dallas.
And even like this past summer I got to go to Nashville and like those, which we’re talking about CADCA for anyone who’s not necessarily following, we’re talking about CAD convenience. I would say that Dallas was the first one we attended, right? Yeah. Dallas was the first one we went to three years ago. And I remember like the person I was when I walked into the hotel was completely different from who I was when I left. Like just night and day difference. you know, prevention, it’s a really great field and it changes a lot of lives because it’s helping people but I don’t think we really notice the changes it can make to the individual who’s actually doing it. I’m so much more outgoing and extroverted and honestly, I’m so much happier because of the work that I’ve been able to do. And I don’t wanna speak for you, but I feel like that’s kind of the same feeling.
I mean like Dallas definitely changed me completely. When we went to Dallas, I think we’d been in Y-Link for about six months. And Dallas taught us just the basis of having a coalition, basics about prevention. And it wasn’t even like, yes, we learned a lot and gained a lot from that, but that was not what totally changed the trajectory of my life. I remember this exactly. There was a grand ballroom that we had like this opening session and hundreds of people, everyone at this conference, adults, youth, I’m telling hundreds and hundreds of people. And the guy in charge of CADCA, he stands up, their general price, and he says, if one of the five questions I ask applies to you, I want you to stand up. And they were like, have you lost someone in your family to suicide? Does someone you’re related to suffer from addiction? Do you know someone who has been abused?
Like there were five questions all about that. And by the end of the five questions, every person in that room was standing up. I mean hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people.
If you’re an outsider, you would think that people who are traveling to these conferences and doing all this work and speaking at the state, they probably don’t struggle with these things. They probably have a great life. But every person in that room was standing up. Every person in that room had been affected by mental health, had been affected by suicide, had been affected by addiction, had been affected by abuse, had been affected by homelessness.
And it really just opened my eyes to this thing that has affected me that I have been bottling up that I thought was only impacting me is impacting probably every single person around me.
Transformative Experiences at Conferences
And then we had another project that was just youth and it was like 20, 30 people. And it was another similar thing like that. Like if you related to something like stand up and it was more focused on opening your eyes to the demographics that were impacted by them. So there were kids, I mean, we’re from a rural small town, our diversity percentage in our town is like 2%. But there were people that had the same exact experience as our town did that were in New York City, that were in Los Angeles, that were in these huge places and so that conference just like opened my eyes to not only that it’s a national crisis and that everyone is impacted by it but that I wasn’t alone.
Up until that point, I did not talk to people about what I was going through. I mean, I just bottled it up until I was broken. And now I’ve gone to the point, I speak to hundreds of people every speech I give and I’m like, I lost my brother to suicide. I have an alcoholic parent. I suffered with mental illness. Like these things have all impacted me.
But had it not been for that conference, I probably never would have talked about it because I thought nobody understood what I was going through. And I think that’s another reason why I choose to speak so much about what I’ve been through. And I bring it up all the time because I don’t ever want a kid who is in my shoes thinking they’re alone and can’t talk to anyone to think they’re alone. Because unfortunately, everyone is impacted by addiction, by mental health, by suicide, everyone.
Until you realize that it is just such a lonely crisis. Until you realize that everyone else is also impacted by these things. And so I just speak as much as I can because of Dallas. And like the next year we went to Chicago and it was just like all the information I was soaking up. I was like a sponge. Like I just wanted to learn, learn, learn, learn, learn. And then I went to DC to a conference this spring and I was learning about prevention on college campuses and I was just so excited to be able to like continue this and advocate and do all these things and I swear had it not been for Dallas I definitely would not have gotten to the point I am now because Dallas just like being in that room and knowing all those people were impacted by this crisis really sparked that flame to we need to do something about this and I’m not alone like I just it changed my life being there.
Yeah, like I remember being in that, like I of course remember that opening like plenary where like everyone stands up, right? But also like the small group when we had to like step forward to the middle if you had ever experienced these things. Like that was one of the hardest things I think I had ever done to like step forward and like admit those things to all these strangers even. And I feel like you know, we’re all gonna struggle, we’re all gonna go through these hard things, but it’s how we like react to them and how we use them to make not only ourselves better, but to help other people that really shows like your character and how you’re going to move forward.
And so like, I cannot speak, I can speak volumes about CADCA and Mid-Year and just all the ways that like those conferences really change lives. and I like to say that like prevention and Y-Link is very much like, Yes, 100% you get out what you put in. Like you can go to like a Y-Link or your prevention club or whatever it may be and just kind of sit there, not really participate, like put it on your college resume that you were part of it, but not really like say much, not really get into it. Or you can really dive fully in and use it as your platform and like change not only other people’s lives, but also your own. And I just think that.
Yeah, and another thing about that those conferences, it wasn’t even just what we were learning that was so beneficial. was being around other youth that were equally as passionate as us. Every time I came home from a conference.
I was 10 times more passionate and 10 times more driven than I was before just from being around so many other youth that cared as much as we did was so uplifting. Like being in Chicago, we were in a group. It was like 10 kids that were on ENYAC, our national board that we served on. So, I mean, these kids are the most passionate of passionate about prevention work. They serve on a national board and we learned that week together. And what we learned was honestly, I talk about what we learned in Chicago about public health and that thing that yes social determinants of health I talk about that stuff all the time But it wasn’t just that it was being in a group of ten kids who were so passionate about it when I got home It was like we need to do this project. We need to do this. We need to do that It just like those conferences make a world of difference in the world of youth prevention like social determinants of self.
