Matt Talafuse is the author of Between the Living and the Dead and the creator of The Weight We Carry, a keynote built around one powerful idea:

The weight isn't the problem. Carrying it alone is.

Through stories of war, firefighting, faith, family, leadership, and healing, Matt challenges audiences to ask three questions:

What are you carrying?
Who helps you carry it?
Whose weight can you help carry?

It's a message born from a life of service and experiences Matt never expected to have.

At 19 years old, I deployed to Iraq with the Colorado Army National Guard as a Black Hawk helicopter mechanic and crew chief.

I went there expecting to fix helicopters.

Instead, I found myself volunteering at one of the busiest combat hospitals in Iraq. I spent more than 600 hours helping receive wounded service members from medevac helicopters and eventually working in the morgue, where I helped prepare 14 fallen American service members for their final journey home.

Those experiences changed me, and some of them followed me home.

After Iraq, I found another way to serve.

For nearly 15 years, I've worked as a professional firefighter in Colorado. I also spent several years in peer support, helping fellow first responders navigate difficult calls, trauma, and the things that sometimes follow us home.

Over time, the question changed from "Why did I have to carry this?" to "How can I use what I've carried to help someone else?"

That question eventually became both a book and a keynote.

My memoir, Between the Living and the Dead: A Story of War, Faith, and Turning Pain Into Purpose, began as a way to leave my daughters the story of what their dad experienced in Iraq.

But it became much more than a war story.

It's about what happens afterward. Trauma. Marriage. Fatherhood. Faith. Healing. Service. And discovering that some of the things we wish we had never been asked to carry can eventually prepare us to help carry someone else.

My signature keynote brings that message to the stage.

The Weight We Carry combines storytelling with practical lessons about resilience, leadership, service, faith, and the power of showing up for one another.

My story includes Black Hawk helicopters, a combat hospital, the firehouse, business, marriage, faith, and fatherhood.

Yours probably looks very different.

But everybody carries something.

I speak because I want these stories to do more than entertain a room. I want someone to leave willing to ask for help, check on a struggling friend, make the phone call, or sit beside someone who needs them.

For all the titles I've had, soldier, firefighter, entrepreneur, author, and speaker, the ones that matter most are husband and dad.

My wife, Lindsey, and I are raising our three daughters, Tenley, Genevieve, and Emersyn, in Colorado. My family and my faith are at the center of who I am and have changed the way I understand everything that came before.

Looking back, I can see purpose in chapters I couldn't understand while I was living them.

And that's ultimately why I write and why I speak...