Danette Gibbs

Danette Gibbs is Executive Director of the Campus Suicide Prevention Center of Virginia. With a PhD in Clinical Psychology and a background in higher education and community coalition development, Danette has spent much of her career helping people navigate challenges, build resilience, and find the support they need to thrive.

Her work has brought together individuals, schools, and communities across Virginia to strengthen suicide prevention efforts and promote wellness. But beyond her professional roles, Danette’s favorite title is “Mom,” and she aspires to make the communities in which her young children will learn and grow safer and more supportive for all.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hey everyone, and welcome to Voices of Hope. I'm Ross Wilsie. And I'm Mike Wade. Each episode, we sit down to talk about what it means to live well, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and beyond.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

We'll look at how wellness shapes us as individuals, families, communities, and even the wider world around us.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Through real stories and honest conversations, we'll explore what hope looks like and how it grows, right here in the New River Valley. Thanks for joining us. This is Voices of Hope. Danette Gibbs is Executive Director of the Campus Suicide Prevention Center of Virginia. With a PhD in clinical psychology and a background in higher education and community coalition development, Danette has spent much of her career helping people navigate challenges, build resilience, and find the support they need to thrive. Her work has brought together individuals, schools, and communities across Virginia to strengthen suicide prevention efforts and promote wellness. But beyond her professional roles, Danette's favorite title is Mom, and she aspires to make the communities in which her young children will learn and grow safer and more supportive for all.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

So, Danette, welcome to the Voices of Hope podcast. We're so glad to have you with us today.

SPEAKER_03 1:18

Thank you. It's great to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Yeah. So for folks who are listening that aren't familiar with you, can you share a little bit about yourself, your background, your education, and so forth?

SPEAKER_03 1:27

Sure. So I have a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Toledo. Um I always wanted to be a clinical psychologist and thought I wanted to see clients. And then I kind of got to the end of grad school and was like, I don't think I want to do this entirely. And I was frustrated a little bit with traditional mental health care and some of the um experiences there. And um became a professor for about seven or eight years. I was always interested in adolescents and young adults. I was interested in um education as a tool for reducing stigma and um just better mental health care. And uh so I taught at Longwood University and became an associate professor of psychology there for um about seven years. Um and now I serve as the executive director of the Campus Suicide Prevention Center of Virginia. Uh suicide prevention intervention assessment was always kind of an area of interest um since grad school and an area of research and community service work. And so when this job opened up, um I switched over to it. It was also driven by some personal family reasons. Um, but uh it was kind of a perfect fit for me and kind of almost a dream job. So pretty excited to be here.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Awesome. Well, so you're currently executive director of the Campus Suicide Prevention Center of Virginia, and that's at JMU, correct?

SPEAKER_03 2:52

Yes, we're housed at JMU, but we're funded by the State Department of Health to work with the whole state.

unknown 2:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Yeah, I was kind of wondering how that all worked, but um well, I suppose the name of the organization is pretty self-explanatory. Can you tell us more about the mission of the center and what your your primary areas of focus are?

