Title:
Izzy’s Path: From High School Advocate to Cancer Survivor and Nonprofit Influencer

Subtitle:
Isabella Grimmer’s Tribute to Pediatric Cancer Awareness Month

Transcript:

Alycia Anderson: Welcome to Pushing Forward with Alycia, a podcast that gives disability a voice. Each week we will explore topics like confidence, ambition, resilience, and finding success against all odds. We are creating a collective community that believes that all things are possible for all people. Open hearts, clear paths.

Let’s go.

Welcome back to Pushing Forward with Alycia. I’m Alycia Anderson. We have one of the most important and amazing special guest on the show today. A lot of you have been hearing me, goo goo and ga ga over my event that I had at Presentation High School at the beginning of the year with these amazing girls who created this disability advocacy week, and they invited me to come speak, and there was just a beautiful moment of camaraderie and we just had a moment together and I knew when I met some of these young women that maybe eventually one or more would end up coming on the show.

And we got one today and I’m so excited. We’ve got Izzy Grimmer. She and her classmates invited me to come speak, and I remember thinking when I was rolling away, this is the future of disability advocacy.

Like from a practical perspective, from a compassionate perspective, and from a let’s get our hands dirty and do the work and get in and make some change for the future. I’m so excited that you’re here. Her brother was diagnosed with a disability at a very young age. I’m gonna let her talk about that a little bit.

And she’s had some challenges in her own life herself. She just beat cancer her junior year of high school. Unbelievable. She founded a disability advocacy club. She’s built a website that helps neurodivergent students access accommodations. She’s launched a social group for individuals with intellectual disabilities.

She partners with an organization called Magic Bridge. She’s doing all of this post kicking cancers bottom, and she’s just a powerhouse. I am so happy to share space again. Izzy, welcome to Pushing Forward with Alycia. I’m thrilled to see you.

Isabella Grimmer: Thank you so much for having me. The pleasure’s all mine.

Alycia Anderson: One other shout out. It is Pediatric Cancer Awareness Month. And to my community. Anything you can do to show up for patients, families, and take local action to donate and support, like we need to be doing that. And in Izzy’s honor.

Okay, icebreaker, let’s do something fun before we get a little heavy, not too heavy, but three words that your friends would use to describe you.

Isabella Grimmer: Ooh, that’s a tough one. I think three words my friends would use to describe me, probably first and foremost is bubbly. I try to be a very happy and smiley person around campus. I think that’s, an important part of my life. I think the second word would probably be leader. I do tend to embody that role in a lot of places in my life. And then I think the third would probably be hardworking. I do try to do my best to work harder. I think my friends would agree with that too,

Alycia Anderson: I think those are all perfect words for you and I wanna add one more like excellent ally and friend, like you could, I felt like you were my friend immediately from the moment we met. So I can’t imagine what that would be like for your actual friends that are in your day-to-day life. Yeah.

Okay, let’s look back a little bit. Let’s start at this amazing event that we had. You and your classmates created a disability advocacy week.

Isabella Grimmer: What sparked this movement, the want to educate your classmates about disability?

Alycia Anderson: And what has inspired you to be a movement builder, like an advocacy educator? Can you talk about that a little bit?

Isabella Grimmer: Sure. So for disability advocacy week, it actually started really small. I’m part of this club at my school called Community Involvement, and one thing we try to do is just small things to make the world, a better and our pre campus better to, groups. So I remember after a meeting one time, our leader had asked, does anyone have any ideas for our next meeting?

And I had remembered. Disability rights as a really big issue that I care about personally. My brother Eli, was diagnosed with autism when he was two years old. He’s profoundly autistic. He is nonverbal. He also is unable to read and write because of his intellectual disabilities. And I noticed a lot of the attitudes that I saw on campus towards people with disabilities. We’re really negative, things from outright looking down on people with disabilities to using language like, oh, he’s autistic. Or using the R word as like an insult or joke with your friends. So I think that really sparked me to want to do something about it, and me talking to our, teacher, our amazing teacher, miss New, who’s in charge of community involvement, talking to her, really started sparking some dialogue. ultimately we ended up teaming up with two other girls. It was a friend of mine and then another friend of mine who herself is disabled. And that really introduced the physical disability aspect.

