This didn't start with you…but you can interrupt it.

Tressa L. Bell, MBA, BSN, RN brings the science of generational trauma and the authority of lived experience into rooms that are ready for both.

Book Tressa for Your Event

A smiling woman with blonde hair, glasses, wearing a white lab coat and blue scrubs, outdoors with trees and sunlight in the background.

Bio

Tressa L. Bell is a registered nurse, former forensic nurse, author, speaker, and podcast host whose work sits at the intersection of clinical science and personal truth.

She has spent years inside the most acute moments of trauma—documenting it, testifying about it, and sitting with survivors at the biological and legal level. She has also lived it. As a survivor of childhood trauma, child sexual abuse, and domestic violence, she brings something no credential alone can offer: the authority of someone who has been on both sides of the examination table.

Her workshops and keynotes are not lectures. They are experiences—grounded in ACEs research, polyvagal theory, and the neuroscience of inherited patterns, and delivered in a voice that makes complex science feel like a conversation you needed to have.

She is the author of The Fan in the Window: How We Inherit Trauma—And How We Interrupt It and host of the podcast The Fan in the Window: Interrupting What We Inherit.

This didn't start with you…but you can interrupt it.

Featured Workshop

INTERRUPTING WHAT WE INHERIT

A Half-Day Trauma-Informed Workshop for Organizations

Designed for healthcare systems, hospital staff, school districts, law enforcement, domestic violence organizations, and nonprofits whose teams work with—and absorb—trauma every day.

In four hours, your team will learn to recognize inherited trauma patterns, understand the nervous system science beneath their own responses, and leave with practical regulation tools they can use the same day.

This is not soft training. It is clinical. It is grounded in research. And it is taught by someone who has sat in the room your staff works in.

✓ Half-day format · 15–75 participants · In-person or virtual ✓ Nursing NCPD contact hours + ASWB ACE for social work (pending) ✓ Participant workbook included ✓ Starting at $3,500

Inquire About This Workshop →

  • Trauma does not always arrive as a single event. Often it is the atmosphere — the silence, the hypervigilance, the patterns that got handed down before anyone had language for them. This keynote gives audiences the science and the story behind generational trauma, and a practical framework for beginning to change what gets passed on. Audiences leave with vocabulary, understanding, and one specific thing they are going to do differently.

  • The most powerful clinical intervention you have is not a protocol. It is your own nervous system. This session teaches healthcare and helping professionals how chronic trauma exposure reshapes their stress responses — and how regulation-first communication changes outcomes for the people they serve. Built on polyvagal theory, co-regulation research, and the lived reality of working in high-stakes environments.

  • Most parents who carry childhood trauma are not parenting from their values. They are parenting from their nervous systems. This session helps survivor-turned-parents recognize the patterns they absorbed, understand the biology driving their reactions, and learn practical interruptions they can make before the next moment of rupture.

  • Trauma is not just stored in memory. It is stored in the body — in chronic tension, hypervigilance, shutdown, and the survival strategies that long outlast the danger. This session draws on van der Kolk, Porges, and Perry to explain what trauma actually does to the nervous system, and why understanding this changes everything about how we communicate with people in crisis.

  • Topics can be tailored for healthcare organizations, community groups, parenting organizations, women's groups, schools, nonprofits, and conferences.

Speaking Topics

A woman in navy scrubs holding a book titled "The Fan in the Window" against a white background.

Formats Available

Available For

✓ Keynote presentations

✓ Conference sessions

✓ Workshops

✓ Panel discussions

✓ Podcast interviews

✓ Virtual presentations

✓ Continuing education events

✓ Community education programs

Download Media Kit

Who I Speak To

Ideal Audiences

  • Parents

  • Adult survivors of childhood trauma

  • Healthcare professionals

  • Nurses

  • Social workers

  • Therapists and counselors

  • Educators

  • Community organizations

  • Women's groups

  • Faith communities

  • Conference attendees

Let's Start the Conversation

Interested in booking Tressa for a speaking engagement, workshop, podcast interview, or educational event?

  • "Tressa shows us how this constant level of trauma not only manifests deeply within families but also how the trauma affects every person's nervous system."

    -Kimberley, Personal Coach

  • "Tressa takes a personal experience and tells the story of learning acceptance and making intentional decisions to change in order to stop the cycle or change the trajectory."

    Kim, Reader

  • "Tressa was very forthcoming with her healing journey and offers hope to those who are still struggling."

    Tracy, Registered Nurse

  • First workshop testimonial coming...

    Your name, your title, your organization, one to two sentences on what your team walked away with.