SPEAKER_03 3:11

Yeah, sure. Uh so we've been around for roughly 18-ish years. Um, and our our mission is to um, I like to say we help the helpers. Uh, so we work to help prepare campuses and more recently, K-12 school communities in kind of doing the planning, the preparation, the protocol development, uh the policy development in order to help their campuses be suicide safe and prepare to respond to mental health crises. Um, so we do a lot of working with campuses on making sure their staff and professors and faculty, everybody are trained in best practices. We make sure that uh clinicians are trained in evidence-based practices for suicide prevention and intervention. Um, we work on policy development. Um, we don't do any direct services. Often, you know, when people hear psychologist or suicide prevention, they think about the one-to-one counseling type work. And that's not what we do. We do a lot of the planning ahead. And if a student is in crisis or if a student makes certain statements that raise alarms, how do we respond? Um who acts? What partnerships do we have in the community to um work together with in order to respond best? Um, and we take a public health approach to suicide prevention. So uh we have this kind of gear model that we like to use. And it says there's nine elements that need to be in place in order to support suicide prevention in the community, and we specifically adapt that to educational communities. So I'll run through those really briefly. Uh so the first one is identifying and assist. We need to be able to identify people who are at risk. We need to know kind of what some of the warning signs are, some of the risk factors are, and know how to help them get whatever support that they need. We need to increase help seeking. So, especially on a college campus, what's going to help students feel comfortable seeking help? Um, where do they want to get help? What kinds of help do they want to get? What kinds of messaging do we need to send out to make sure that they're open to getting help? Um, effective care and treatment. So making sure people are trained again in those best practices and evidence-based suicide care. Uh, I will say I went through grad school, it's now embarrassing to say, but 20 years ago. Um and, you know, just then was uh like best care starting to come out and actually um treatments for suicide. We used to think like if we treat the anxiety, if we treat the depression, we will the suicide will go away. Um and now we realize you can be suicidal and not have any disorder, like that can be its own thing, or um you know, you can be suicidal for lots of other reasons, and that treating depression doesn't always fix the suicidality. And so making sure people are trained in those evidence-based treatments for suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Um, the fourth one is uh care transitions and linkages. So we know that one of the biggest risky times for people for suicidality is when they get released from the hospital uh after they've had a suicidal crisis. Their risk increases by about a hundredfold for a week to a month following. Yeah, because a lot of them don't follow up with care. They fall through the cracks. Referrals get made, it takes a long time to get into care. Maybe they don't like someone, or you know, some barriers haven't been addressed that are going to keep them from getting care. And so we work to make sure that there are plans in place to follow up with people, to do warm handoffs, to make sure that when a student leaves a campus for the summer, they have the care that they need. Um, when they're transitioning back to campus, whether they're going to study abroad. There's lots of transitions the kids go through. We want to make sure that they're not falling through the cracks during those. Um, another one is responding to crisis. That's probably what people most think of is when a kid expresses significant suicidality, when we think they're an imminent risk or very high levels of risk, what protocols do we put in place? Who's doing what? Who's responding? How do we decide if they need a higher level of care than we can provide on campus or in a school? Um, and how do we make sure that they can return and make that transition back as easy as possible? Uh, lethal mean safety is a big area. So making sure that um we actually help campuses do an environmental scan and identify um areas of risk on their campus, everything from um making sure that like rooftops are locked and windows might not be easily accessible to making sure that chemicals are locked up by their facilities. And then, of course, you know, access to firearms and medications that we have options for people in periods of high risk to limit their access to those.

SPEAKER_02 7:59

Right.

SPEAKER_03 7:59

Um, and then connectedness and belonginess is another one. So um building uh connections between students, making sure that they feel a place where they can belong, make sure there's lots of options for clubs and places where they feel like they have access to others and feel part of the community, make sure that mentorship is in place. Um, they can find uh trusted adults that they can connect to, whether in a school or on a higher education campus. And then the eighth one is life skills and resilience. So, especially college students, you know, they're kind of adulting for the first time and they're sort of adults, but they're sort of still our babies and our kids. And so helping them, they're managing their health care often for the first time in their life and have no idea how to do that, um, in addition to laundry. Uh and so helping them really learn how to do some of those basic life skills that we know can spiral out of control, financial difficulties, relationship difficulties, those are often precipitants for people to attempt suicide. And so we want to help them build those skills and we want to help them learn to bounce back um from failures or from big struggles. And then the last one is postvention. So after a death happens on a campus, we knew that increases risk for that campus. And so, what are the ways that we can respond that are going to decrease risk as opposed to increase risk? How do we memorialize that student and honor that student's life? How do we support their friends and family members in a way that's going to be helpful for them? How do we support the broader campus community uh through that? How do we communicate about it, et cetera? And so um, so we take this broad public health approach, kind of looking at all these different areas and helping campuses and schools build these up. Um, and we also encourage collaboration. So a lot of times there's people on a campus that there might be one or two people doing this work, and so they can feel kind of isolated. And so we try and uh provide connection between campuses, between schools where they can share ideas and resources and do shared problem solving and support one another.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

Wow. Sorry, that was a really long response. No, that's great. I mean, I I love all of those, especially the connectedness and belongingness one. I think I I remember back to my college days and how important it was for me to feel like I had a group of a social group and just people that I could rely on. So that that seems like one of the bigger ones in my mind, at least. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's great. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 10:25

And I I will actually say one other piece that we do that I don't want to forget about on the higher education campuses is we also work on training future professionals because we know that those graduate students and mental health programs and helping professions are going to be our front line in our state and beyond soon. And so we try to make sure that we're getting those best practices and care, that awareness of suicide is a risk into those programs and helping students become prepared because they're also responding even today as students to their peers. Um we do a lot of training of future professionals as well.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

Great.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Yeah, that's really great. So just in terms of how the uh campus suicide prevention center approaches um working with young people, has that evolved at all with the um advances in social media technology, that kind of thing? Has that has that evolved over time?

