Speaking Engagements
Abstracts:
An interview by Kate Fillion in Maclean magazine
The Marriage Benefit: Eight Intimate Risks That Help Us To Become Our Best Selves
This is a talk about marriage, but it’s not the kind of “how to make your marriage better” talk that we have come to expect. This is a talk about how stretching the boundaries of what we imagine to be possible can turn our intimate relationships into remarkable opportunities for growth and change. This is a talk about how our relationships can make us better.
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Raising Sexually Responsible Children In Sexually Troublesome Times
Contemporary culture is presenting kids with a big time problem with their sexual development. Surprisingly, the real problem is less what kids are doing, and it’s more what kids are feeling about what they are doing. The problem lies in this culture of “hooking up”, “friends with benefits”, “It’s just sex” mindset we are hearing about. We adults can help. In this talk Dr. O’Connell tells us how.
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In this talk Dr. O’Connell describes how taking the risk of being sexually real over time with someone loved and trusted can give us an alternative to the distorting funhouse mirrors that populate our present-day surroundings. How we can, instead, find in each other loving and compassionate reflections of our bodily selves. And how we can use our relationships to sustain the sense of vibrant physicality that all too easily disappears in the face of life’s multiple pressures, and, over time, mounting losses.
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The Power and Joy of Fatherhood
Who, men might rightfully ask, are we expected to be? Do various pop-cultural definitions of masculinity really reflect what it is to be a man? What in men's true natures helps them be good fathers? What masculine traits do fathers need to guard -- and guard against? How do men love their children, and how is being a father very different from and no less essential than being a mother? And how can women understand how men experience fatherhood?
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Finding Joy and Meaning Through Life’s Limitations
At its best, middle age and beyond can be a time of seeking. In this talk, Dr. O’Connell shows us how the most life-expanding possibilities imaginable can be found in the lives that we already have. How we can find freedom and meaning through the very constraints and limitations that are the hallmark of growing older.
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