Writing from "Detours" - Trusting the Power of a Personal Story for Universal Appeal

In this keynote, learn how to combine multiple mediums, including music, dance, poetry visual art, the power of the spoken word, to gain confidence in your own personal story having universal appeal.

Learn how to transform any "detour" in life into a story worth sharing.

In the process, these writing exercises will help you to transform any adversity into creative growth, and cultivate resilience. As a survivor of various traumas, including nearly 30 surgeries, sexual abuse, PTSD, and months in a coma, Amy will share her own story, shedding light on how she recovered and was empowered to reimagine her identity from various artistic disciplines. Being able to finally share her story with community allowed her to reintegrate into society, receive empathy, feel heard, and ultimately heal through telling her story. But she learned that words can frequently take the longest to verbalize, an often, it takes “dipping your toes” into different mediums in order to bring your own story to light.

Come learn how humor plays a role in storytelling and healing, and stories connect us to community, and how we can use the archetypal hero’s journey, symbols and mythology to not only share our individual stories, but share them in a universal format which bridges communities and creates group empathy. Amy will also perform segments of her autobiographical musical which initially told her story, monologues from a new play exploring her grandmother’s journey to tell her own story, and art she created in a surgical ICU in order to find the first words to express her “detoured” journey. Learn what a “Detourist” is and discover and to turn any “detour” in your life into a creative path to healing, resilience, and reimagined identity.