And it all snowballed into this is an issue we care about and this is an issue we care about. This can’t all be covered in one meeting. So how about we just plan a week? And so, disability advocacy Week and Awareness week was a week at our school centered around raising awareness for a variety of different disabilities and conditions. So we wrote a school-wide lesson that every single person in the school listened to that we’re hoping to convert to an assembly this year and we just talked about what a disability is and how you can be a better ally. And obviously probably the most impactful part of that whole week was having Alycia come speak to us, and that was just a really incredible experience. So that’s about advocacy and awareness week, like in terms of my own advocacy and why I care about it. Obviously I have my brother, I’ve seen him go through just unimaginably difficult circumstances, not because of his disability necessarily, but because of the structures that are built that hold people like him back.

So I’ve definitely seen that. I’ve also worked really closely with friends of his and individuals, mostly with intellectual and some physical disabilities as well. I’ve seen the ways in which our society is not built for them, and I’ve seen the ways that we can do better. So I think is what really inspires me and pushes me to keep doing the work I’ve been doing.

Alycia Anderson: Yeah. And you’re you talk about it so eloquently ’cause and I love, and I wanna give like a shout out and prop to number one. I appreciate you saying I was the highlight. Yay. But. I think the highlight of that week, and I’m gonna give my highlight is seeing how many students showed up.

I wasn’t there the whole week, but I know my session wasn’t mandatory and that library was jampacked. You could hear a pin drop on the ground. So that told me that everybody was very interested in learning more and the engagement was very high level and I felt like we could have sat there for five hours and just talked through a lot of things and that’s.

That’s props to you and your team, your students, to set up a event that was engaging and was safe and really gave space to have these conversations. And you not only did it for an hour, and this is a like. 4 1 1 to the companies that are listening to this podcast that do an hour a year hire me to come in for an hour, we’re done.

You invested a week of time, a week of planning, and you broke down the conversation in so many different levels. That is how change is made is like continually dripping and teaching and continuing the conversation. You all did that, like for me, I just had to show up and be me. So you just did a really good job.

And I’ve been using that example on stage and with my other clients because when you have students coming up to me afterwards, like Ritika, saying she was so afraid to grow up disabled until today. That was one of the most meaningful statements that anybody has ever said to me before.

And if I can have a small piece in helping you all expand that, it’s so amazing. So congratulations. That’s the tip of the iceberg. If you can create energy like that at your age the sky’s the limit. So that’s really amazing.

Isabella Grimmer: Thank you.

Alycia Anderson: What’s the advice to friends, to be better allies or to get more comfortable with the conversation of intellectual disabilities, autism, any disability, can you speak to that at all?

Isabella Grimmer: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I think people are very uncomfortable with intellectual disabilities. In fact, I’ve noticed people are even uncomfortable calling people intellectually disabled because they see that term itself as demonizing. They see calling someone autistic, which is, the diagnosis that they’ve received or calling someone intellectually disabled, they see it negatively because it’s used so frequently as an insult.

Just yesterday I saw a post where someone in the comment section said, oh, he looked so autistic at the end about, a non-disabled person. I think seeing things like that makes me realize how little knowledge people have surrounding intellectual disabilities and conditions like autism. So I think the biggest advice I could give to anyone is first, the same advice you give to anyone trying to be an ally to any community is get informed. So learn about how people with these disabilities identify themselves. Learn about what the condition is learn about what their lives look like. I think you’d have a lot more empathy for someone with an intellectual disability or someone with autism if you actually took the time to learn about the disability, and then maybe you would be a better ally because you wouldn’t be, making jokes or excluding people. So I think the biggest thing for me is just to learn.

Ignorance is completely in your control. If you can take the steps to learn something and be a better ally, then you should do it a hundred percent.

