100_Laura Davis
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Monica: What does the healing process from trauma look like over the course of a lifetime? 

Laura: Well, I think it, it, um, at first, I mean my experience and, and many others, there's, there's a fixation first on the trauma. I mean that you have to really focus on what happened to you and that, that involves naming it.

And it involves grieving for what you've lost. It involves getting angry at what had happened to you. It means breaking silence and not keeping it just inside yourself and you know, many other steps to actually confronting the trauma. And, you know, for me, I did a lot of therapy, um, and really needed the help of a therapist.

People use a lot of different modalities to help along their healing journey. And for me, you know, and then there's like all the ways we cope with trauma. Then we have to deal with those, you know, like the habits, like it could be an addiction, it could be some other compulsive behavior. It could be the way we dissociate.

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Monica: Welcome to The Revelation Project Podcast. I'm Monica Rogers, and this podcast is intended to disrupt the trance of unworthiness and to guide women, to remember and reveal the truth of who we are. We say that life is a Revelation Project and what gets revealed. It gets healed. 

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Revelation Project podcast.

So I'm with Laura Davis today and she is the author of seven books, including a book that I, I know that I've seen a million times. I haven't yet read it, but it's called the courage to heal becoming the parent. You want to be. And I thought we'd never speak again. Her groundbreaking books have been translated into 11 languages and she's sold over 2 million copies.

In addition to writing books that inspire and change people's lives. The work of Laura's heart is to teach. For more than 20 years, she's helped people find their voices, tell their stories and hone their craft. Laura loves creating, supportive, intimate writing communities online in-person and internationally today we'll be talking about her.

New memoir, the burning light of two stars, a mother daughter story. The story of her embattled, yet loving relationship with her mother. Hi, Laura. 

Laura: Hi, so great to be here today. 

Monica: Oh, it's so, so great to have you, it's an honor to have you reading your book has just, I don't, you know, there's divine timing is what I'll call it.

And I feel like that's what it is to come in contact with your work. Because as I had shared. With you. And as my audience knows, I am in the process of writing a part memoir a part self-help book. And so much of the storytelling is about my own relationship with my mother. And so reading your work and just your beautiful writing and.

this dynamic that it's embattled. And yet it's a loving relationship because there's both and it's complicated. And so I just really wanted to first start by honoring your, you know, and congratulating you for your book and your work and your writing. It's just beautiful. 

Laura: It's um, it's an exciting time for me because.

It took me 10 years to write this book and then, you know, a year to publish it and record the audio book and all of that. And to have it just coming out, it's like, it's like giving birth to a fully formed adult. Wow. And it's just such an exciting time because it's been in my head and in my body and in my psyche for so long.

And now it gets to be shared with readers and, you know, as a, as an office, The cycle is not complete until the reader reads the book because it's, it's really a relationship between the author and the audience, the reader, you know, so that you bring your life experience. Just like you told me before the show to the story.

And it becomes, it's like gets transformed into a whole other thing, then what are. You know, because it, it triggers things in you. It influences things in you, it makes you think, and you bring your own realities to it. And I just love that completing the circuit. And so it's a, it's an exciting time for me to, to have this book finally, finally launch. And being in reader's hands. 

Monica: Yeah. Well, it is such an exciting time and I'm so exciting and I'm kind of living vicariously through what you're saying, because it's so true. Like so much of my writing process can be in my head about, but often when I, when I can kind of catch the inspiration and think about, you know, the hearts I can touch.

Or, you know, the ways that I can actually make a difference in the world by sharing my story in a fully expressed way, then, you know, my writing comes from almost a different source. If that makes sense. 

Laura: Yes. It, it, I mean, you know, I've been teaching writing for over 20 years and I'm working with writers all the time and there are those moments where you tap into something it's really a source that's beyond your ego or your mind, or even your memory.

And you're tapping into some truth. And often on the page, I can, I can access truth or wisdom or insight that I find really challenging in my real life, in my daily life. So I think words have a lot of power and when you can convey them on the page so that it becomes more than just your personal story, but you tap into that universal vein.

There's just nothing more exciting than that. It's just a thrilling experience and you know, it, when it's happening, 

Monica: you should do, you know it, I got a shit eating grin on my face because I do know it when it's happening and it's the best feeling it really is. And so you use a word a lot in your, in your description, kind of, of the writing and there's like this betrayal piece, right?

And I wondered if we could start by just, just talking a little bit and framing the book a little bit more about kind of the dynamic between you and your mother and what that kind of betrayal in terms of levels of the complexity that really brought to your relationship. 

Laura: You know, my mother was an incredibly complex woman. 

And she had many wonderful qualities and in some ways she was a wonderful parent. I mean, she was not, I thought of her as an ogre for many years, but now with the perspective I have now, I don't see her that way, but she she'd like to be the sun. And she wanted me to be a planet orbiting around. And I'm a very strong personality and I was really not, I didn't come into life to be revolving around anyone else.

