Life Swings • You Survived • Life After Impact Starts Here •
Life Swings • You Survived • Life After Impact Starts Here •
Beth McDonough
Reconstruction, not Resilience • Rebuild After Crisis • Life After Impact • Architect of the "After"
Stop Repeating
Start Rebuilding
What broke you becomes what builds you
What is STILL STANDING?
A five-beam reconstruction framework for the part no one prepares you for: the aftermath has an "after." Resilience Gets You Through Crisis; Reconstruction Determines What You Build After the Dust Settles.
Beth developed this method for the long, quiet middle when the crisis may be over, but the consequences are still unfolding. You're no longer who you were. Yet you aren't where you're going.
This trademarked method helps people and organizations navigate that difficult in-between space: to stop the inferno, inspect what's burning underneath it, decide what's damaged but worth saving, what can be repurposed, release what no longer supports who you're becoming, and begin rebuilding from the inside out better than before.
Audiences learn to identify warning signs before they become visible collapse, recognize destructive patterns, install new internal systems, strengthen dependable support, and pinpoint the weakest emotional beam that requires repair, restoration or reinforcement before moving forward. Beth walks you through the wreckage, shows you how to inspect the internal framework, make lasting behavior change and be the architect of a fresh life that welcomes you home to yourself.
If you're in that daunting space between living day to day and rebuilding, you're not failing.
You are in the work.
Surviving is the start. Reconstruction afterward, is where STILL STANDING lives.
Resilience gets you through crisis. Reconstruction determines what's built on the other side
Why Beth?
Adversity gets all the airtime.
Beth McDonough expands the conversation to confront the morning after, when the news crews leave, the sympathy runs out, and you're the only one left holding a hammer.
An Emmy, Edward R. Murrow, duPont-Columbia and Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist, Beth, spent three decades reporting from the center of crisis. Her assignments included 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing, the I-35W bridge collapse, Prince’s death, the escape of kidnapping survivor Jayme Closs, and the murder of George Floyd along with the civil unrest that followed. She was wounded while reporting during a riot.
She learned to read a room and hold people’s attention when the subject was difficult, personal, or painful.
Then Beth’s own life collapsed: in public.
Two DUI arrests cost her coveted career, credibility, and identity she spent decades building. But the hardest part began after she survived impact.
Resilience helps people get through tough times. Reconstruction determines what you rebuild after the dust settles.
Beth transformed her own lived-experience into STILL STANDING™ a five-beam method for creating lasting transformation after life takes a swing.
Her keynotes turn that framework into an immersive experience.
Beth builds the framework live onstage while attendees examine their own infrastructure. Volunteers engage to help prove a point. Through compelling storytelling , visual demonstrations, audience interaction, props and a personal audit scored in real-time, she guides attendees through five essential inspections.
For event planners, that makes Beth’s system especially valuable for creating emotional connections and moves people to action. She brings the unique combination of investigation precision, decades of reading hidden patterns, asking unique questions that uncover what people aren’t saying, and translating complex systems.
Each keynote is adapted for individuals, leadership conferences, corporations, women & workplace wellness, non-profit associations, educational agencies, justice + courts and recovery communities.
Beth is the author of two books: STANDBY & STILL STANDING: The Reconstruction of Life, which takes readers behind the crime-scene tape of her gritty reporting career and exposes the private work of repairing her damaged life. She has appeared on CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX News, along with countless podcast, newspaper, magazine, radio and digital interviews. She was also featured alongside abduction survivor Elizabeth Smart in the Lifetime documentary Smart Justice: The Jayme Closs Case.
Beth brings the stagecraft of a broadcast producer who knows how to keep a crowd with her. She speaks from 18 years of deliberate, documented reconstruction.
She hands people a detailed blueprint to repeatedly use long after the event ends.
Beth's keynotes create the shift. Her workshops develop the plan. Two books deepen the understanding. The Rebuild Lab app helps you continue the work.
Find your footing before you find your future.
EMMY WINNER • duPONT COLUMBIA AWARD • EDWARD R. MURROW
Standby is Beth McDonough’s first memoir of investigative journalism, true crime and the personal cost of public failure.
For decades, viewers knew Beth as the tenacious reporter who gave people a voice when they needed someone to listen.
From a small-town newsroom to coverage of 9/11 and the killing of George Floyd, she built a career uncovering truths others wanted hidden. Facing her own took longer.
Behind the polished on-air persona was a secret she couldn't outrun anymore. A night filled with drinking and bad decisions turned her from respected journalist to scandalized headline. Two DUI arrests. Mugshots replaced professional portraits. Her downfall became national news.
She lost her job. Reputation. Almost everything.
The reporter who asked hard questions of others, now had to answer some.
With a journalist’s eye for detail and the candor of someone who lived the repercussions, Beth takes readers behind the scenes of television news and inside the private struggle her audience didn't see. She confronts the disparity between appearing capable and being healthy.
For anyone who has hidden a struggle, loved someone living with substance use disorder, or wondered how to face people after imploding publicly, Standby offers an honest place to begin.
