About Sheila
SPEAKER I AUTHOR I PERFORMANCE ARTIST I CONSULTANT
About Sheila
Dr. Collins has a bachelor of philosophy from Monteith College, Wayne State University in Detroit, a Masters in Social Work from the Wayne State University School of Social Work in Detroit and a PhD in Adult and Continuing Education from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
In her social work career, Dr. Collins co-founded and directed the Center for Co-Equal Education at the University of Nebraska, training and consulting with school districts across Nebraska on their implementation of Title 9. As a social work professor at the University of Nebraska Dr. Collins headed an NIMH funded grant to work with agencies to improve services to Native American and Mexican American clients in the panhandle of Nebraska. She taught at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth and at the University of Texas at Arlington where, inspired by research from her dissertation, The Career Development of Women Administrators in Social Work, Nursing and Education, she co-founded and directed the Women and Work Research and Resource Center working with corporations to better utilize their female employees. After leaving the university, Dr. Collins co-founded and directed with her husband, the largest out-patient behavioral health care clinic in North Texas, Iatreia Institute for the Healing Arts.
Even to the present day, Sheila considers herself a dancer. Having performed in a regional ballet company while still in high school, and later in summer stock, in nightclub productions in Las Vegas, in an award-winning film, in the national company of a Broadway show, as a founding member of a contemporary dance company Festival Dancers, out of the Jewish Community Center in Detroit, and now as a improvisational performance artist, she calls on lessons learned from her dancing life. She is passionate about empowering others to trust the wisdom of their own bodies and use improvisational singing, dancing, storytelling tools to access creativity and find support and ease when traversing tough times.
Sheila believes that life’s toughest challenges call us out to discover our better selves. That in facing such challenges as grief, loss, illness, and death of a loved one, we become who we truly are. Her writing, keynote speaking, and improvisational artist performances, contain thought provoking discoveries of ways to deal with the tough challenges life asks of us so that by meeting them we become stronger and more resilient.
SHEILA’S CLIENTS AND COLLABORATORS HAVE BEEN
Art-Based Tools for Healing
Using her background as a social work professor, therapist, and performance artist, Dr. Collins demonstrates in her presentations and workshops how art-based tools have helped her and can help others get through life’s toughest challenges.
TEDx Talks
Her engaging 2016 TEDx Talk, When Death Threatens – Life REALLY Matters demonstrates the challenge of being a caregiver to a loved one dealing with a death-defying illness and includes some of the gifts present in such circumstances.
Live Productions
Sheila currently directs the Wing & A Prayer Pittsburgh Players, an InterPlay-based improvisational performance troupe whose mission is to assist arts and human service organizations in achieving their noble purposes. In collaboration with community non-profits, the group has developed programs and performances to address such tough topics as ending the stigma of mental illness, Changing the Race Dance, and saying No More to gender violence. She travels nationally and internationally assisting individuals and organizations to tell their stories in transforming ways.
Her Own Journey
Her award-winning book, Warrior Mother: Fierce Love, Unbearable Loss and the Rituals that Heal tells of her journeys with two of her three adult children and her best friend through their life-threatening illnesses and deaths and of the rituals that helped her family to heal. She has performed the book locally, nationally, and internationally, spoken, conducted workshops and consulted with organizations on the themes of grief, loss and recovery. The audio version of Warrior Mother is available, read by the author.
Her Self Care Playbook for Caregivers
The revised second edition of her book for professional and family caregivers, co-authored with Christine Gautreaux, Stillpoint: A Self Care Playbook for Caregivers to Find Ease, and Time to Breathe, and Reclaim Joy was released the fall of 2018. Sheila and her co-author Christine offer keynotes and workshops on self-care for caregivers, both together and separately in various places in the country, and in their home communities of Atlanta and Pittsburgh. The pair will be on the road again soon, performing the stories from Stillpoint and pulling in members of InterPlay improv troupes like the Wing & A Prayer Pittsburgh Players troupe that Dr. Collins directs and Atlanta’s SoulPrint Players, where Christine is a founding member.
How to Grieve with Art and Art-Making
Sheila is no stranger to grief. After the loss of two of her children, Sheila felt disconnected from the support she needed, living in a society that makes us feel like we can’t speak openly or honestly about the one thing we will all become acquainted with: grief.
- The Art of Grieving challenges conventional attitudes toward grieving. Part memoir, part grief handbook, and guide, Sheila draws on a lifetime of experience as a dancer, social work professor, and therapist to illustrate the value of grieving and how the arts can become grief’s collaborator.
- This book provides guidance and resources on how to use the arts of storytelling, music, dance, and visual arts to make grieving itself a life-long art.
- When we utilize the arts to honor our losses and celebrate together, as our ancestors once did, we are provided a path to insight that allows us to continuously learn from our grief rather than fear it.
JACK CANFIELD
New York Times Best Selling Author
Coach and Founder of Canfield Training Group
“Sheila educates while she entertains. She has impact wherever she goes because her deep wisdom comes wrapped in humor.”
TESTIMONIALS
