My story.
I began telling stories and public speaking eight years ago, after meeting The Stability Network at a conference they held in San Francisco. I had known about them for years but I had been too afraid to talk about my mental health and experiences. Then I heard one of their speaker coaches, a former stand-up comedian, tell his story. I thought, “You’re going to teach me to tell my story like that? Sign me up!”
I joined their team and never looked back.
Pretty soon I met John Capecci from Living Proof Advocacy and learned “The Five Qualities of Well-Told Advocacy Stories” as I worked on a keynote. John liked my process so much, I’m Chapter Three of his book, Living Proof, Telling Your Story to Make a Difference, co-written with Timothy Cage.
I talk about when I revealed my diagnosis to my managers at a top investment firm, collaborating on accommodations that made all the difference. My best of 19 years at the company immediately followed.
The story is a powerful example of building safe workplaces where gifted employees can (carefully) come out of the closet in Corporate America.
No matter who your audience is, they’ll gain valuable insights to become better informed managers, colleagues, therapists and supportive family and friends. I’ll even get your middle and high schoolers engaged.
My daughters were talking afterward, “as teenagers, guess we don’t always know what life has waiting for us.” Sepee really gave them some wisdom for the unexpected. – Shuna Knapper, The Blue Bird Riders.
William.
The handsome inspiration behind My Stable Life. I learn more from him and the herd than could fill a million stories. Leadership, teamwork, boundaries, forgiveness and love. Horses seem to have mastery of all the things we humans miss in our modern world.
I’ll share these life lessons with you.
Many with mental illness get stuck in life and are often misunderstood. Admittedly, we too have a difficult time understanding ourselves, let alone advocating for what we need.
I speak from decades of experience managing my mental health while supporting peers and family members, too. Through trials and disruptions one thing becomes clear, each setback can become a springboard to growth and healing. A new success awaits around every dark corner as “life happens for us, not to us.”