Darkness Was My Candle:
An Odyssey of Survival and Grace
Author Conversation with Lora DeVore
Thursday, September 29, 2022 | 6:30-8:30pm CT
at the Council on Recovery
303 Jackson Hill Street
Lora DeVore is a writer and catalyst for transformational change for both individuals and systems. Her wisdom comes from the field of psychology, transpersonal development and spiritual psychology. Most importantly, it comes from the inside out, from facing the darkest aspects of human experience and mining the dark for the treasures that can be found.
In doing so she has not only moved through post-traumatic growth, but beyond as she is transcending all previous limitations to living a Luminous Life.
And you can too.
Join us for an in-person dinner conversation with Lora DeVore about her book and her astounding journey of hardship and profound healing.
Lora is facilitating a next-day Intensive Workshop on Friday the 30th. Attendees of the Thursday eveningreceive a discount on registration. Learn more about the author spotlight event here.
Sponsored by:
About the book:
Birthed into poverty and violence, my early life was one of extreme vulnerability. I spent long evenings in the spell of neon lights outside the military bases of my childhood where my mother picked up men. My mother prostituted me for the first time at age nine. I found refuge in the world of language, books, music, nature, and the world of Spirit. There were human angels who came into my life, each for a short time, with the face of compassion and whispers that left behind miraculous seeds of hope and the ability to reach out and past the unbearable circumstances of my life, again and again.
Institutionalized shortly after beginning college, I would not have survived if not for Sydney, a courageous nurse who fought for my release. When I first began this book, I searched for and then learned from her that the institution I was held in was conducting experimental research. My unwillingness to be compliant and take prescribed pills led to my commitment to the worst state hospital in the Illinois System.
As I began writing this book, Sydney and I returned to Elgin State Hospital for a visit and conducted archival research. We discovered that throughout the Cold War our nation used thousands of vulnerable, unsuspecting citizens as research subjects: newborns, institutionalized children, African-Americans, Native Americans, prisoners, mental patients, and our own military. But this book is not just about surviving the impossible, it is about recovery of the soul, healing into wholeness, and the possibility of living a luminous life.
About the Author:
LORA DEVORE-MATZ, MS., LICSW
Lora integrates over forty years of experience as a psychotherapist and educator with adults and children. She specialized, much of her life, with individual and community wide trauma as well as end of life care. She is considered a national leader in the field of Integrative Medicine and has been the director of a number of innovative programs. Lora has an advanced education and interest in spiritual psychology, transpersonal development and Jungian theory and practice. Her work integrates the wisdom traditions, scientific knowledge and her own personal experiences. Lora has been a sought after speaker on a local and national level for many years.
Recently completing her first full length book, Darkness Was My Candle: An Odyssey of Survival and Grace, Lora has a passion for transforming the current state and practice of mental health and the treatment of trauma and is committed to helping systems and individuals from all walks of life.
For over twenty years, Lora has been a senior faculty member with the internationally recognized, Center for Mind-Body Medicine (www.cmbm.org). In addition to providing professional trainings throughout the U.S, she conducts supervision for those seeking to become certified in Mind-Body Medicine, and she is part of the International “healing the wounds of war and global trauma,” team. This work has taken her to the Middle East, Haiti and throughout the United States to work with trauma survivors using innovative approaches to trauma recovery, self-care and prevention. Most recently she worked with Parkland Schools in Broward County, Florida, as well as, other disaster hit regions in the United States and internationally.
Lora co-created a curriculum through her work with The Center for Mind-Body Medicine to train others to work with children from age three through high-school concerning trauma. This program was utilized in a joint training of Israeli and Palestinian professionals that she helped to conduct and it has been translated into three languages in addition to English.
She has led mind-body skills groups with teen mothers in MN where she currently resides, homeless women and children, and homeless teens. Lora co-led a team who worked for a year with the children that were on the bus after the I-35W bridge collapsed in August of 2007. Pre and Post testing of this group showed a reduction in symptoms of acute trauma and stress as well as the prevention of post-traumatic stress disorder in 90% of the children.
About thirteen years ago Lora began her work at Prairie Care in MN, a University of Minnesota Medical School affiliate, by creating the first adult IOP program using innovative, integrative and transformative practices. For the past ten years she has worked in a unique position as Prairie Care’s Clinical Education Specialist, providing trainings, mentoring and leadership development to not only the staff, but throughout the twin cities. She is frequently a keynote speaker, including at Minnesota’s annual Association for Children’s mental health, attended by three to four thousand individuals from across the Midwest.
Lora has a passion for bringing creative, evidence based integrative and transformative practices to the field of mental health, cancer care, education and death and dying. She
worked for many years with end of life care at Children’s Hospital in MN conducting in- home family therapy and innovative approaches, then worked in creating an
innovative transformative program for Cancer Patients at Virginia Piper Cancer Center/ Abbot Northwestern Hospital. In 2013 she was offered the program director position at Sunstone in Tucson, Arizona working with cancer patients, so she took a break from life in Minnesota and headed the program until it ended a year later. Lora continues to lead a three-day training in Midwifing Conscious Dying at the Aslan Institute in Eagan, MN several times a year, and she is an adjunct faculty member with the University of Minnesota’s Center for Spirituality and Healing, where she helped create the Health Coaching Master's Degree Program.
In addition, Lora has an advanced education in spiritual psychology and transpersonal development and she is well versed in working with very young children in creative ways. She is proud to be known as puppet literate and enjoys teaching young children about stress and resilience through the use of puppets. About fifteen years ago, Lora created an innovative program with children age 3-5 and has taught well-over 500 educators and other care-givers of young children how to use stress reduction strategies with pre-school children and themselves. Finally, Lora has been humbled and has grown in her work with homeless youth of color and with Indigenous populations.