Amy Oestreicher: LoveMyDetour

My speaking engagements can include an author talk event which can include a 20-30 minute presentation, a selection of brief excerpts from my book sharing my journey and delivering a powerful message that it’s possible to become empowered by life's detours, and concluding with a question and answer segment, or a writer's workshop on reframing our narrative through storytelling. I'd be happy to provide more information, send videos of past presentations, references, and answer any questions you may have.
You can also view a brief interview I did on the book's themes for WTNH-TV (ABC) "Good Morning CT” here: (link hidden)

Workshops: (link hidden)
Motivation and Mental Health

Amy’s life experience in these brief 29 years have taught her…how much more there is to learn! Yet, she has also learned lessons through her beautiful detour that have inspired others with my message of hope, gratitude, and resilience. She hopes to shed light on the true power of the human spirit – the strength that is within all of us, and the fierce, determined passion we are capable in accessing when we decide to live our best lives. Reach out to her using the contact form below to contact Amy and find out additional information.

Gutless & Grateful

Amy has developed a comprehensive program based off her one-woman musical comedy. This workshop has curriculum individualized specifically for different audiences, including: Patients, Doctors, Medical Students, Health-care Professionals, High Schools, Colleges, Artists, Writers, Spirituality & Faith, Sexual Assault Survivors, Trauma-informed PTSD Survivors, Corporate Events & Leadership.

Compassionate Courage: Sexual Assault Prevention

Combining mental health advocacy and sexual assault prevention with autobiographical theatre, a talkback on resiliency, and a recovery Q & A, Compassionate Courage shifts the college ethos towards inclusion, to give courage and a sense of belonging to students who are struggling with mental health or physical challenges, and to help build a campus that gives survivors, bystanders and entire student body an awareness and generosity of spirit to creates a compassionate community.

Writing Workshops

Expressive writing has the power to transform our lives, shape our world, and drive a community ethos toward inclusion with the magic of one word: Detours. No one else can document the “detours” our own lives have taken, yet we’ve all experienced them. Once we choose to become the authors of our own personal stories and detoured pathways, we find our place in the narrative that unites us all, enabling us to engage our community in a vital conversation on how we view obstacles.

Art Workshop

Local artist Amy Oestreicher is excited to start offering her mixed media “Show Me Your heART” workshops. Through eclectic materials, unique insights, messy fun and guided prompts, Show Me Your heART inspires people of all ages to discover creativity as a means of personal expression and making beautiful, personal art. Through mixed media art, participants will discover what being in the “flow” of creativity feels like, and use art as a way to navigate through life’s messy detours.

Detourist Workshop

Detourist workshops bring people together from all ages, professions and backgrounds, celebrating the detours that make us who we are. Using the Detour Road Map to Resilience* participants will claim their Detourist identity by discovering arrows to navigate through life’s messy detours. Detourists workshops can include engaging discussions, writing prompts, art activities, theatre games story-circles, and plenty more surprises along the way.

Gutless & Grateful strives to shift an entire college ethos in the direction of inclusion – partly to give courage and a sense of belonging to people who are struggling with all kinds of mental health or physical challenges, but also to help build a campus that gives everyone the kind of awareness and generosity of spirit that makes that world a better place. This is an easy program to put on—a 90 minute, 3 component keynote/program including: 1) 70 minute performance, 2) an educational session/speech discussing an empowered approach to mental health (or topic of choice), and 3) Q&A.

Private Coaching

Everyone encounters a detour in life. Whether it’s healing from a break-up, a breakdown, or an unexpected twist in your path, we all need help knowing which direction to travel. To help you overcome obstacles, manifest joy, or simply become ready for the next exciting chapter in life, the work you will do with Amy provides immediate inspiration, serious results and lasting knowledge. This can include private art sessions focusing on intuitive visualization, vision boarding and manifestation art. Amy can help you locate, reclaim and refocus your creative energy into a path to move forward

Business & Leadership

Amy has a variety of curriculums designed for groups and individuals. Speaking topics include: Simpler Than You Think: Four Essential Mindsets to Fuel Your Business with Aliveness, Harness the Power of Storytelling to Accelerate Your Career, Turn Your Career into in Idea Worth Spreading: Secrets from TEDx, You’re a Detourist: Your Detour Leads to a Bigger, Bolder Business, Staying Hungry for Life: Fueling Livelihood with Aliveness, More Than a Username: Creating Successful Careers through Storytelling on Social Media, and The Irreplaceable Speaker’s Secret: Find the Universal Message in Your Own Unique Story.

For students:
I'm driven to provide hope, help and resources for students, which I also share in my recently published memoir, My Beautiful Detour: An Unthinkable Journey from Gutless to Grateful.
I've toured a Broadway-style theatre and mental health program to 150+ colleges nationwide since 2012 to cultivate student resilience, and to support healthy self-care strategies on campus. This three-component program is frequently requested for student orientation, sexual assault prevention month, mental health awareness, disability groups, leadership speaker series, diversity/anti-bullying programming, ROTC workshops, and mental health awareness events, and can be shortened or modified as needed:

Part 1: One-Woman Musical Theatre/Book Reading: Gutless & Grateful - a 15-character, nine-song Broadway-style performance with a powerful message that it's possible to turn unexpected obstacles into opportunities for growth. The play has won seven national awards, and features original material written for me by Kathie Lee Gifford after appearing on NBC's Today Show. An alternative to the theatre performance, is a short reading from my book, My Beautiful Detour, sharing my journey of physical and mental health recovery while starting college at age 25, and after I had fully recovered from my coma.

