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By Helen Marie Diaz

With more than 20 years of leadership experience in the nonprofit and social services sector, Helen Marie Diaz combines her professional expertise in trauma-informed care with her deeply personal journey of healing to deliver a powerful and transformative presentation.

In this heartfelt presentation, Helen courageously shares her story of surviving years of physical and emotional abuse during childhood. Through honesty and vulnerability, she reveals not only the profound pain she experienced as a child, but also the lasting impact that childhood trauma had throughout her adult life—including living with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD), depression, anxiety, and fibromyalgia.

Throughout her presentation, Helen brings her story to life through intimate readings of selected poems from her book, The Journey of Reflection: A Collection of Poems, as well as new, unpublished motivational poems written during her continued healing journey. Each poem offers audiences a deeper emotional connection to her experiences while inspiring hope, resilience, healing, and self-discovery.

Helen provides insight into what it means to live in a constant state of survival—experiencing fear, emotional numbing, dissociation, isolation, freezing, and people-pleasing. She helps audiences understand how unresolved trauma can influence relationships, professional success, self-worth, and everyday decision-making, while offering the powerful message that healing is possible.

Drawing from both lived experience and professional knowledge, Helen concludes by sharing her path to healing through the transformative power of poetry, journaling, clinical therapy—including Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)—and her study of the neurobiology of trauma. She reflects on how receiving her PTSD diagnosis at nearly 50 years old became the beginning of a deeper understanding of herself and a renewed journey toward healing.

Through storytelling, poetry, and practical insights, Helen creates an authentic and emotionally impactful experience that leaves audiences feeling inspired, empowered, and hopeful. Her presentation reminds us that while trauma may shape our story, it does not have to define our future. 

By embracing healing, we can transform our deepest wounds into our greatest source of strength, purpose, and hope.