About Sheila K. Collins, PhD

Sheila K. Collins, PhD knows grief, having lost her son to AIDS and daughter to breast cancer, which she chronicled in her award-winning memoir, Warrior Mother: Fierce Love, Unbearable Loss and the Rituals that Heal, published by She Writes Press in 2013. Since then, she has became a grief advocate,having learned many, magical ways grief can transform our hearts, minds and souls. Sheila’s 40-year career as a licensed therapist, social worker and dancer has seen her guiding thousands of people through the tough challenges life handed them –inspiring them to turn grief into gift. She’s also delighted audiences worldwide with demonstrations about how art-based expressions, such as dance, storytelling, song and music, can help anyone turn life’s toughest challenges into growth. Her first book, revised in 2018 for a second edition, Stillpoint: A Self-Care Playbook for Caregivers to Find Ease, and Time to Breathe and Reclaim Joy, and co-authored with Christine Gautreaux, has become the basis of popular online course for family caregivers, school nurses, social activists and social workers. Her 2016 TEDx talk, When Death Threatens Someone We Love, Life Really Matters, offers a poignant perspective for anyone facing life-threatening illness and death. Sheila currently directs the Wing & A Prayer Pittsburgh Players, an InterPlay-based improvisational troupe, that helps individuals and organizations to tell their stories in transforming ways and to accomplish their noble purposes, Sheila and her partner of 43 years, organizational psychologist Richard Citrin, live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.