Part 2: A mental health-themed keynote: I discuss the psychological impact of PostTraumatic Stress Disorder, describe innovative means of breaking barriers of silence and stigma for both visible and invisible illness, and discuss key strategies for developing a resiliency toolbox to cope with major change.

Part 3: Q & A/Panel Discussion: A question and answer segment on student wellness strategies on campus, plus any questions students may have about the experiences I've shared. This can also be opened to a panel discussion with wellness faculty, a peer-led organization, or Title IX to discuss campus resources.

Amy Oestreicher is a PTSD Specialist, Audie award-nominated playwright, performer, and multidisciplinary creator. Amy overcame a decade of trauma to become a sought-after trauma-informed teaching artist, author, writer for The Huffington Post, international keynote speaker, RAINN representative, and health advocate. She has given three TEDx Talks on transforming trauma through creativity, and holds the record for the only woman to gives TEDx Talks for three consecutive years, reaching nearly 15K views. Her story has appeared on NBC’s Today, CBS, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen Magazine, The Washington Post, Good Housekeeping, and MSNBC, among others and she’s contributed to over 80 print and online publications. A singer, librettist, and visual mixed media artist, she dedicates her work to celebrating everyday miracles, untold stories, and the detours in life that can spark connection and transform communities. Amy has toured her autobiographical musical, Gutless & Grateful, to over 200 venues from 54 Below to Barrington Stage Company since its 2012 NYC debut, as well as a mental health program for colleges, conferences and organizations. She is currently developing her full-length play, Flicker and a Firestarter, on the dichotomies that emerge after trauma, and More Than Ever Now, a play based on her grandmother's story of survival. She most recently premiered her one-woman multimedia musical, Passageways, at HERE Arts Center, for which she created music, book, lyrics, and artwork.
As the 2014 Eastern Regional Recipient of Convatec’s Great Comebacks Award and WEGO Health “Health Activist Hero”, and WeGO Health Expert, medical community, speaking for National WOCN conferences and the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress, and writing for the official print publication of the UOAA. She has devised programming for the Transformative Language Arts Network National Conference, the Eating Recovery Foundation, the 40th Anniversary New England Educational Opportunity Association Milestones Conference, three Annual National Mental Health America Conference, and others. She has been the featured keynote speaker for national conferences including the Pacific Rim Conference of Diversity and Disability, the International School of Social Work Conference, and Women of Resilience.
As a playwright, Amy has received awards and accolades for engaging her audiences in dynamic conversation on trauma’s effects on society, including Women Around Town’s “Women to Celebrate” 2014, BroadwayWorld “Best Theatre Debut,” Bistro Awards “New York Top Pick, and the “Singular Award” at the Sarasolo Theatre Festival, presented annually for a “performance that is exceptionally uncommon, groundbreaking, original and inventive.” Amy has performed excerpts of her solo oral history play, Fibers, as part of Brooklyn's immigrants and Exile, Beechwood Art's Giving Voice, Dixon Place, Seekonk Storytelling Television Special, and Museum of Jewish Heritage Festival of Untold Women. She is a cabaret and theatre reviewer for BroadwayWorld, Her theatre education essays and monologues have been published in Creative Pedagogy journals, as part of a theatre curriculum for high school students in the Philippines. Her play, "We Re-Member" honoring the immigration stories of her grandparents, has been performed in twelve states, and her full-length Play, Factory Treasure, has been performed at the Philadelphia Arts Center, Identity Theatre, LIU, The Depot, and Actors Theatre of Newburyport. Her short plays have been published by the Eddy Theatre Company and finalists in Manhattan Repertory Theatre’s Short Play Festival, as well as NYC Playwright’s Women in the Age of Trump.
Amy’s collaboration with Beechwood Arts on the immersion salon, “Resilience and the Power of the Human Spirit”, has traveled around the world to health and arts facilities as a public installation, incorporating her monologues, art, writing and recipes to express the life-altering detours and ultimately the invaluable gifts of her resilient journey. Amy is also an active artist and teacher in the Jewish community, being honored by United Way in 2005 for her music programs at Hollander House, completing artist residencies at Art Kibbutz, and delivering “Hope, Resilience & Biblical Women” keynotes for synagogues and religious schools. Her theatre education essays and monologues have been published in Creative Pedagogy journals, as part of a theatre curriculum for high school students in the Philippines, and as a teaching artist, she is a strong advocate for arts integration and education. She is a teaching artist with Brooklyn's Community World Project, and trained ACTSmart, a Playback Theatre troupe in Amherst, MA. She is also a passionate arts education advocate, a successful mixed media visual artist, a continuing education studio arts teacher, and her artwork has been shown in esteemed galleries in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Chicago, San Diego and New York, as well as published in national publications including Conquer, Topology and Cargo Literary. She has recently published her memoir, My Beautiful Detour: An Unthinkable Journey from Gutless to Grateful. See more at (link hidden).