Time to Embrace Purgatory.

You’re not lost. You’re in-between.

Corporate engagements, keynote speaking,
and coaching to support you where you are on your journey.

Embracing Your Own Purgatory

When the titles, achievements, and certainty disappear, what’s left? Geoff Curtis explores the uncomfortable space between who we were and who we are becoming.

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For nearly thirty years, Geoff Curtis built an impressive professional identity. The title. The expertise. It became his armor. It shielded him from discomfort, from admitting he didn’t have the answers. When the company he worked at was acquired and his role became redundant, that armor disappeared. What followed wasn’t a reinvention story. It was an uncomfortable reckoning. He realized he’d spent his entire life using work to suppress his emotions.

He calls this new stage purgatory—the uncomfortable space between who he was and who he is becoming. Most people write about these experiences from the other side. They’ve found the answers and emerged transformed. But Curtis? He’s writing from inside purgatory. He’s done pretending he has it figured out. He’s ready to learn. Through his vulnerability and the stories of others navigating their own purgatories, he explores what happens when identities collapse. The stories we tell to maintain control. The achievement addiction. The delayed grief. And the depression that follows when façades crack.

This is not a self-help book. It’s for anyone who has lost something that defined them. It’s for those exhausted from suppressing true emotion. We’ve all been there. We’ve all hurried to escape the voids, eager to avoid discomfort.

Curtis is taking the first step: saying the quiet part out loud. You are not alone.

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Geoff Curtis

Geoff spent nearly thirty years in healthcare communications, including agency and corporate roles. Following a company acquisition that resulted in his role being redundant, Curtis experienced a professional identity crisis, a loss of relevance and began an uncomfortable journey to redefine his purpose and life. Rather than offering solutions, Embracing Your Own Purgatory, his first book, is written not as a triumph but from inside his ongoing battle with this uncomfortable space.

Curtis serves on multiple boards, was a fellow in the University of Chicago’s Leadership and Society Initiative and holds degrees from Lake Forest College and DePaul University.

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Services and Engagements

Change is inevitable, but navigating it doesn’t have to be done alone. Through, keynote speaking, and coaching, this work helps people and organizations find clarity, resilience, and a path forward.

Keynote Speaking

A keynote that meets your audience where they are

I don’t speak from the other side of transformation. I am still actively inside it – and that’s what makes me different.

Whether the your audience is navigating career transitions, organizational change, or the quiet crisis of a professional identity that no longer fits, my keynotes deliver something rare: permission to stop pretending, and a framework for finding meaning in the uncertainty. Honest. Research-backed. Unexpectedly funny for a book about purgatory.

Available for conferences, leadership summits, corporate events, and university programs.

Coaching

For high achievers who’ve lost the plot – and know it.

You’ve spent your career being the person with the answers. Now you’re not sure you even know the right questions. That’s not failure. That’s purgatory — and it’s exactly where growth begins.

I work one-on-one with executives, professionals in transition, and anyone whose identity has been tied to their title for longer than they’d like to admit. My coaching isn’t about getting you back to who you were. It’s about helping you figure out who you actually want to become.

Limited engagements available.

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