2025 Gratitude Report

When Light Arrives: The Moments You Make Possible Prairie Sky Counseling Center • Gratitude Report for 2025 • prairieskycc.org

Dear Friends of Prairie Sky, Those of us who live on the prairie learn to pay attention to light. We notice when it changes — the way a late afternoon in October turns the grasses gold, or how the first gray morning of spring carries something different from winter. We know the particular quality of light after a thunderstorm, when the air has been washed clean and the sky opens into something luminous and new. We learn that light is always changing. And we learn to trust that it comes back.

That is the work of Prairie Sky. Meeting people in the storm, and staying with them until the light changes.

When we opened Prairie Sky, we hoped to build something rooted enough to grow. In 2024, we found our footing. In 2025, we felt the light arrive. Together with you, we delivered 1,222 counseling sessions — nearly double the year before, and a milestone we will not soon forget: crossing 1,000 sessions for the first time.

Behind that number are real people showing up week after week — sometimes in crisis, sometimes just trying to keep going, sometimes not sure why they came at all. Healing is rarely dramatic. It is mostly quiet, unglamorous work. But it is work that changes lives, and it does not happen without a safe place to do it.

This year we also launched our internship program, welcoming the next generation of counselors into the work. To train someone not just in technique but in what it means to sit with another person in the dark — and help them find their way toward light — is its own kind of hope for what Prairie Sky will become.

None of this happens without you. Not the sessions, not the interns, not the open door.

You are how the light gets here.

With deep gratitude,

Alice Alice Carrott Board President

Jen Jen Wewers Executive Director

The Moments You Made Possible Joyce, 74 I lost my husband of 49 years in the spring. People kept telling me I was strong. I didn't feel strong.

My daughter found Prairie Sky. I almost didn't come. I thought, what is a therapist going to tell me that I don't already know? That grief takes time. That I need to stay busy. I'd heard it all.

But it wasn't like that. Nobody told me how to feel. Nobody rushed me. For the first time since he died, I had a place where I could just say the true thing — that I was lonely, that I didn't know who I was without him, that I wanted to make new friends but didn't know how anymore at my age.

I'm still figuring it out. But I'm not sitting in our living room anymore, looking at my husband’s empty recliner.

Daniel, 27

I'd been struggling for years before anyone gave it a name. When my doctor finally said bipolar disorder, part of me was relieved — and part of me didn't know what to do with that. A diagnosis isn't an answer. It's just the beginning of a lot of questions.

I came to Prairie Sky not knowing what I was looking for. Mostly I just needed someone to help me understand what was happening in my own mind — why some weeks I could do anything, and other weeks I couldn't get out of bed.

My therapist didn't flinch at any of it. We talked about the hard stuff and the boring stuff and the stuff I was embarrassed to say out loud. Slowly I started to feel less like my diagnosis was something happening to me and more like something I was learning to live with.

Camille and Andre, 40s

We love our kids. That was never the question. The question was whether we were doing right by them — whether the tension between us was showing up in ways we couldn't see, whether we were so focused on our individual relationships with the kids that we'd forgotten we were still a team.

A friend suggested couples counseling. We both resisted. We weren't in crisis, we told ourselves. Things weren't that bad. But that's exactly why we went. Not because we were falling apart — because we didn't want to.

What we found at Prairie Sky was a space to say the things we'd been quietly carrying. The resentments that had never quite become arguments. The fears about whether we were getting it right. Our therapist helped us hear each other in a way we'd stopped doing somewhere along the way. We're not a perfect team. But we're a better one.

To protect confidentiality, these portraits are composites inspired by the experiences of real clients.

Names are fictional.

Who the Light Reached

Clients come for an average of 12 sessions Ages Range from 12 - 83 40% of clients are 20 - 39 years old 1 in 6 clients are over 65 Nearly double the sessions of 2024 from 695 sessions to

1,222 Counseling Sessions

The light reached further this year.

Because of you.

What Makes the Light Possible $9

$62

$150

per intern session 182 sessions avg sliding scale session 627 sessions full rate per session 413 sessions at full rate or insured rate

At Prairie Sky, we believe that access to care should never depend on the size of a paycheck.

That commitment has a cost and you help us meet it.

In 2025, nearly two-thirds of our clients paid less than our standard rate of $150 per session.

Some paid $62. Some paid $9. The gap between what care costs and what people can pay is where your giving does its most important work.

Last year, donors like you contributed $144,026 in unrestricted gifts ensuring that the mission didn't just survive its second year. It grew.

Our 2025 Finances at a Glance Every dollar entrusted to Prairie Sky is managed with care. In 2025, in addition to your generosity, we drew on reserves to fund our growth, ending the year with a strong foundation for what comes next.

Cash on Hand, January 1, 2025

$228,883

Donations & Investment Income

$147,485

Fundraiser Revenue

$46,754

Program Revenue

$84,457

Total Expenses

$(349,373)

Cash on Hand, December 31, 2025

$159,943

The light doesn't spread on its own. You are how it gets here.

Under the Wide Prairie Sky: A Morning of Healing and Hope On the morning of November 6, 2025, close to 150 people gathered for Prairie Sky's first annual breakfast fundraiser, Under the Wide Prairie Sky: A Morning of Healing and Hope.

Keynote speaker Kendall Gammon, former Kansas City Chiefs long snapper and mental health advocate, set the tone for the morning — reminding the room that asking for help is not a weakness.

Guests came to reflect, to connect, and to recommit to the work of making mental health care accessible in our community.

They heard from diverse voices, but all said one thing: mental health care matters, and Prairie Sky is doing the work.

Executive Director Jen Wewers put it simply: "What began as an idea shared on a patio is now a place of healing and hope. And under this prairie sky, healing should always be within reach."

Together, attendees and supporters raised more than $105,000 in donations and multi-year pledges. For a two-year-old organization, that is not a small thing. It is a statement of trust.

We are humbled and grateful. And we are already looking forward to next year.

Thank you to the sponsors who made the morning possible: Alice Carrott & Al Eidson Patty & Harvey Grossman Karen Reimer & Steve Hewlett

Passing the Light Forward More Hands More Light Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion. - bell hooks When Lauren Plummer joined Prairie Sky in January 2025, she brought more than clinical credentials. She brought a decade of experience at the intersections of pastoral care, community education, and social justice — and a deep belief that healing happens in relationship.

As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Lauren specializes in helping people understand themselves within the context of their relationships — with partners, with family, with community, and with themselves. Her arrival allowed Prairie Sky to intentionally expand its work with couples, serving ten couples in 2025 who came seeking clarity, connection, and the courage to face what was hard.

Lauren also serves as site mentor for Prairie Sky's first internship program, in partnership with Friends University's Marriage and Family Therapy graduate program — creating the kind of open, curious, warm space where someone new to the work can ask hard questions, make mistakes, and grow.

Prairie Sky is shaping my "way of being" in the therapy room. The open, nurturing space they've created for student therapists is, I realize, exactly the kind of space I want to create for my own clients to learn and grow.

I feel so cared for.

— Rebecca Haessig Student Therapist

B R E A K FA S T

F U N D R A I S E R

Under the

Prairie Sky Save the Date T H U R S D AY O C T O B E R 2 2 , 2 0 2 6

14895 Antioch Road Overland Park, KS 66221