Women’s Center’s 32nd Annual Luncheon
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Stockton Civic Auditorium
11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
(Doors open at 11:00 a.m.)

Sponsorship opportunities are available ranging from $500 to $5,000
(reserve tables available for $350)
Click here to download the sponsorship packet

Individual lunches - $40 each
Click here to download the luncheon invitation

See you at the Civic! This year the Women's Center's Annual Luncheon returns to its original home at the Stockton Civic Auditorium in downtown Stockton.

This year's keynote speaker, Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, is an expert on trauma and self-care who has worked directly with trauma survivors for over two decades, including survivors of domestic violence. Laura initially engaged in her work with great passion and commitment, and with a sense that it was a privilege to serve others. But over time, the work changed her, until she realized her work had compromised her ability to be present in her life, enjoy her relationships, and even be an effective social worker and educator.

In 2000, she quit her job as an emergency room social worker and began an urgent quest for wisdom that would allow her to preserve her trust in life and its beauty even when doing work that guaranteed exposure to endless waves of pain. Her explorations took her from Buddhist monks and nuns to qigong healers to Native American medicine men and women to the latest scientific research on the effects of prolonged exposure to others’ trauma. Embracing both the joy and the sorrow of our life experiences is at the root of her concept of trauma stewardship.

Laura offered her first workshop on trauma stewardship in 1999. Since then, she has trained a wide variety of people, including zookeepers and reconstruction workers in post-Katrina New Orleans, community organizers and health care providers in Japan, U.S. Air Force pilots, Canadian firefighters, public school teachers, and private practice doctors. In 2009 she co-authored Trauma Stewardship:An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others, and founded the Trauma Stewardship Institute, raising awareness and responding to the cumulative toll on those who are exposed to the suffering, hardship, crisis, or trauma of humans, living beings, or the planet itself.

For more information, please visit the Trauma Stewardship Institute's website.