SPEAKER_03 11:22

Not a ton, uh, because our goal is more on helping helpers. Um and so we don't do that much with students directly. Okay. We do talk with the helpers about, you know, things to pay attention to in online student behavior. If there's a student risk or if there is a death that's occurred on campus, then we might have them, you know, encourage them to track social media. And honestly, a lot of the campuses are doing this better than probably we would, you know, they're already out of the game on that. Um, I mean, we talk a little bit about messaging and how you message things, how you uh increase help seeking using um digital tools and social media uh posts and those kinds of things. Right. Um but for the most part, that's an area that a lot of campuses are already pretty advanced on.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

Yeah, makes sense. Um all right. Well, you've had a few different roles working in the field of prevention. So what is it about this work that you find so appealing?

SPEAKER_03 12:24

Sure. Uh so I think I mentioned earlier, um when I was going through training, I don't think I even realized prevention was a field uh that I could get into. You know, I thought the way to help people was to do one-to-one counseling. And then I found myself um seeing patients and getting frustrated because so much of what they were dealing with was systems level issues. Um so I could help them change their thoughts and change their behaviors, and those things are super important. But if I couldn't fix some of the sucky systems, if I can say that, uh, that they existed, then I, you know, things weren't gonna get better for a lot of them. Um, and so I started to learn about systems level change, and that was something so appealing to me. Um, I also once heard somebody say that a psychologist's job is to put themselves out of a job um by teaching people good mental health care and how to take care of themselves and take care of their brain and their well-being. And to me, that's what prevention is. Um it's getting ahead of the curve instead of waiting for things to get terrible and hoping that that person might be able to actually access mental health care. We know so much of the population never will access mental health care, even though they need it. Um, or they won't access the level that they need. And so I feel like prevention just opens up a door for us to meet, have a much greater reach in the population. Um, I also kind of fell into the world of uh suicide prevention. It wasn't kind of what I went to grad school for, but um, the other research that I was doing with my supervisor, kind of by my second year of grad school, he was like, Well, I'm wrapping up that line of research. And I was like, I'm still gonna be here for a few years. What else do you do? And it was suicide prevention stuff. And I was like, I don't know how you do that, but you can teach me and I'll, you know, do whatever I need to do to get my degree. Um, and then I fell in love with it because I found it so much less deficit driven. Uh, you know, when you go into the traditional mental health care, there's a lot of focus on diagnoses and everything that's wrong with you versus um the world of like suicide prevention is much more about like how can we build a system that supports you, makes life worth living, uh, and less about like giving you a diagnosis and then treating all the things that are wrong with you. And so that that's also been a um really appealing piece to me.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

Well, and how can we help other people help those folks that need it? I think to me that's that's an exciting part for me personally.

SPEAKER_03 15:10

So absolutely. Yeah, you mentioned the connectedness and belongingness piece earlier, and community is so important. And um, I agree, like building communities and places, environments in which people want to live and feel supported is huge. Um and that's just so rewarding when we can help foster that.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Definitely.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

So having worked in this field for over 26 years now, I feel like um we as a society and just uh public in general have become more comfortable with having open conversations about behavioral health challenges, whether it be mental health, substance use, whatever the case may be. Um, but with that kind of context, do you feel like we've made any progress in peeling off some of the stigma that tends to be associated with suicide or suicidality?

SPEAKER_03 16:05

Absolutely. Um, we still have a long way to go.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

Right.

