ABOUT
The Keynote
Helping veterans and their family with:
A clear understanding of how self-care improves how we show up for those we love
Language that helps their family talk about stress before it turns into conflict
Practical skills they can use immediately at home
Momentum for stronger connection after deployment
TESTIMONIALS
-Craig Smith,
-Craig Smith, President, OSV Studios (42+ years experience)
I’ve filmed many speakers. Colin O’Donohoe was the first who genuinely shook me.
His presence on stage is powerful, his delivery is authentic, and his message opened my eyes to new ways of living.
This isn’t a performance. It’s an experience.
Inspired by our client stories? Get updates to continue your journey.
THE SPEAKER
Colin O’Donohoe is a keynote speaker, writer, and multi-disciplinary artist whose work examines how survival skills formed in extreme environments continue shaping families, relationships, and identity long after the danger has passed.
He is legally blind and has spent his life navigating heightened awareness, pattern recognition, and adaptation. These skills made him effective as an artist and later forced him to confront how the same survival traits can quietly distort relationships and family life.
His work does not approach trauma as a disorder to be fixed. It treats survival as intelligence that once protected life and now requires recalibration.
THE SOLDIER
The work began with a handwritten war memoir written in the early 2000s by a Purple Heart veteran buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
The memoir documents his service in Vietnam in 1966 and 1967. It was not written for publication or reflection. It was written as a factual record of how survival functioned in real time.
Patrols.
Vigilance.
Silence.
Responsibility.
Years later, the significance became clear. The same skills that kept a soldier alive in combat were still operating at home, shaping the emotional climate of his family long after the war ended.
Third Hand
Smoke names
that transfer.
Not as blame.
As inheritance.
