The DTB Podcast, Presented by Bless Your Heart Nonprofit Corporation · The DTB Podcast

S3E6 - Beau and Michelle Brooks

·59 min·3 clips

Sean Harrison told Bo Brooks, "You have tomorrow," after Spencer's Down syndrome diagnosis.

Jarae Jean-Banjaro opens the show while filling in for the regular host, Brennan Mathurne. She introduces Bless Your Heart Nonprofit Corporation and the shared commitment that has shaped the family’s work around disability inclusion. Jarae explains that she and her brother Ross serve on the Bless Your Heart board and on the DTB Podcast team. She also grounds the conversation in family history, including growing up around six siblings on her father’s side with Fragile X Syndrome and the memory of grandparents raising uncles at a time when they were not accepted in public. That background gives the conversation a personal tone before it becomes organizational. Bo and Michelle Brooks join the show from that same local frame. They talk about their son, Bo Spencer Brooks Jr., who was diagnosed with Down syndrome at birth in 2015, something they were not prepared to hear. Out of that family reality came Upside Downs, the local nonprofit they founded. The interview keeps its focus on lived experience. Jarae asks the kind of setup questions that let guests tell their own story in order. Bo and Michelle answer by connecting family, diagnosis, and service without losing the human details. The show makes room for the ordinary language of community life. It also makes room for the harder truth that many people still do not regularly interact with kids or adults with special needs. The 3-2-1 Dash becomes one of the episode’s central examples. Michelle describes it as the largest 5K in the area. She says it keeps getting bigger and bigger. The event is not only for people with Down syndrome and their families. It is also for the broader community. The episode lingers on what that means in practice. People help along the route. They cheer. They cry. They leave with a deeper sense of connection. Michelle says the event can feel therapeutic because it gives others a chance to see people with Down syndrome as part of everyday community life. The conversation does not treat that as abstract progress. It describes specific moments of recognition and support. Jarae responds with the kind of affirmation that keeps the exchange moving. The tone stays warm and unhurried. World Down Syndrome Day comes into the discussion as a natural touchpoint. The 3-2-1 Dash usually falls right around March 21, a date tied to the three copies of the 21st chromosome. That detail gives the event a symbolic frame, but the episode keeps returning to the local version of the story. Michelle talks about a friend, Craig Blackburn, who has Down syndrome and ran the Crescent City Classic. She says the race allowed him to wear the 3-2-1 bib. This year, they presented that bib to Craig to run their 5K. The moment lands as a small but meaningful act of recognition. Michelle says they plan to do the same for another individual who runs the Crescent City Classic. The episode treats that kind of handoff as part celebration and part welcome. It shows how community events can create space for people to be known by name and honored publicly. That is the heart of the conversation. It is not polished. It is not abstract. It is neighborly, direct, and rooted in a specific place. The closing settles back into the show’s larger mission. Bless Your Heart and Upside Downs are presented as part of a wider effort to make inclusion normal rather than exceptional. The episode keeps its footing in family and service. It never drifts far from the people doing the work or the people being welcomed into it. By the end, the listener has a clear sense of how one local family turned a personal diagnosis into a public practice of belonging.

As heard by us

A warm local interview about disability inclusion, family, and community action.

The episode keeps its focus on inclusion for people with disabilities in family life, nonprofit work, and the wider community. Bo and Michelle Brooks talk about their son's Down syndrome diagnosis at birth and the local nonprofit they founded, Upside Downs, to support that work.

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Why you'd press play

You want a local story about a Down syndrome diagnosis, a family nonprofit, and a community that shows up.

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