SPEAKER_03 16:08

Uh, but we have made huge strides. I think back to um when I was in grad school, I worked on a research study that we did a very basic suicide awareness um training. And uh I was one of my responsibilities was to recruit people to attend that training. And um I called families and I always asked to speak to the mom uh because I didn't even think dads would be interested at all. I thought it was gonna be a hard enough cell to get the moms to come, um, being the more, I guess, traditionally emotional connected parents. Right. And now I'm like, of course we're gonna invite dads. Dads are crazy, like we should invite them. And so I think, you know, in my own like personal experience, that feels like that's been a shift. But I also look at things like 988 and getting 988 was huge. I never thought I'd see that day. And so now have a national three-digit line to support people in crisis is amazing. And then the recent um, you know, so signing of the decriminalization bill by Governor Spanberger on decriminalizing suicide in Virginia is just a huge representation of moving away from some of the stigma so we can encourage people to seek support and encourage families to not just bury themselves in further stigma and shame to get the support that they need. And so I think I think that's great. I think, you know, suicide prevention training is more common. Um and people are just a little more suicide aware that it's a little more on their radars now that that could be a risk factor. I think back to when I was in college, I do remember someone attempting when I was in college at a fairly small school. Um, but I don't think it was something I walked around and regularly like had my radar up about for my peers. And I think that's different now for students. I think they're very aware of their peers and their mental health and how they're doing.

SPEAKER_00 18:08

Yeah, I agree. So, Danette, you mentioned um, you have mentioned a few times suicide prevention training. And I know you can we can spend, you know, a day, two days more than that, on receiving training for uh suicide prevention and how to how to handle a situation that we may uh come across in our lives. But if you're able to, just tell me if someone I'm concerned about, um, to the point that I'm worried they may be contemplating suicide. If I have somebody that like that in my life, what's the best way to help them? And if you can put that into like an answer on a podcast, you know, that sounds so difficult, but sure.

SPEAKER_03 18:47

Yeah, yeah. Um I would say just ask. Um, just be open and don't be afraid of whatever answer you might get. Don't think you have to be trained. Like, I think training is good and training is important, and training helps people get more comfortable, but we can get so focused on needing to be trained and professional about something that we can lose our humanity. And for me, I think just being human and authentic with someone and say, I see you are really struggling and I'm worried about you.

SPEAKER_02 19:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:23

Are you thinking about suicide? And just asking and being able to get the word out, I think is really important. Um, to not be like, all right, here's thinking about anything bad that makes it harder to talk. Um but yeah, just being comfortable asking, and that's that's hard. That's really hard. But uh, and then being open to whatever answer you get and not panicking. Um, I think you know, over 50% of the population experiences thoughts of suicide at some point in their life. It's it's a fairly common human experience, and the vast majority of those people never attempt suicide and certainly don't die by suicide. And so we don't need to panic, we just need to be able to talk about it. And then follow up would be another thing. So ask and don't think like we got through that conversation. I'm never, you know, that's check. Uh, you know, don't be afraid to ask again. Uh, don't be afraid to connect with them regularly. And if definitely if they are thinking about it, connect regularly, follow up with them, support them, getting whatever help they need. And help does not have to be professional. It does not have to be one-to-one counseling. For a lot of people, it's just talking and finding a safe place to be able to talk. For some people, it is professional counseling help. And if that's what they need and that's what they're open to, great. Um, but it doesn't always have to be that. And then finally, I would say um, lethal means are really important. Um, and so if somebody is at really high risk, helping them remove access to firearms temporarily while they're at really high levels of risk can be life-saving, can prevent them from acting on an impulse that they wouldn't normally act on. Um, removing access to really dangerous medications like opioids can also be life-saving. So they don't impulsively act on a threat when they're not, you know, in their right frame of mind, when they're feeling kind of particularly emotional.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

I am so glad you made the point about not needing to go through any kind of like formal training to be equipped to support someone in their time of need. That it really is just being about uh a human being checking in with an a fellow human being and and being concerned and coming from a place of compassion and concern. I I think that's so important.

unknown 21:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

Absolutely. Yeah, I mean it just takes the pressure off a little bit. I mean, thinking of the situation as as something that you can come into naturally as just somebody that who's there to help. I think it's great.

SPEAKER_02 22:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:01

Absolutely. Yeah. So, Danette, we shared in the intro that you are also a mom. Um, does that aspect of your life play into how you approach your work? And if so, how?

SPEAKER_03 22:12

100%. Um, thank you. I love talking about my kids. I'll try not to talk about them too much. Uh you know, it just adds a lens, uh, for sure. So when I talk to campuses and schools, I'm thinking about what does the law say? Um, what is feasible in a school environment with all the different pressures that they're responding to? Uh, what is acceptable? You know, what are people actually gonna do and their behaviors and, you know, what they're willing to take on and not. Um, but I think, you know, having kids, I'm also thinking about what's the student response? What's what's the kid response? What's gonna be the parent response? What do I want, what supports do I want available for my daughter when I'm not always gonna be there? Um, you know, as college students, parents don't get to find out everything until it's really, really bad. And I don't want to wait. I don't want my daughter to have to wait for things to get really, really bad before I get contacted. I I want her to have the support she needs so things will never have to get really, really bad.

