Cassandra Marie Kelly-Conn made a deal with a higher power when she was struggling with addiction.
“I always promised God if he ever got me out of this situation, I would do something for myself and to help somebody else,” she said.
She is making good on that promise. For herself, she’s on an educational journey that started at Virginia Peninsula Community College. For others, she’s the founder of Beyond the Break and Lucille’s House. The former is her business that offers support for youth and family members of addicts. The latter is named after her late mother and is a non-profit.
It hasn’t been a straightforward journey for Kelly-Conn, who was among three panelists at a recent discussion called “Understanding Addiction: Recovery & Resilience” hosted by VPCC President Dr. Towuanna Porter Brannon as part of her series “Tea with Dr. B.” She was born in Newport News and attended Warwick and Ferguson high schools, growing up in a home where she said everything was sheltered. She married at an early age and had twins. Things appeared fine. However, she and her husband would party recreationally on weekends. She suffered a miscarriage and her husband left. Those losses were triggers for her.
At age 22, she became an addict, and soon her only friends were fellow addicts. It was like that for 15 years before she had her talk with God while she was incarcerated. Soon after she was released, and while in the initial stages of recovery, her mother passed away.
Kelly-Conn attended peer support groups while in jail. When she was released, that continued, as she found them invaluable. They led her to VPCC in fall 2020 at the age of 40.
“I knew I had to do something with helping people and reaching out to people,” she said. “I decided to go to Virginia Peninsula Community College just to take a couple of courses in Human Services. I never in a million years thought it would progress to me going as far as I’ve gone.”
How far is that?
After earning an associate degree in Human Services (while serving on the program’s student advisory board), she transferred to Old Dominion University, where she graduated in 2025 with a bachelor’s degree in Human Services and a Substance Abuse Counselor Assistant certificate. She’s now at Norfolk State University working on her master’s in social work.
“When I got into Virginia Peninsula Community College, I was just blessed with Dr. Keisha Samuels, Marian Clifton and Sharon Simmons,” she said. “Those women were like mother figures to me. They saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. I get emotional when I talk about it because I had just lost my mom.
“I was so broken, and in that time of my life, I met Dr. Samuels,” Kelly-Conn continued. “She is just so amazing.”
Kelly-Conn wants people to know addicts shouldn’t be judged by their addiction.
“That doesn’t determine who we are as people as a whole,” she said. “Some people fall and get up. It’s possible to get up. It’s hard, but it’s possible. And I’m grateful for the people who were in my life, who continue to just stay in my path, in my corner, the entire time.”
Furthermore, she never will act as if her troubles didn’t happen.
“I would hate to look at somebody else in the same situation I was once in and look down at them,” she said.
For Kelly-Conn, VPCC was more than a place where she received an education. It was part of the healing process and played a significant role in her recovery.
“It was therapeutic,” she said. “it was a place for me to heal. It really was.”
She understood addiction from an addict’s viewpoint but attending VPCC allowed her to learn about it from the clinical aspect and apply it in the real world.
“I can go sit with anybody and talk to them. I can reach people,” she said. “Some people can’t, and it’s just because I’ve been there.”
She’s not sure where she would be without VPCC, but doesn’t believe in coincidences.
“Virginia Peninsula Community College gave me my life back,” she said. “It showed me that I was smarter than I thought; that I had what it took to be somebody; that I was worth the time of the day; that I could offer more than I thought I could to people, and that I was valuable.”
As a firm believer in God, she said He didn’t bring her this far to fail. Her mother was a devout Christian. Near the end of her mother’s life, her doctor asked what kept her living.
“And she (my mother) said that one day God would get me together,” Kelly-Conn said. “Her favorite quote was, ‘He heard what I said.’”
Kelly-Conn believes He did hear her mother. She wants to help others now.
“If I could do anything to help somebody realize their potential, then that’s what I want to do,” she said. “That’s what I feel I was saved for.”