Catherine Schaffer, PA-C

savagegrace.net | savagegracepodcast@gmail.com

---

Keynote Topics

Finding Resilience:  Navigating Burnout, Stress and PTSD in Healthcare

Whether you are a nurse, clinician, paramedic, or firefighter, the stress and emotional toll of your profession is undeniable. This talk offers a candid and compassionate look at the difference between everyday stress and full-blown burnout—and how the invisible wounds of moral injury, betrayal trauma, abandonment shock, and compassion fatigue can quietly erode your sense of purpose and well-being.

Through story, science, and reflection, you'll gain practical tools for recognizing early warning signs, understanding the body's physiological response to chronic trauma, and identifying pathways toward emotional repair. This session is not about pushing through—it's about coming home to yourself.

Learn how to help yourself through simple, sustainable strategies that support nervous system regulation, foster post-traumatic growth, and reconnect you to the resilience that lives beneath the scars.

Savage Grace: Rising from the Ashes in the Second Half of Life

A journey of reinvention, resilience, and fierce self-compassion.

At midlife and beyond, many women find themselves standing in the ashes of what once was—burned by betrayal, loss, burnout, illness, or simply the slow erosion of identity over time. In this soulful and deeply personal talk, Savage Grace becomes more than a title—it becomes a roadmap for what it means to rise again with truth, power, and unapologetic authenticity.

Drawing from her own experience as a frontline healthcare provider, trauma survivor, and award-winning ballroom dancer, Cathy Schaffer weaves together story, science, and spirit to explore what it means to heal when the world sees you as whole but your soul knows otherwise.

Through themes of identity, grief, reinvention, and embodied wisdom, participants will be invited to:
– Name what has been lost and what still longs to be found
– Explore the hidden gifts of trauma and transformation
– Reclaim voice, purpose, sensuality, and vitality in later life
– Learn tools for self-compassion, nervous system healing, and post-traumatic growth

This is not a talk about aging gracefully. It is a rally cry to rise fiercely—to become, at last, the woman you were meant to be before the world told you who you had to be.

Unbreakable Hearts: Building Resilience and Heart Health in Women

A mind-body approach to protecting the heart—emotionally and physically.

Heart disease remains the leading cause of death in women, yet the warning signs are often overlooked, misdiagnosed, or minimized. This empowering talk explores the unique intersection of emotional stress, trauma, and cardiovascular health in women—and how building resilience can be one of the most powerful tools for prevention.

Drawing on decades of clinical experience and personal insight, this session breaks down the critical links between burnout, anxiety, hormone shifts, and heart disease. You'll learn how emotional and physiological stressors impact the female heart, why women’s symptoms present differently, and how to advocate for your health in a system that doesn’t always listen.

This talk offers more than just education—it delivers practical tools for self-care, emotional regulation, and lifestyle strategies that support lasting heart health. Whether you're a healthcare provider, a survivor, or someone simply ready to reclaim your vitality, Unbreakable Hearts invites you to lean into your health with strength, wisdom, and grace.

Write to Heal: Memoir as a Path to Wholeness

Turning wounds into words, and words into wisdom.

We all carry stories—some buried, some silenced, some still burning in the body. In this powerful session, writing becomes more than expression; it becomes a sacred act of self-reclamation. Write to Heal is an invitation to explore memoir as both a literary art and a transformative healing practice.

Whether you're a seasoned writer or someone just beginning to put pen to page, this talk guides you through the terrain of personal narrative, emotional truth, and the alchemy of storytelling. You’ll learn how memoir can help reframe trauma, reveal inner resilience, and reconnect fragmented parts of the self.

Drawing from her own memoir Savage Grace and her experience as a clinician and survivor, Cathy Schaffer shares how writing helped her process loss, recover voice, and reimagine life in the aftermath of crisis. Through practical tools and soulful reflection, participants will explore:

– Why storytelling is vital for healing, especially in midlife and beyond
– How to write without re-traumatizing
– The difference between confession and transformation on the page
– Writing prompts and reflective practices to unlock memory and meaning
– How personal story can ripple outward to heal others

Memoir is not just a record of the past—it is a pathway to wholeness, a map back to your most courageous self.

The Long Burn: What ICU Medicine Taught Me About Grace

IWhat we carry. What we silence. And what we must finally name to heal.

Healthcare professionals are trained to save lives, manage crises, and stay composed in the face of human suffering. But what happens to the healer when the weight becomes too much? What toll does it take to show up day after day in broken systems that demand everything and return little?

In this unflinching and deeply human talk, Cathy Schaffer—a physician assistant with over three decades on the frontlines—shares the often untold emotional and ethical cost of caregiving. Through powerful stories and reflections from her forthcoming book Savage Medicine, she explores the cumulative impact of moral injury, compassion fatigue, secondary trauma, and institutional betrayal.

This is not just a critique of the system—it is a love letter to those still standing inside it, holding the line with aching hearts.

Participants will explore:
– The invisible wounds that healthcare providers carry
– How silence, shame, and survivalism contribute to trauma
– Practical, accessible strategies for emotional processing and post-traumatic growth
– How narrative, community, and embodied practices can begin to restore wholeness

This talk is for clinicians, nurses, therapists, students, and anyone who has ever cared too much for too long without a safe place to put their pain. It’s a call to tell the truth, to bear witness—and to heal the healers, before it’s too late.

Painting What Words Can’t Say: Expressive Arts for Healing & Burnout

When language fails, the body remembers—and art becomes a way through.

In the aftermath of trauma, burnout, or prolonged stress, words often fall short. Emotions get trapped in the body, and the nervous system speaks in a language deeper than logic. Painting What Words Can’t Say offers a gentle, invitation to explore healing through expressive arts—especially for those who have spent a lifetime caring for others.

In this experiential and restorative session, Cathy Schaffer—artist, author, and longtime healthcare provider—guides participants through creative practices that bypass the thinking mind and awaken the body’s innate capacity for repair. No art experience is necessary; this is not about making something beautiful, but about making something true.

Participants will:
– Understand how trauma and burnout live in the body and silence the voice
– Learn how creative expression helps regulate the nervous system
– Engage in simple, guided art-making exercises to access emotional clarity
– Discover how color, shape, and movement can restore what words cannot
– Reconnect with the self through a safe and nonverbal process of release

This session is not just for healthcare providers, it is meant for anyone who is in a caregiving situation and anyone feeling emotionally depleted. Through paint, texture, and movement, you’ll explore not just how to express—but how to feel again.

About Catherine

Cathy Schaffer is a nationally certified physician assistant with over 34 years of frontline experience in cardiac surgery and critical care. She is the author of Letters of Forgiveness and the forthcoming memoir Savage Grace, which explores midlife awakening, personal resilience, and the healing power of story, art, and movement.

A ballroom dancer, expressive artist, and podcast host, Cathy speaks candidly about trauma, loneliness, burnout, and the profound transformations that can occur when women reclaim their lives in the second half.