We were lucky to catch up with Kris Miller recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Kris, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
On June 20, 2019, my 15-year-old son, Nikolai, died by suicide. He had struggled for many years with an ADHD disorder, depression and anxiety. As his parents, my husband and I thought we were doing all the right things to help him. He was seeing a therapist, we were in communication with this school social workers and his teachers. However, in the end, our child felt broken, he had lost his joy, and he took his life.
In October of the same year, I was asked to be a guest speaker at a SafeTalk suicide prevention training. I told Nikolai’s story and then sat through the training myself. What I thought would be helpful, ended up destroying me. This training literally told me all the things I missed when trying to help Nikolai – the signs we missed, the conversations that should have been had, the questions we should have asked. It spiraled me into a darkness of my own – I wasn’t enough for my child. I didn’t help him enough. If I had known more, maybe he would still be here.
The thing about suicide is it leaves survivors with all the coulda, woulda, shoulda’s, It leaves you with guilt and more questions than answers.
I started therapy in December and through my own process of healing, realized that what that training taught me was that there is a lot of information regarding mental illness and suicide ideation that isn’t talked about. We only know what we know at the time that we know it. What if we could educate people to recognize the signs? What if we could break the stigma that surrounds mental health? What if we could teach people to have real and open conversations with those who are struggling?
I couldn’t save the life of my own child; however, maybe I can make a big enough impact, that I can save the life of someone else’s child.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
My journey began a few months after my son died. I started a grief blog as a way to help myself heal. Along with this blog, I started utilizing social media under the name On A Dragonfly’s Wings as a way to begin educating others on mental health and suicide.
In 2021, I left my full-time job to take a year to plan and apply for 501c3 status. In February 2022, On A Dragonfly’s Wings became an official 501c3 and our organization’s real journey began. Our mission is: To provide community support while engaging in suicide prevention through investment in mental health advocacy and youth programs.
Because my son was only 15 when he died, our organization focuses primarily on youth and families. Our ultimate vision is to build a wellness facility for kids where they can be supported both clinically and by peers. It is our hope that kids will learn coping mechanisms to help them regulate and process emotions, while finding joy in learning new things such as music, art, animal care, cooking, sports, nature, gardening, and so much more.
Until we have the means to build the facility we dream of, we plan to host our first kids wellness day camp in June 2025. It is an exciting adventure and we hope that the camp will help us better figure out direction, what our kids need, and how we can best support them.
In addition to building our camp and facility, we currently provide college scholarships to high school seniors pursuing a career in the mental health field. We also host a kids (ages 5-13) resource event every January to help them build a toolkit of coping mechanisms to help them with their big emotions. We also partner and fund many other programs in our local communities and school districts in the realm of mental health and suicide prevention.
To help us fund all of our programming, we host four fundraisers every year: Comedy Show at One Night Stan’s in Waterford (5/3), 5k Walk/Run (6/1), 9 hold golf outing (9/27) and a Halloween costume Bingo event in October (TBD). In addition, we sell merchandise/wearables on our website.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
This journey has been hard. It has only been five years since my son took his life and I literally have been advocating for others this entire time, while grieving an immense loss myself. I wanted to be impactful and to do that, there were several things I did that have made me and my organization stronger.
I decided from the beginning to focus on my son’s life, not his death. Nikolai was the kindest, most joyful kid. This is his legacy – the way he made people feel, the love he gave out so freely, the joy he spread through his infectious smile and laugh. They say that when someone you love deeply dies, to look at the best parts of that person and try and live your life accordingly. Choose Joy became my daily mantra. It doesn’t mean I’m happy all the time, that I’m not sad and don’t grieve, it’s that through all of the darkness, I am able to see the light and I choose it above all else.
When forming my 501c3, I chose my board of directors very carefully. Surround yourself with people you can learn from, who bring talents and skills to the table that are not your strengths, who see things differently than you, who push you to do better and be better. I recognized that I have a certain skillset; however, there is so much yet I don’t know. Embracing people who complement my skills was my number one priority.
Asking for help is brave. I am constantly putting on my bravery boots and asking for help. When people are struggling, we tell them to reach out, to talk to someone, to call 988, yet most times, it’s do as I say and not as I do because humans are awful when it comes to asking for help. However, I would not have been able to move forward through this grief journey without asking for help from so many people. There is no shame in reaching out. Professionally I have to ask for help all the time because there is so much I just don’t know, and that’s okay. We aren’t meant to figure out everything by ourselves.
Alright, so before we go we want to ask you to take a moment to reflect and share what you think you would do if you somehow knew you only had a decade of life left?
Contact Info:
- Website: onadragonflyswings.com
- Instagram: onadragonflyswings
- Facebook: On A Dragonfly’s Wings
- Youtube: On A Dragonfly’s Wings
- Other: Spotify: Let’s Talk About It. ALL. THE. THINGS.
