Kim Fuller - The Fuller Life Concepts of Southern California

By Monica Montgomery

Photos Provided by Kim Fuller

You can’t help but feel a little jealous when you first meet Kim Fuller. Whether it’s the Southern California sunshine at her back, her eyes full of joy, or her bright smile full of light, you find yourself happy to have met her.

Kim Fuller is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, psychotherapist, author, trainer, founder, and CEO of Fuller Life Concepts, Inc. Fuller Life Concepts, Inc. is a mental health and wellness agency that helps women, children, and families manage anxiety and depression using evidence-based models. Kim’s vision is to be a nationally recognized mental health and wellness agency for Black families and people of color.

Helping people has been Kim’s passion from a young age. She shares, “I’ve wanted to be a therapist since junior high school. I took an elective that allowed me to work as an office assistant, and I would see the students coming in to talk to the counselor. I thought it was cool that the students had someone they could go to for help. My mom was a principal, and I would sometimes chat with the psychologist at her school about what they did. So, I am one of those unusual people who have known for pretty much my whole life that this is what I wanted to do.”

Whether you believe in signs or destiny, life experiences helped confirm that Kim was on the right path. “As I said, I always knew I wanted to study psychology. I had a friend in high school who struggled with her identity. She was Asian American, but she wanted to be white. S o much so that she contemplated ending her life. I wanted to understand what she was going through.”

Kim received her bachelor’s in psychology from California State University, Fresno. “I grew up in a pretty diverse small town in Central California, but there were no dating opportunities. I wanted to go where the men were,” Kim said with a laugh. “While there, I spent a summer with some friends, and one of the girls took a bunch of sleeping pills attempting to commit suicide. I was the first one at home, so I found her. This was another level of depression and feeling helpless for me. The challenge was that it was kind of dismissed when we got her to the hospital. They just sent her home like it was no big deal. We were only about eighteen or nineteen, so we were just kids, but there was no additional support for her or us, her friends who found her,” Kim explained. “That was traumatic, but we were just sent home. I felt like this person needed more. That night we all stayed together, none of us wanting to be alone after the experience. The next morning, I called home and started bawling as soon as my dad spoke.”

“I’ve wanted to be a therapist since junior high school. I took an elective that allowed me to work as an office assistant, and I would see the students coming in to talk to the counselor. I thought it was cool that the students had someone they could go to for help.”

Kim credits having the support of her parents as being one of the biggest reasons she could pursue her passion. That experience compelled Kim to want to fill those gaps she and her friends experienced. As a result, Fuller Life Concepts focuses much of its energy on anxiety, depression, and trauma in adolescents and children.

After receiving her bachelor’s degree, Kim’s first job was with the VA hospital in their inpatient/outpatient substance abuse clinic for about a year. “I worked with a doctor researching cessation, like how to get veterans to stop smoking. That was a vital time because it helped me realize two things. One, the cessation of substance abuse and tobacco use was not my area. Two, veterans were not my population. My dad was a Vietnam vet, so that was too close for comfort. My father was my hero, and to imagine he was suffering the way these men were, was a little more than I could take.”

Thinking ahead to her next steps, Kim decided to go back to school and get her master’s degree in counseling from California State University in Long Beach. “I focused my graduate studies on marriage and families so that I would have a broader range of options in my career field.”

Kim’s first paying job was with an agency called LA Child Guidance, now Wellnest in South Los Angeles. “At LA Child Guidance, we worked with severely emotionally disturbed children and their families. Our goal was to help create stability within the family so the children could remain in the home. We wanted to avoid having them go into a higher level of care,” she says.

She started as an intern, but once licensed, Kim was promoted to Director of the center’s learning program. “I really loved that position because I was able to help the older teens and young adults. They still needed support. Some of them were transitioning from foster care, and at that time, you transitioned at age eighteen. Since then, the laws have changed, and it’s closer to twenty-five.”

Transitioning from a minor to adulthood is difficult for anyone, but it’s compounded for young people who have aged out of the foster care system. They lose any semblance of stability and support. This is what the program Kim worked with provided. “We partnered with the department of rehabilitation to give them on-the-job training, life skills, and experience. I am really proud of the work we did in that program.”

Seeing the work she did as important, Kim took advantage of every opportunity to make a difference in the lives of those who needed it. “Eventually, I left LA Child Guidance and took a position at a different agency as Director of the outpatient clinic. I managed supervisors and programs. Thanks to the fullservice partnerships with the state. We created programs that focused on the underserved and the inappropriately served. This meant we could do early intervention before things got to really bad.”

As a mental health provider, Kim admits there were periods in her life when she had to ask for help. As a black female, Kim comes from a culture of strength, but that strength was also a stumbling block when life took an unexpected turn.

“I met a wonderful man. We were both single with no children, and we both loved to travel. We did everything from skiing, sailing, scuba diving, hiking, and camping we did it. We spent about thirteen years of our lives together, but he was diagnosed with leukemia soon after we met. He initially chose to keep it to himself. So, we continue to live and enjoy life together. He was told that because of chemo, he was infertile,” Kim winced then laughed. “To our surprise, we came up pregnant. Thankfully we were blessed with a healthy baby girl. My husband died when our daughter was less than a year old.”

With the demands of her career, the loss of her best friend and life partner, and then instantly becoming a single parent, Kim was starting to struggle under the weight of it all. “So much happened in that year. I got married, I had a baby, and I got a promotion. Then in one month, I was demoted, and my husband died. A few months later, I left my job completely.”

Kim prides herself on having a fantastic community of supporters, but when she needed them most, she didn’t know how to ask for help. “Call it pride or ignorance, but I just couldn’t reach out. I was featured in a book about 16 successful Mompreneurs. The book starts with me trying to get a car seat into a rental car on the day of my husband’s funeral. There I am, frustrated as I struggle and tussle with trying to install this car seat, and I’m just all over the place. The thing was, my parents were standing right behind me, watching. They didn’t offer because I was so sensitive at the time that I would have snapped at them. So… I continued to struggle. It would have made sense to turn around and ask for help, but that’s not the culture.”

Along with working to help children and families heal and live their best lives, Kim focuses on bringing light to the black and brown community. “We believe seeking social-emotional help is not a “black” thing. That’s not true. I was grieving and a hot mess, but I wore my mask every day because the culture said I couldn’t let anyone see my pain. I had to break down and find help. Fuller Life Concepts dispels the myth that only white people do mental health. Black women and black men are just as likely to deal with trauma. My goal is to let them know that there are people who look like them and understand who they are and where they come from that can help. That’s what the Fuller Life is all about.”