SPEAKER_02 23:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:18

Um so and I, you know, I think about parent responses and what they want to know and how they're gonna feel about things. I think about the child developmental level. Um, I think about my daughter. I mean my daughter's seven, and I I also have a two-year-old, and you know, we're just learning our basic words right now. So it's not a lot of emotional conversation right now, it's all about balls. Um but uh but my seven-year-old, there's a lot going on with her peers. There's a lot of emotions going on. There's a lot of things that get confided in each other, and I know that's gonna increase as she gets older, and that a lot of times students tell things to other students that never get relayed to the adults. And so what does she need to be equipped with? How can we equip our students to support each other um and to know when they need to take it to a trusted adult um for greater levels of support? So yeah, I think it affects definitely the lens through which I see things.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

Well, this is kind of a big question here, but what do you what would you say is the most challenging part of your job?

SPEAKER_03 24:22

I think convincing people prevention is important is probably uh the most challenging piece. So, and that plays at many different pieces of the work. So funding, there's never enough funding for anything, but certainly prevention, it is hard to convince people um to invest in something that's hard to measure our impact. Um, because when you prevent something, you don't know if it's gonna happen or not. Right. And so um it's hard to demonstrate the financial return on it in some ways. And so it always seems that prevention is underfunded, but also convincing schools and campuses to invest the time and energy that they need to create these policies and protocols and support systems. Um often we get contacted or people become receptive to our services after a crisis happens um or after a death occurs.

SPEAKER_02 25:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:22

And we are so thankful they're willing to reach out to us. And we would love to have that not be the number one time that people reach out to us. We would love to work with them sooner. So yeah, definitely kind of just preventing that. And then I'm gonna cheat and give a second one.

SPEAKER_02 25:40

Um no problem.

SPEAKER_03 25:41

So I I think it's also easy for schools and systems to get into a checkbox mentality. Like, what does the law say? Are we in compliance? And to lose the human piece, to lose sight of what is the student feeling. Um, you know, especially we've expanded our work in the K-12 schools recently. And there's a lot of laws and a lot of guidance about what you should do with that student. And we got to make sure that this person is notified by this time and that these people are looped in and that we have done this paperwork and we have given this assessment. And sometimes the student gets lost in that of what is that experience like for them? How traumatizing or hard or scary can it be? And is that going to shut them down so they never seek help again in the future? Um, and so just that going back to your humanness and your authenticity and compassion and letting that drive the work and not a risk of liability, not a risk of, you know, a lawsuit or anything like that. Um, but letting compassion and humanity lead.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And and I would say that I think y'all you've done a great job of supporting that message with, you know, we don't have this um in our questions here, but I think I'll just promote it for you, maybe the supportive together.org uh website. You know, it looks like y'all just looking through that website have done a really good job of going helping people go through each step of the process from prevention to through postvention. And um, so great resource. Uh thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 27:24

Yeah, I'll just highlight that briefly. Um, so I've mentioned a couple of times that we've expanded our work at the K-12 schools in really the past year, year and a half. Uh, and so Supportive Together was an initiative we launched and we launched a website, um, supportive together.org, that basically takes the Virginia Department of Education guidelines for best practices and suicide prevention in K-12 schools. And we've tried to put it in a more accessible, friendly um format online, along with resources to kind of support implementation of that. Um, and so I appreciate hearing that like the humanity wasn't lost in that as well.

SPEAKER_00 28:00

Yeah. And if you go to if you don't need to go to it right now for any other reason, go to it to play around with the little uh the ball, the little bubble things. It's so fun. Like I'm just doing it right now. There's these little little balls that kind of congregate wherever your mouse is. I love it anyway.

SPEAKER_03 28:18

Yes, it's yeah, it was uh very subtle. We had a great web design company. Um and it was a very subtle way of saying like when somebody needs help, others kind of congregate around them and come and support them.