Alycia Anderson: Ignorance is in your control. Powerful statement. I like that a lot. You’re so right. Great advice. Really good advice. You’ve been busy creating programs and doing a lot of work. Let’s talk about that a little bit. You founded a disability advocacy club. Should we start with the club and let’s talk about some of the work that you’re doing, trying to educate and create resources.

Isabella Grimmer: Yeah, so that’s a really good place to start actually. ’cause I think that’s really where we got our starting off point. So Ritika, who we mentioned before, had started a smaller club that was under an umbrella and hadn’t really gotten in the ground up. It was called the Special Needs Advocacy Club, is what we called it, short for SNAC, which I think is fun and. As she was going to graduate and she was thinking about the legacy that she was gonna leave behind at PRES, she came to me and another student and asked us to take on this project of SNAC, which was, her child at PRES. And so we really took that seriously and we took it, to a different level.

So what we did is we applied to become an affinity group at PRES and affinity groups are basically groups that are built for a certain minority group to feel comfortable and safe on campus. thing that’s really cool about them is your club won’t get closed if you don’t have as many participants at every meeting.

Because oftentimes there won’t be, 30 disabled students at Presentation High School. But for maybe the three or four we have, it is so important to have a safe space. So I think Special Needs Advocacy Club that is now Affinity Club really started centered around that safe space. individuals with disabilities and we have seen a very large turnout, from people who are part of that community on our campus, which is great. other part is education. So we definitely wanna teach people to be better allies. So each of our meetings we center around a certain topic. And then another part is service, because we go to Presentation High School, which is such a service-based and action-based community. We really try to commit ourselves to do a service project every semester. For this semester, we’re inviting a local special education class into to have lunch with us in a best buddy style program.

I think the mixture of actually meeting people with disabilities. Learning about disabilities and then also having a safe place for disabled students just creates a more of an environment for people to be better allies and to be better just having conversations around disabilities that aren’t so uncomfortable.

Alycia Anderson: That’s incredible and I love that you’re taking on that model and I think. That you’re right. Like the more interaction that you have with somebody with a disability your biases start to come down. And then when you move into your careers and you are the people that are hiring and doing the things, you maybe won’t have those biases and you’ll hire people with disabilities and give them opportunities.

So I think that is crucial and amazing. So what about this accommodation website that you’ve built? Can we talk about that a little bit?

Isabella Grimmer: No. Yeah, that’s great. So over the summer I actually did this program, I’ll give them a shout out. It’s the Stanford Neurodiversity Program outreach. So what they do is they basically bring together high schoolers who are incredibly passionate about neurodiversity and disability, they unite them to learn from Stanford professors and other guest speakers.

And then at the end of the week design a project. So my group is called Accommodate Me.

I can send you the link to the website of course. our goal really started when we were talking about our own struggles that we faced accessing accommodations. realized that neurodiverse students have so much to give to the world and are often held back by things that are completely out of their control, like their ability to access necessary accommodations. And so, essentially we started a website to try to make that process a little easier. We have pre-made email templates requesting accommodations. We have a list of common challenges associated with conditions and accommodations you can receive to, help mitigate those and make it so that you can learn and perform your best. And something that was really exciting that we actually did just last week was our team, a few of our team members presented at the Stanford Neurodiversity Summit and we got to present our work and answer a few questions. And that was a really exciting opportunity to share what we had been working on, and hopefully get our project even more off the ground.

Alycia Anderson: That’s incredible. Oh my gosh. Congratulations. Wow. What’s the goal there? Like where do you think you can take this?

Isabella Grimmer: Hoping to take it pretty far. I think our goal is to implement it into schools, especially schools that don’t have the supports in place. I think right now we’re very much focusing on our local community, but at one point we wanna branch out to colleges. We’ve just started our college partnerships, so we’re actually interviewing a few schools. They’re like accommodation overseer, I guess we’re going to interview them to see how we can also make the website work for colleges. And I think it’s just a really good opportunity to help a group that often gets left behind. Especially in public schools where you have this is the special ed class and this is the like general education class.

And then the people who need support but also are able to take the general education classes, they get forgotten. And I think that’s a group we just wanna make sure isn’t being left behind anymore.