I was a sun myself. In fact, the title of the book, the burning light of two stars really is describing that dynamic of these two powerhouses at odds with each other. So, you know, my relationship with her was. Pretty good and wonderful in some ways when I was a young child, but when I hit puberty and I, when I started to express and articulate who I was and who I was becoming, and it didn't fit her idea of the kind of daughter she wanted me to be.

That's when we started having major conflict. And, you know, I grew up in the sixties and seventies and I was a love child. So I, when I was a teenager, I joined an Ashram. I had a guru. And I, you know, I, I was a really difficult daughter, you know, I quit college three times. I, you know, I did drugs, I did whatever was out there.

I was doing it. And I still was, you know, going to school and I was getting A's, which was really important to my mother. But th but each decision I made or each thing I experimented with, she always took it as like a personal affront and she would meet it with rage, intense anxiety, fear. Really clamping down and trying to control me.

And of course I just went in the opposite direction. So I always felt like I was fleeing from her control. And I think in the book one time, I, I describe it as feeling like she was like a spicy. And I was caught in her web. I mean, that's how I perceived her for many years. And that became kind of a habitual story.

We, we were discussing that before the show, I had this habitual story about my life and about my mother and about our relationship. And it was pretty rigid and I cast her as the villain, you know, I, I don't know, but at that time, for many years I was wronged and she was the villain. I came out to her as a lesbian when I was 23 and she.

Her response was you've confirmed my worst fear about. So that's typical of how she responded to who I was and who I was becoming. And that really led to a lot of difficulty between us and I kept moving further and further away. I'd grown up in New Jersey. I ended up in California, which was really as far as I could get without crossing an ocean.

But what really cemented the rift between us was when I was in my late twenties, about 27 years old. I began to remember sexual abuse with my grandfather. Who was her father. And I had, you know, buried that memory as a way to cope as a small child. And it started coming back in the context really of my first deep love relationship, which I think is a pretty typical time for those kinds of memories to surface, because I was.

Suddenly experiencing intimacy and sexuality together, and it just triggered these memories. And I was absolutely devastated. My life completely fell apart and I really needed my mother. And when I reached out to her to tell her, which I dreaded for a long time, you know, I said I was lying. I was making it up to kill her.

And she, that cemented our rift because I needed her. It was the worst time in my life. And that was the biggest betrayal. She abandoned me. She chose her dead father over her living daughter. And this is a pretty typical scenario. This is not unusual in a home where there's been some kind of sexual abuse or sexual violence, but she could have.

Be there for me. And so we went through years of me desperately wanting her support and just as desperately, she wanted me to recant. And then I, you know, I made things much worse by teaming up with a writer, Ellen Vass and writing the courage to heal, which was my first book. And that book took off like an underground bestseller way beyond any expectations we had.

I mean, it just, it was like, it started a firestorm. It started a whole movement survivors learning they could heal and recover from trauma. And it, it just was this phenomenon. At that time, it was 1988 and I was only 31 years old. I wasn't really equipped to handle this kind of sudden notoriety for the worst thing that had ever happened to me.

Um, but the fact that I was going on national TV and I was, I was on Phil Donahue was on all these shows that to my mother, you know, to my whole family on her side was just horrible. You know? Airing the dirty laundry and the law is they believed, uh, on national TV. And so that at that point I stopped being invited to the weddings and the bar mitzvahs and the, I was really cast out of the family and also I needed space from them because I needed to heal without their constant.

You know, denial and rage. And so it was, it was a very painful time for me and for, I think definitely my mother. And I think, I don't know about my other relatives, but I think my mother and I both were really suffering during that time of our deepest estrangement. I know, you know, I wasn't talking to her, but I thought about her every day and I could hear her voice in my mind.

I could hear her voice. And I wouldn't wouldn't have admitted it at the time, but I really longed to make peace with her. So, you know, it, it, I was estranged, but she was in my head all the time. 

Monica: Yeah. Yeah. You did such a great job of explaining what that was like with all the women, like waiting around the corner at that one, you know, big speaking of.

Uh, that you were headed into and you had gotten on the phone with her just before you walked in and her ears were like echoing or, or your, her words were echoing in your ears and you, you said you had to shut it behind like a steel wall. Right? 

Laura: Right. So that I could, I could get up on stage and inspire these hundreds of women who had come to hear me speak.

When I would get up on those stages during that period of time, it was almost like not that someone else took over, but I really was able to tap into. Uh, kind of healing inspirational energy that was beyond my own personal capability. Like I was still so much in the throws of my own healing process. At that time in my life was falling apart.

I was a wreck, but I would get on stage and I would, I would root myself into the earth and I would just feel like my heart open. And I was really a channel for. This healing, energy and inspiration. And then after the, these speaking gigs, all these women would come and I would sign their books and I would talk to each one individually, and then I would go back to my hotel room and I would just collapse.

