🌱 Growing Tall
Gary Winterholler is a storyteller, creative director, and community connector rooted in the Oregon Coast. In 2018, Gary experienced a life-changing ischemic stroke and was initially told he would likely never walk again. Rather than returning to his old life, Gary learned how to rebuild a new one through patience, reflection, and steady, honest action — step by step.
Before his stroke, Gary spent years in theatre, creative projects, and community arts, learning how stories shape connection and healing. Afterward, those experiences became the foundation for his approach to resilience, meaning, and transformation.
Today, Gary helps individuals and groups explore the human side of recovery — physical, emotional, and creative — through:
Growing Tall — a keynote and workshop series grounded in lived experience
StoryNight — a community storytelling event that honors personal narratives
Writing and creative work that bridges theatre, reflection, and the everyday work of becoming whole
Gary doesn’t speak from theory — he speaks from walked experience. He believes that:
The body knows the way home, and the next honest step is enough.
His work invites listeners to slow down, notice what’s real, and find strength not in perfection, but in presence.
A story of recovery, resilience, and becoming who you already are
Growing Tall is a deeply human project that grew out of lived experience — a journey through stroke, recovery, creativity, and the long, patient work of becoming whole again.
It exists in three forms:
A Keynote Talk
Workshops & Small Group Experiences
A Book
Each stands on its own. Together, they form a single story about learning to walk again — in body, in mind, and in life.
At its heart, Growing Tall isn’t about medical recovery.
It’s about what it means to keep going.
To adapt.
To release what was.
And to step, inch by inch, into what’s still possible.
Book
Growing Tall: Learning to Stand Inside Change
A reflective, gently paced book about life after transformation — and what it means to stand inside change rather than rush past it. Through lived experience, narrative insight, and quiet reflection, Growing Tall meets the hard work of living forward with both honesty and compassion
Keynote Talk
Growing Tall: Letting Go to Move Forward
A grounded, human keynote built on firsthand experience. This talk offers audiences an honest story of change, resilience, and rediscovering life’s simplest step — the next honest step — with presence, awareness, and courage.
Workshops / Seminars
Exploring the Inner Landscape of Change
Interactive sessions that go deeper than a talk. In small groups, participants explore themes from Growing Tall through reflection, conversation, and guided practice — all rooted in real experience and shared with compassion.
Contact us
Interested in working together? Fill out some info and we will be in touch shortly. We can’t wait to hear from you!