Alycia Anderson: Powerful. Oh my gosh. Okay. And you’re doing all this work during last year. Can we talk about your year last year? A little bit. I know you were diagnosed with cancer pretty much like 10 days after we had our event, which was shocking to me. Whatever you’re comfortable with, will you share your journey with disability and how that has advanced your advocacy and your passion and drive to continue this work?

Isabella Grimmer: Yeah, so I know something that I had always been taught about disability advocacy, and I think it’s when you said during your talk was that disability is the only minority group you can enter and exit. Throughout your life. And I think that’s something I didn’t really understand until about 10 days after we wrapped up our disability advocacy week, which thank goodness I got through that. About 10 days later, I noticed that my left arm was swollen, so I went to the ER. I was presenting blood clots, symptoms, and when they sent me to get a CT scan, they discovered that my blood clot was being caused by a mass, about the size of an iPhone in my chest that was pressing down on one of my arteries. So that was really shocking to find out. At the time I was 16, I was very healthy, very active, always, dedicated to school and things like that. It really just came out of nowhere and it felt like, everything came for a moment to a screeching halt. So I started chemotherapy on my 17th birthday, so that’s a fun fact. I was in the hospital initially for three weeks. I ended up going home and being in and out of the hospital for the next few months, because of, I had stage three primary mediastinal, B cell lymphoma, which is a pretty rare and pretty aggressive cancer. It required very aggressive treatment, so I’d be receiving chemo, seven days a week, and I’d be pretty wiped out, and I had to rely on my family members to take care of me in a way that I hadn’t really before. So I had to, have help just to get up to use the restroom or shower, eat, and like all these things I had taken for granted. And it really made me realize like how different the experience of depending on others is. My brother Eli, he, from the moment he’s born until the moment he dies, he will be reliant on my parents for everything. His disability really limits his independence and it made me realize like how different your life looks when that’s limited. And it made me realize how much just isn’t built for people who have that limited independence. I struggled in certain areas because, it’s just society wasn’t built for, people who need that kind of help. I think it really just made me realize that it’s so important to make sure that structures exist, that can help people with a variety of disabilities and people who rely on others for help, or even just people who have, differences in disabilities. It just made me realize how important that kind of work is, and it really also made me realize how fragile life is.

I realized I had been worried and preoccupied with all these kind of silly problems looking back, they still matter, but they were silly. that kind of made me realize that I really want to dedicate more of my life to something that actually matters, which is disability advocacy. So I think that helped clarify that for me.

Alycia Anderson: Oh my God. It’s so incredible and you are cancer free and remission like powerhouse, everything is going good.

Isabella Grimmer: Yes, I’ve been in remission for three months now.

Alycia Anderson: Wow. I think that story right there is, it’s unbelievable, honestly. And even me sitting here with a disabilities like, my gosh, like what? What you went through at your age, you’re just so incredibly strong and resilient and it’s a testimonial to resiliency and like just, getting in there and fighting and getting it done.

So congratulations on that. What do you think, how has it been since you’ve been back to school? What, how has it been with your classmates? Is there advice that you could give them for other younger people that might be going through cancer or diagnosis that come on like that?

Have you? Is there anything that you can share there?

Isabella Grimmer: There’s definitely advice I can give classmates who haven’t experienced cancer and there’s advice I can give people who have experienced cancer, I think they’re very different. The thing that I’ve noticed coming back to school is that a lot of people. I did it too. So I’m not saying this as like a ooh, but a lot of people do complain about things that kind of don’t matter as much and that are actually privileges.

So complaining about the fact that you have a test on Friday, that’s okay. But it’s also important to reflect on the fact that not everyone gets to receive an education or not everyone can be in school for a test and like complaining about waking up early is okay, but you woke up this morning isn’t that incredible? So I think the biggest piece of advice I would give anyone is to start recognizing some of the challenges they face. As privileges. And I think that mindset shift really helps you just to lead a happier and more productive life where you aren’t so focused on, getting bogged down on things that you can’t control and you’re more focused on what you can do. And then I think if I were to talk to someone who just got diagnosed with cancer, that would be a hard conversation. But I’d probably say that surviving cancer is really hard. But once you’ve made that step and you’ve survived cancer, it’s the best place to be in. Your life will be different and you will gain so much clarity and so much knowledge that it’s like really hard and you don’t really want to get there.

