Month: February 2018

Shericka Smith ’05 As a young teen, Shericka Smith ’05 watched her mother at work as the director of the Salvation Army’s homeless shelter. She absorbed the many gestures of kindness and the trauma of families being separated. “Since then,” she says, “I’ve had this passion for helping families and helping kids, and helping parents stay on track so they can do what’s best for their kids.” Smith excelled as a student at Tates Creek High School and followed her sister, Shawnetta, to Transylvania, where she was able to thrive, she says, and “prove that no matter where you come from you can succeed.” In 2014, she returned to her alma mater, Tates Creek High, where she was named Kentucky’s 2016 School Social Worker of the Year. “I’ve been blessed by having opportunities,” she says. “I just felt it made sense to come back and help the same folks in the same neighborhood I grew up in and left to make a better life.” Every day is different for Smith, because, as she explains, students who experience trauma manifest it in ways that can’t be anticipated. “For the kids who act out, once we dig deeper and find out it’s because of a traumatic event, then we can work with them.” And listen. I just felt it made sense to come back and help the same folks in the same neighborhood I grew up in and left to make a

Read “Full Circle”

Kathryn Perry ’10 The Rev. Kathryn Perry ’10 steers head-on into what most of us shove aside until left without any choice: death—and prioritizing what is important during the transition from life to deaeth. As a palliative care chaplain at the University of Kentucky’s Chandler Hospital, her days straddle this life and the next for families of every background and belief. Perry’s work requires putting the self aside to enter a sacred and exceedingly difficult place, listening carefully to the needs of the most vulnerable and being supportive of her peers on the palliative care team. Together they tend “the sickest of the sick” from around the state, meeting them at any point in an illness. “Pain is physical, emotional and spiritual,” she explains, which is why the palliative care team is interdisciplinary. Much of her work is about helping people with anxiety and providing emotional support. “The listening component is one of the most beautiful things about what I get to do every day,” she says. “I invite people to tell me about their lives or what’s important to them, what they value.” More often than not, it isn’t a party affiliation or a particular argument that rises to the top—“it is spending time with the people they love, it is going fishing or watching television and eating ice cream—those very simple, seemingly ordinary pieces of life that really make us who we are.” These end-of-life lessons are ripe

Read “Compassion in Palliative Care”