Speaker: Kris Fulkerson
Topic: Not Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining: Allowing Grief and Gratitude to Co-Exist
Where: Bella Milano – 455 Regency Park O’Fallon, IL 62269
Monday, October 30, 2023 – 11:30AM-1:00PM CST
Kris Fulkerson is the founder and President of Coping 4 Kids, started in 2007, and co-founder of the non-profit Coping 4 Life in 2016. Both organizations provide much needed social work support in low-resourced, at-risk rural communities. Kris has extensive training in grief and trauma, youth mental health needs, suicide prevention, and rural mental health. She has presented both nationally and locally, in person and online. Notably, Kris presented a national webinar on parenting teens during the pandemic through the NACG and most recently at the National Alliance for Children’s Grief National Symposium on the intersection of children’s grief and the rural mental health crisis. Kris volunteers with both Experience Camps and TAPS providing clinical care to grieving children and adolescents around the country. She was honored with a 2011 NASW Social Worker of the Year award, a 2016 YWCA Woman of Distinction Award for her work helping women and children, and the 2021 Horace Mann Reaching Out and Building Bridges Award by the Illinois Principals Association for her innovative mobile social work programs in rural schools. On a personal level, Kris is a widow raising her nine children with her amazing now husband, Jason, while she completes her Doctor of Social Work degree. Beyond her calling to help people, Kris kayaks, travels, raises her small army, and is the main blogger on Coping’s Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Let’s talk about what happens when our personal challenges collide with our professional lives, and we’re left to figure out what to do in the aftermath. As women, we are often ATAP (all things to all people) making it difficult for us to make space for our own needs during hard times. This presentation will offer one example of what happens when personal calamity meets professional aspirations in a poignant fairy tale format, complete with interactive activities.
Presentation takeaways:
All feelings are valid
Making room for our grief allows us to fully experience gratitude
Asking for what we need during personal struggle can allow growth professionally – or at least not impede it