But once you do, your life is gonna change and it’s gonna be for the better. I, you’re not gonna be glad you got cancer. That will never happen, you definitely will be glad that you have the perspectives that you have to go on to live your life, you’ll feel more mature than other kids your age. You’ll feel more like you understand your life a little better, and I think that actually ends up being a really valuable skill as we go into, the next parts of our lives.

Alycia Anderson: Ugh. Challenges or privileges. I love that. And creating awareness of your life. Going through hardship is a thing, and I agree with you that if you don’t go through the hard stuff, you don’t actually know what it feels like to feel really good when you get through it. Like I remember years I went through just like a failing.

I only have one kidney failing kidney. Like having all kinds of problems and looking back like I was facing mortality myself. And when I got better, I was sick for a really long time, and when I got better I was like, oh wow. Like I was alive. Like I didn’t realize how good it felt to feel good again. Until you’re given that privilege from going through all those challenges. So I think that was really beautifully said. And I, your path is just absolutely, you gotta write a book or something you’re gonna be a motivational speaker. You’re speaking so eloquently.

Isabella Grimmer: Thank you.

Alycia Anderson: I’m envisioning you on stages.

Isabella Grimmer: That’d be fun.

Alycia Anderson: So yeah, I think that’s in your future. Thanks for sharing that. I think it’s a beautiful thing for you to share that with our community and with the world. I think like disability, a lot of people are curious about cancer, especially as a child, and we don’t openly talk about those things hardly at all. I don’t think I’ve ever, this is probably my first conversation that I’ve ever had about it openly myself, so I’m navigating delicately on my end too.

But it’s, I think it’s a very important conversation and I really appreciate you sharing the path.

Isabella Grimmer: Thank you. And I think before we move on to a new topic, that’s the thing with these conversations that I think is so important, having them makes them less uncomfortable. And I appreciate that people wanna treat it delicately, but I do feel like sometimes when you’re a patient, it feels like people are bouncing around you.

So I think if you’re ever having conversations, and I’d imagine this be similar for disability and you can tell me if it is, it’s very important to just ask as if the person you’re talking to is a human being and does understand the gravity of what you’re talking about. And I think it’s important to be upfront with these conversations.

So I’m very glad that you’ve had me here to talk about it. I think that’s great.

Alycia Anderson: I love that you just said that and you said it before we got on you wanna talk boldly about this, you talk about it openly, often this is your life, and it’s a powerful part of your life. So I I think that you are helping a lot of people today. And I’m sure every single moment of your life, honestly, you helped me just by strolling through campus together and just being around you is something really like cool.

Isabella Grimmer: Thank you.

Alycia Anderson: Yeah, I genuinely mean that. Anything else on that topic before we move on to Magical Bridge?

Isabella Grimmer: No, I think that’s good. Yeah, we can move on.

Alycia Anderson: Okay. Just congratulations on kicking cancers back. Yeah, you’re strong. You, it’s amazing. Okay. Magical Bridge organization. Tell me what is this partnership?

Isabella Grimmer: Yeah, so Magical Bridge is a really incredible organization. I’m very, I love them so much. So essentially their goal is to make the world more accessible to everybody. So they started out in Palo Alto when they noticed that there weren’t a lot of playgrounds where someone with a disability could play alongside someone who is non-disabled rather than having to be separate into what’s accessible and what’s not. So they wanted to create a place where there’s really a sense of community between disabled and non-disabled people. So they designed a playground. They, it’s a huge playground. It’s very beautiful. If you haven’t been, I highly recommend you go. Something that you’ll notice is that it’s all wheelchair accessible.