SPEAKER_01 28:29

Yeah, I love it. Awesome. Ross just proving that he's a multitasker. And Annette, uh, I'll just underscore the point that you made earlier about prevention work being underfunded and undervalued. I don't think anyone could argue with that. Yes, thank you. I know you all feel it at the CSB for sure. For sure. So let's switch back to you um specifically. How do you maintain your own personal wellness?

SPEAKER_03 29:02

Yeah. Um making sure I'm walking the walk, huh? Yeah. Um yeah. So to me, you know, and Ross and I have already kind of emphasized this, but connection is so important. Um, and so, you know, making space for people in my life is important. Uh that's kind of forced by having two hike tiny humans that I go home to every day that demand my attention and connection. Um, I have a wonderful husband who supports me, and uh, you know, we're a team, and that is great. But connection outside of my family is also really important. Um I am a strong introvert, and so socializing is exhausting.

SPEAKER_00 29:45

And I have to You're in good company. Yes, you are.

SPEAKER_03 29:49

I have to really pace myself, but I know that caring about and for other people and being involved in a community where we have interdependency on each other is so important. Um, it helps me keep perspective on my problems when I see other people suffering and in need. Um, and it also provides support for me when I'm in need. And so for me, a faith community is really important, also connection to um God for me is really important. And so that's probably the biggest way. I also like to spend a lot of time in nature. Uh, and so um when I when I don't want to be around people, I like to be around the trees. And so to kind of help me uh recharge. Um yeah, and then I think knowing my values and as I'm getting older, maybe I'm getting more um settled in those and really know kind of what drives me and what's yeah, what motivates me, uh, what keeps me going is really important.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

Yeah, I love that answer. Thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 30:53

Um, well, since you're on the Voices of Hope podcast, we do want to ask you, what does the word hope mean to you?

SPEAKER_03 30:58

Is this something you ask everybody?

SPEAKER_00 31:01

It certainly is, yes.

SPEAKER_03 31:02

Oh man, I should have listened to other people's.

SPEAKER_00 31:04

Uh no, this yours will be totally unique.

SPEAKER_03 31:08

Well, yes, yes, you are getting my unique answer. Um so I'm gonna couch this a little bit. I do work in suicide prevention, and so hopelessness we know is one of the biggest predictors of suicidality. Um I also come to this having struggled myself with you know suicidal thoughts as a teenager. And I think about the times when I felt hopeless and what was that, and what's the difference between that and not being hopeless or having hope? And so for me, um, hope is still having options uh and seeing some sort of potential path forward that I have some personal agency in. Um, so not being handed a path uh that I may or may not want, but having some choice and seeing some option for taking another step forward.

SPEAKER_01 31:59

Yeah, love that. Yeah, that's great. Well, uh Danette, we are closing uh our time here with you, but uh before we let you go, any final words of wisdom to share with our listeners?

SPEAKER_03 32:13

My first thought when I saw that question was nope.

SPEAKER_01 32:20

Okay, good night, everybody.

SPEAKER_03 32:23

Um it is still hard for me to fathom that I have any wisdom to share, but um, I would say again, just emphasizing that community piece. Um don't overprofessionalize, just be there for each other, let compassion and care and concern for others lead you. Be willing to ask the hard questions, be willing to have uncomfortable conversations, be willing to be vulnerable. Vulnerability to me is just one of the most beautiful things. It creates authentic connection with others. Be willing to sacrifice a little bit. Caring and compassion and concern for others and doing the work that helps save people's lives sometimes means sacrificing time and sacrificing your comfort. And but that's what it takes, uh, sometimes. And so I would say just be willing to lead with your heart and truly connected people.

SPEAKER_01 33:21

Beautiful. Well, I think that I think that's a great way to uh close out our interview. That was great.

SPEAKER_03 33:29

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 33:30

Well, Danette, you've been very great. What's that?

SPEAKER_03 33:33

I was like, hopefully you got something there that works.

SPEAKER_01 33:36

No, it was great. It was great. So thank you so much for your time. We've uh we've really enjoyed the conversation today.

SPEAKER_03 33:42

Thank you. I appreciate you guys.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

Thanks for listening to Voices of Hope. If you enjoyed today's conversation, we'd love for you to rate and review the podcast and help us spread the word. Voices of Hope is a production of New River Valley Community Services. To learn more or listen to past episodes, visit nrvcs.org slash podcast. And remember, hope grows when we share it. So keep the conversation going, and we'll talk to you next time on Voices of Hope.