Helping people stay open after the fire.

Helping professionals are often expected to carry crisis, loss, and moral injury while remaining composed, productive, and resilient. Over time, that quiet accumulation of grief hardens into burnout, emotional closure, and disconnection—both from others and from ourselves. In this powerful keynote, Christa Evangelisto, PhD, draws on lived experience of layered loss and trauma-informed insight to offer a different path forward: not returning to who we were before rupture, but learning how to remain open within the marks it leaves.

Through story and practical frameworks, audiences learn why survival is not the same as wholeness, how unrecognized losses compound stress, and how trauma reshapes the nervous system in ways that affect leadership, care, and connection. Participants will leave with language for what they’re carrying, permission to be human in high-stakes roles, and simple, repeatable practices for choosing openness without burning out.

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Key takeaways:

• Reframe resilience: why “functioning” isn’t the same as healing

• Name hidden grief and ambiguous loss—and create micro-rituals to mark endings

• Understand how trauma impacts the nervous system (and what helps)

• Practice boundaried openness: porous, not raw

• Choose one small, sustainable practice to carry forward

This keynote is ideal for healthcare and helping professionals, educators, nonprofit leaders, and teams navigating cumulative stress who want to lead with clarity, compassion, and courage—without closing their hearts to do it.

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