There’s not one section that’s accessible and one that’s not. It’s all wheelchair accessible so that every person with a disability is also able to play alongside every person without a disability. A lot of the features are also designed for people with intellectual disabilities with, for people with autism, even ADHD. There are, it’s a lot of neuroscience actually went into it, so there’s something for everybody and it’s designed with so much thought and so much care, and over time it became seen as this place in our community for people with disabilities to really find their, find their place and find their community. And so they started working on programming as well. So one of the programs that they work on is Magical Tennis. I’ve been a part of that. There’s concerts that are accessible. I’ve been a part of that. And then one that I’m launching in partnership with them now is the Magical Friendship Club.

Friendship Club is just a place for people with intellectual disabilities to find that sense of community that’s often missing. I think about my brother and I think about the friends he has. And honestly, the numbers are pretty low. A lot of people don’t wanna talk to him. And so I thought, what if there’s a way to bring people with intellectual disabilities together so that they can find community amongst themselves?

And that’s what we did. So we’ve really looked into the fact that play is really powerful in uniting people with disabilities who can’t always vocalize or verbalize their feelings. And so we provide fun activities and play. It’s really helped foster some really strong connections I’ve seen, and I think its a really great opportunity to give people with intellectual disabilities a community that they oftentimes aren’t, given.

Alycia Anderson: There’s so much to unpack right there because number one, I agree, like having a place where people with disabilities, children with disabilities can come together and find community and play is huge. Like huge. I used to go to a kids camp when I was little for one week out of a year, and it was the one time I could blend into a crowd.

It wasn’t like the only one. That I found friends that understood me. And the play piece, if I could take it one step further, it not only builds community and helps you with like socialization, but it also allows you to master your disabled body, however that is, to learn how to like function, navigate the world through play.

Like I know for me. I learned to become one with my chair, and that, and like really be efficient in it. So whatever that disability is like navigating through playing and socializing in community is I think the most organic way to figure out how to like navigate life. So that’s amazing.

I need to get involved in Magical Tennis and beyond will you invite me to come Please.

Isabella Grimmer: Yes, absolutely. Oh my gosh, it’s a blast. It’s so fun.

Alycia Anderson: Wow. So that’s amazing. So are you’re volunteering with them or what’s your position there? Like where?

Isabella Grimmer: Over the summer I did an internship with Magical Bridge. I was, my official title, I believe was Magic Maker, which is a pretty fun title to have. This fall I have started my Girl Scout Gold Award project, which is what Magical Friendship Club is a part of. So that’s where I’m at now.

I’m a volunteer. I’m doing, my Girl Scout thing.

Alycia Anderson: Oh, I love that.

Isabella Grimmer: Making change.

Alycia Anderson: I love it. Did we miss any of the organizations or any of the projects that you’re working on? I dunno how you’re doing all of it.

Isabella Grimmer: Oof. Yeah. I don’t think we missed any. Yeah.

Alycia Anderson: I think we got ’em. I think you’re hitting everything. ’cause it’s like you’ve got community, you’ve got the tech, you’ve got the resources, you’ve got the advocacy, you’ve got the lived experience as an ally and now a disabled person. It’s a full package. I don’t think you’re missing anything.

Isabella Grimmer: I’d hope so y eah. But I’m always trying to be better and learn more and, understand this community better.

Alycia Anderson: Yeah, so how can our community support, donate, get involved? We’ll leave all the links for all of these organizations, but if you had a grant right now, a small grant, what would be your North Star to invest in to grow?

Isabella Grimmer: That’s a good question. I think before I fully answer that question, since we are talking about the donations piece right now, it is Pediatric Cancer Awareness Month, and I wanna shout out an incredible organization I work with for pediatric cancer purposes. It’s Unravel Pediatric Cancer. It was started by Miss Libby Kranz, and I highly recommend you donate there.

They fund pediatric cancer research, which is chronically underfunded by, the government, by, donations. So I highly recommend you donate there to help more kids. But onto the question of what I would personally do with the grant, I think that’s a really tough question to answer because there’s a lot that I wanna do and a lot of change.

I wanna make one thing that I notice that’s a really. Big issue is the fact that a lot of teenagers like me, not like me ’cause I have my brother Eli, but a lot of teenagers have not really even ever interacted with someone with an intellectual disability.