And those relationships are just so impactful. I still have like our group, like it’s framed on my desk, like that group picture. Like, and I like, it’s that sort of thing that just like, keeps you going. It kind of like, it re-motivates you. It’s your why. and like now I didn’t really realize the importance of like these relationships until like I start this internship. And now like I’m calling up all these people I’ve met over the years to like talk and share their stories because like we’ve all been there. Like these are just to be around such like-minded people is so beneficial, so beneficial.
We could go round and round on this forever. Yes, we could go on and on about the people we have met. I seriously, if it weren’t for prevention, like one of my best friends I met in Chicago and like I cannot imagine my life without her. But had I not been in prevention, I never would have met her. And that’s another reason like doing the prevention work has been so impactful in my mental health. It gave me the courage and the strength to go to therapy because I got educated and realized how beneficial it is and how needed it is. It gave me a safe place of peers who understood what I was going through to be able to talk to them. It gave me lifelong friendships of people to reach out to. It gave me so many resources. It opened my eyes so that I’m not alone. Like this prevention journey has been the best thing for my mental health. Like I cannot recommend enough that students join prevention work, even if you don’t think it impacts you, even if you’re not struggling. It changes your life-changing.
I can be the first person to say that it’s changed my life in every way possible. I would not be a fraction of the person I am. wouldn’t have, I wouldn’t be down the career path that I am going down if it weren’t for that flyer in the hallway. Just to close us out, it’s time for today’s bright spot that one person who’s made a real impact kept us moving forward. And I just think it’s the perfect way to end, because we all are a little better and brighter because of the people who have guided us along the way. So Izzy, you had to pick one person who’s made an impact on you, whether in the prevention field or your life in general, who would it be? Why do you choose them?
no shock to anyone. I choose my mom. My mom is like literally the strongest person I’ve ever met in my life. Obviously the challenges I’ve gone through, my mom has also gone through. My mom was the first person to tell me to go to therapy. When I was really struggling my freshman year and I told my mom like mom, I really want to go to therapy.
She was like, yes, we’ll get you in like she’s the first person that I come out of therapy and I’m so excited to tell her about what I’ve learned and what I’ve worked on and she goes to therapy and we talk about that and she’s just always been so encouraging. She’s come to every one of my speeches even though it is so hard to give a speech in front of your mom who is the most impactful person when I in my keynote I said you have to look at the table do not look up at me don’t make eye contact with me because I will be crying but yeah she’s come to every event she’s always supported me and just been so proud of me and really my mom’s strength and like for me and my three brothers like just her strength has inspired me she’s been a single mom for a majority of my life and she has just made sure to always provide for us and always be strong for us and so I have always wanted to, you know, be as strong as she is, be as passionate as she is, and so yeah, my mom is definitely my inspiration. My mom is literally the best person ever. And everyone who knows me knows my mom. So Yeah, props to Amanda, props to a man.
She’s, she’s amazing. And she can rock any hair color, like Yes, my mom can rock any hair color. Any color you can think of, my mom has rocked it. And when I say rocked, I mean rocked.
She’s right. I will vouch. I will vouch for Amanda. I want Amanda’s team through and through. Well, Izzy, thank you so much for spending your time with me this afternoon on this episode of my podcast. And thank you for all of the phenomenal work and advocacy you’ve done in your community and in the United States as a whole. It’s really amazing. And I know I’ve told you before, I probably actually haven’t told you before because this is a little awkward for me, but you are such an inspiration to me. And I’m just really thankful.
I really think we’re more of like a banter type. So I guess you’re all right and you’ve been fun. But honestly, like it’s been really great to have a partner through this whole experience and we don’t do compliments well. We’re more of a, yeah, we’re more of a tease each other like everyone who knows me and prevention knows you like every prevention thing we’ve done it has been together yes It’s like Izzy and Reagan and it’s just, it’s really great to anyone listening. If you can find a partner to like go through it all with you, it’s you on Reddit. It’s the best.
Yes, find someone equally as passionate as you and you will get 20 times more things done. Yes, absolutely. And this work can be heavy at times, so sometimes it’s just nice to have someone to bounce it off. And sometimes you run into people that are a little more difficult to deal with. It’s nice to have someone that you can rely on. So as we wrap up, would you like to share a social media handle for either you or a prevention club that our listeners can check out if they’d like to stay connected?
Definitely check out Y-Link. My name is Isabelle Blackwood. You can find me on anything under my name. If you want to reach out to me with any prevention questions, anything like that, my email is isisabellebcarres.com. And yeah, that’s pretty much it. Definitely look into Y-Link.
Yes if you ever need someone to talk to you about Y-link, our sponsor Lori Martin will talk to you all day. Andreas is the statewide Y-link guy and he is phenomenal. So definitely I want to shout out those two people if you’re ever interested in prevention, those are your two people to meet friends.
And for anyone who’s not a Kansas person, you can reach out to me or anyone else here and we would love to help you get connected to a similar club in your area. Because as, unless you haven’t figured it out already, we are kind of supporters of that sort of thing over here. We have a couple of decent things to say about it. Lots of memories, we’ll just put it that way. Finally, to our audience members, thank you so much for giving Jake’s replacement and my friend Izzy here a chance and for the life-saving work you’re doing in your communities. It does not go unnoticed. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or someone who you think would benefit. This has been the Drug Prevention Power Hour with your host, Reagan McDonald, doing Jake’s job only better. We’ll see you next time.
