Talks that Heal

My name is James LaVeck. I am an author, blogger, coach, and actor.
It took me over 20 years to tell my story. I first started writing about it in 1997. It was two years beyond the death of my first husband, and I was only 30 at the time. As much as I wanted to share the story then, it wasn’t until late 2019 that I felt I was ready. You see, I needed the perspective another 20 years of life would bring, and I needed my second husband’s death and my recovery from that trauma to get to a point where I could tell the story truthfully, painfully, and as uplifting as I could make it.
I released Life After Losses following the 7th anniversary of my second husband’s death. I followed up with Moving Past Grief: A Collection of Stories and Strategies to Help Heal and have created a workbook of Thirteen Strategies to Help You Heal from Loss. I want to help people learn to live, even in grief. In May 2024, I released by third book, which is less about me and more about you and your healing journey called Grief Recovery for Adults where I share a framework for finding a renewed sense of self and purpose.
I have developed several coaching programs to help navigate not only grief but also living life to the fullest in happiness.

In her 27 nursing year career, Yvonne Heath has worked in Canada and the USA, in many areas including emergency, chemotherapy, long-term care and hospice.

She became disheartened by our society’s reluctance to talk about, plan and prepare for grief, transitions and end of life and wanted to create change.

In 2015 she founded Love Your Life to Death and continues to shares her message with heart and humor. She is most passionate about supporting nursing students, future healthcare professionals, caregivers and Compassionate Communities.

When they are not travelling and speaking- Yvonne and her husband Geordie (Jordy) can be found wearing socks and sandals in their happy place in Huntsville, Ontario, along with their several pets.

Steven Case is that snort-laugh you hear at the back of the church during the prayer on Sunday morning.
A 30 year veteran of youth ministry, speaker, workshop leader, and writer Steve Case can interpret the musings of a 17th Century Monk, create moving monologues based on God’s closest encounters in the scriptures or create laugh-out-loud fart jokes in ways that would make any back-row church lady scowl.
You are allowed to laugh and you are allowed to pray and these two things need not be at odds with each other.
Steve Case is available for workshops, keynotes and conferences to speak to groups of all ages on humor and the scriptures. Feel free to shoot him an email at steve.case.speaks@gmail.com

Daniela helps stressed and burnt-out professionals set themselves up for success by overcoming stress and burnout, productively managing daily tasks with ease, and having the time and energy for self-care every day!
She has been an LMSW for 27 years, focused on self-care, stress management skills, mindfulness, relationships, parenting, and managing all the chaos of life. Her mission is to empower you to prioritize yourself on your to-do lists and learn the strategies to makeover your daily life.

Daniela Wolfe / Best D Life – Helping You Find the Bliss in Your Busy
www.bestdlife.com

Amanda Johnson alchemizes twenty-five years of transformative experiences through story literacy, writing, and narrative medicine to fulfill her mission: to equip individuals to use humanity’s most innate tools to transmute the pain of their backstory into a more magically-ever-after for themselves, their loved ones, and those they serve.
After several years of helping others question, recognize, and articulate ideas and arguments as a teacher and writing coach, Amanda uncovered her true intention. Merging lessons, skills, and tools acquired from experiments with self-image and psycho-cybernetics, a Socratic approach to the Classics in the honors program, child development and psychology of learning classes in the teacher training, social-emotional literacy workshops in the transformational facilitator program, and adventures in motherhood, she committed her life to changing the world with more powerful messaging. Immediately, she realized the deeper call to adventure was supporting helping professionals as they excavated and saved the backstories that prevented them from living, loving, and leading without sacrificing too much safety, sanity, and soul. The value of the books and brands they developed paled in comparison to the renewal that resulted from learning how to intentionally co-author their lives.
Known today as The Story Oracle, Amanda partners with organizations and individual helping professionals, creatives, coaches, CEOs, educators, and parents who want to learn how to use Story, Writing, and Community to open portals of (re)connection and belonging, (re)build resilience and trust, and (re)claim and leverage latent superpowers in themselves and their families, workplaces, and communities.
With her partners at Saved By Story, she midwifes paradigm-changing brands, content, and more whole thought leaders and storytellers into the world with story-saving quests and message-manifesting retreats. From inspiration to impact, she and her team help inspired souls dissolve the pain, reorganize their sacred material, and become truer to intention with every piece of content they craft, offering they launch, and system they develop to change the world.
In 2013, Amanda wrote Upside-Down Mommy and shared The Butterfly Approach philosophy responsible for her personal and professional growth. In 2018, she published Upside-Down Messenger and made The Messenger Matrix more visible. In 2022, she published two titles: You Can’t Make This St*ry Up is a collaboration with twenty clients curated to help creatives and coaches recognize and lean into the magic and mess of the process, and A Religion of Story is a collaboration with her son crafted to share the experience and results of mindfully engaging Story to cultivate character and agency in children and eventually culture.
She lives in Prescott, Arizona, with her high-school-sweetheart-turned-husband and loves spending time with her favorite story buddy, business partner, and son when he returns home from his world-changing adventures.

“After more than three decades of serving my community as a registered nurse, I found myself on the other side of the hospital bed, uncertain whether my fifteen-year-old daughter would survive a devastating traumatic brain injury. For forty days, I navigated the acute crisis, not as a nurse, spiritual director, or light-bringer but as a grief-stricken mother in the darkest of places praying desperately for God’s healing hand to prevail. My story of God’s sacred presence and provision in the midst of our suffering still takes my breath away, and I pray it illuminates hope on your journey.”
Lisa Boone