Biography

Dr. Maria Sirois is an inspirational speaker, consultant, and licensed clinical psychologist who has worked in the fields of wellness and positive psychology for twenty years.

As a lecturer and motivational speaker, Maria has been invited to keynote at conferences for wellness organizations, businesses, hospitals, hospices, religious and philanthropic institutions around the country. A master storyteller, her lectures and workshops combine powerful and moving anecdotes with research to bring an audience to the place we all most want to be: moved to tears, joy and positive action within the lives we are already living. Addressing topics as diverse as "Sustaining Resilience in the Presence of Suffering," "Every Day Counts: Flourishing No Matter What," and "The Heart in Philanthropy," she has been called both a "true teacher," and "an orator of great power and beauty."

Her clinical work brings the bounty of positive psychology and mind/body medicine to families and children facing terminal illness, and to the staff who care for them. Trained at the New England Deaconness Mind/Body Clinic (Boston, Mass.) and at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (Boston, Mass.) she currently works as a psychologist and consultant to families, psychology staffs and hospital and hospice organizations. She received her doctorate from the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology in 1993.

An author as well, "Every Day Counts: Lessons in Love, Faith and Resilience From Children Facing Illness is the tale of Maria's psychology internship at Dana-Farber. Every Day Counts brings to us the wisdom of the children she treated, wisdom that reminds us in essence that there is no time but now to live life with an open heart. Fearless when facing the suffering of our children, and determined to bring forth the gifts they offer, it is a book, as Paul Newman has written, "{of} great courage, something to lean on in tough times." Compassion abounds in this book, for the children, for those that love them, and for the caregivers of our world.