Exposure can make those connections so much more natural. So if I were to be given a grant, I would probably start some kind of program that partners teens with an intellectually disabled individual and can help both get to know each other better and start to understand each other. I think I’ve definitely tried to do things like that in the past.

It’s hard to get teens to want to participate and come volunteer in something that’s not required. But if there was a way, I could either speak to schools, something like what you do, or we could just invite people in and say, this is just an opportunity for people of all abilities, for anyone to connect.

And then it would just be more natural. I think I’d probably start some kind of a program like that just to show that like we don’t necessarily need society to be grouped into this is for people with disabilities and this is for people who don’t have disabilities. Like should be working together.

And actually, okay, I wanna change my answer now on what I would do, I would create a program to help disabled intellectually disabled people access jobs. Even simple jobs like working in a supermarket or wiping down the table at the restaurant. I think it’s really hard for a lot of employers to justify hiring people with intellectual disabilities, even though they’re perfectly capable of doing these jobs, and it benefits both groups. Diversity in the workplace is beneficial for the company, and people with intellectual disabilities really benefit from being able to do work and be a part of society, and I think that’s something that. We are doing majorly wrong as a society right now is shoving people with intellectual disabilities away and saying, you stay over there.

You don’t enter with us. And it should be more like, come in, come to our work, come to our schools, come to do this with us. So I think that’s what actually what I would do a job

Alycia Anderson: I love that. And you’re, I agree with you 100%. And what the world needs to understand is the organizations that are hiring people with disabilities, intellectual disabilities, to come in and do the work. They show up early, they stay late, they’re efficient, they get the job done. They’re proud of what they’re doing.

And this whole bias that we have that things won’t be done right. Perfect. All of it’s just it’s not true. Like it’s simply not true. So.

Isabella Grimmer: 100 percent.

Alycia Anderson: I love that’s your goal and it’s beautiful. Did we miss anything?

Isabella Grimmer: Oh gosh. Nothing I can think of.

Alycia Anderson: I’m so proud of you. And I’m not trying to be like a weird adult, but I am so proud of everything that is you. Seriously, congratulations on being a total boss, a total leader, and just getting so much done for our world. It’s really beautiful. More people need to follow your lead, honestly.

Isabella Grimmer: Thank you so much. I really appreciate that.

Alycia Anderson: Yeah, anything that I can ever do to support you, introduce you to organizations like all our friendly organizations that are out there. Follow Izzy, donate to her. Like all the things like you’re gonna change the world and you already are so.

Isabella Grimmer: Thank you so much.

Alycia Anderson: Good job. Yeah. Yeah. And I’m so happy that we’re in each other’s lives.

We need to be in contact more often ’cause you’re.

Isabella Grimmer: Yes! Definitely.

Alycia Anderson: Love it. Okay. I warned you it’s the pushing forward moment. Do you have a little advice or mantra or something that you live by that keeps you motivated and inspired and grounded and happy?

Isabella Grimmer: I think something that I’ve been living by, that I talked about earlier with my cancer experience is challenges are privileges. So to me that means being stressed about my academics is a privilege because it means I get my education. It’s recognizing the fact that a lot of the things you are stressed about, it’s a blessing to be under this pressure.

They always say pressure makes diamonds. So maybe that’s what I’ll say, but

Alycia Anderson: Ooh. I love that. That’s a perfect pushing forward moment. One of these days when I have 365 pushing forward moments, I’m gonna reach out to you and say, we’re putting together one of those like motivational calendars, and that’s gonna be my favorite one. Challenges are privileges. And when we’re under pressure, it creates diamonds, love, sparkle.

Izzy, thank you so much for sharing all of your magical magic on the show.

Isabella Grimmer: Thank you for having me.

Alycia Anderson: Yeah, our community’s gonna love this so much. I’m so excited to share it. And it’s coming out this week, okay. This has been Alycia and Izzy on Pushing Forward with Alycia and pushing forward is absolutely how we roll on this podcast.

We will see you next time.