Anne Hamilton
Speaker • Storyteller • Founder
Anne Hamilton
Reconstructing Identity When the Old Story Ends
Speaker • Storyteller • Founder
After surviving advanced-stage cancer in her thirties, Anne became fascinated by a question medicine couldn't answer:
How do we create meaning when the story that gave our life coherence falls apart?
Today she helps audiences navigate identity, meaning, and transformation through the lenses of storytelling, psychology, and lived experience.
Featured Speaker and Collaborator:
Keynotes
Beyond the Story
Reconstructing Identity When the Old Story Ends
We spend enormous energy discussing what decisions to make after illness, loss, disruption, or change.
But a deeper question comes first:
Who is making those decisions?
When the story that once gave our lives coherence falls apart, we are left with a challenge that is both practical and existential: how do we build a life when we no longer know who we are?
Through personal narrative, philosophy, psychology, and the science of adaptation, this keynote explores how identity is reconstructed after rupture and how meaning is created when certainty disappears.
Building Community after Rupture
Lessons from creating the Survivorship Collective.
How community becomes a form of medicine when certainty, control, and familiar identities disappear.
The Stories That Make Us
Film, Storytelling, and the Search for Meaning
Stories do more than entertain.
They shape identity, create empathy, and help us understand what it means to be human.
A keynote for creative organizations, universities, and leadership audiences.
Life After Rupture
Major life events don't just change our circumstances.
They change the self making sense of them.
Drawing from philosophy, neuroscience, and lived experience, Anne explores how people rebuild meaning after cancer, grief, burnout, trauma, and uncertainty.
Psychedelics, Neuroplasticity & Identity
What happens when the brain becomes capable of telling a different story?
Drawing from emerging research and her work with cancer survivors, Anne explores the role of neuroplasticity, meaning-making, and identity reconstruction in healing.
ORGANIZATIONS
Saltstar
A creative studio exploring healing through story, identity, and transformation.
The Survivorship Collective
A nonprofit creating community-based healing programs for people facing cancer and serious illness.
What People Are Saying
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"One of the most thoughtful and original voices on survivorship and identity."
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"Anne doesn't just talk about resilience. She asks who we become after everything changes."
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"A rare combination of intellectual rigor, emotional honesty, and powerful storytelling."