And I would, I would just shrivel because all that energy would leave me. And I was just left with kind of the desolation of my life at that point. So I was in a very kind of split. Place at that time. And of course, you know, in the many years, since then, I have worked really hard to integrate, you know, so that I'm the same person on the inside and the outside.

And, uh, I can, I can handle that kind of energy coming through me with much more. Then I could, it was more than 30 years ago, 

Monica: Right? Yeah. I mean, and the way that you're describing it is so true to my experience as it relates to trauma and trauma around my mother. And you know, when you have a complicated relationship with a mother, a difficult relationship with them, Finding where you end and she begins and those boundaries and not understanding or having language around what co-dependence or a measurement looks like.

And especially when you've been raised in a situation where you've been forced to kind of. I live in unsafe space, whether it's unpredictable or it's physically unsafe. And then there's impossible circumstances such as actually telling your mother what happened eventually. And just having that. Then result in her, making it as into a personal attack upon her, versus being able to be with you, you know, as a cherishing mother in your time of need.

And it brings up so many interesting conversations for me around just what that archetype of mother, you know, really means and how distorted. That mothering gets through kind of a very patriarchal system. And I even think about, again, the entitlement in some ways of your grandfather and the incest that you suffered.

And that, of course, again, being kind of at the hands of kind of that male figure. In our lives. That just, I don't know if you have anything you want to add on that, but it's just feels really complicated. 

Laura: Yes. If it's really complicated, you know, I mean, part of the journey for me, this, this book is, you know, what I just talked about in terms of the past with my mother is really the backstory.

To the story I wrote about here, which is the, you know, that's sort of, what is, you need to understand, to understand the rift between us, but really the story that I told was. My mother got old. And the question I faced was can I become a caregiver to someone who betrayed me in the past? My mother, we live, you know, 3000 miles apart.

And when she was almost 80 years old, she called one day, and this is the inciting incident for the story. It's what kicks the story into motion. She calls and announces that she's moving across the country to my town for the rest of her life. And I was. Stunned. I was shocked. I was panicked, completely panicked, but there was also a part of me that was kind of hungry for it.

And there's actually something I want to read from the book, but there was a part of me that hoped that finally at the end of her life, that we would be able to reconcile all the way. And we had already achieved by this point, a pretty good degree of like a working relationship. It had taken 20 years to get from being totally as strange to agreeing, to disagree and being able to have a good relationship, but not an intimate one.

I never confided in her about anything that really mattered to me. You know, I just, I didn't, I never felt I could be vulnerable to her, but yet we had worked out how to be together and how to find things we could enjoy that were separate from this giant kind of turd in the living room, which was the abuse, you know, because I got to a point where I didn't really need her to believe me anymore.

You know, I had healed enough that I was moving on. What she thought about it didn't matter. And she was able to let go of the idea that I would ever recant my story. And we began to look for ways to develop new threads of connection between us that were not based on this huge conflict at the center of our relationship.

And he had done pretty well at that. And I would have said that we were reconciled, but then when. Was old and she moved across the country and she was starting to develop dementia. You know, suddenly that 3000 mile buffer between us was gone and, you know, her decline, it just pushed every button I had and, and, you know, she made those buttons.

So it was kind of inevitable that that would happen. But suddenly we were at war again, uh, you know, and it, and it was over her independence, you know? As anyone with dementia is usually in the early stages, nothing was wrong. She didn't need any help she could drive. She could, and I, you know, saw that she needed help and then we just locked heads again.

And it just, it brought up all the challenges from the past. And yet. I wanted to follow through. I wanted to be there for her and it was just incredibly difficult. And that's, that's what this story is about. It's about the, mostly about the period of time from that phone call until her death and what I had to face and what I had to deal with as a caregiver to her.

So I want to read this this little bit. This was soon after moved out to California where I live and, and she, she never lived with me. I don't think I could have ever handled that proximity. I don't think she could have either. And fortunately, we were privileged enough that we didn't have to, we were not forced into that situation.

I think it would have destroyed us both. Um, so she lives separate from me. At when this scene happens, I had been away on a work trip for a week, teaching, writing somewhere. I don't know where, and I came back and I went over to her place and like, all her neediness had built up in the week. I had been gone and I came in and, you know, it manifested in, like her printer was broken.

Like I came in and I started like fixing things. And I, I was able, at this point I was like the good. You know, people would say, oh, I wish I had a daughter like you, because I was very attentive. And I went through the motions of doing all the tasks, all the research, you know, I made sure, you know, I did everything, but I was still distant.

And this day, um, she confronted me about it. And, and then afterwards, this is, this is what I wrote three decades earlier. I had erected an impenetrable wall between us. A fortress with narrow slits. So I could watch her approach. I ensured my defenses were prepared any time she came near me. I always had an escape plan.

It's true. We later reconciled. And the fact that we were able to create a functional relationship was a miracle, but it wasn't an intimate miracle because I never took down my wall. Oh, I taught myself to be kind to her in a fake it till you make it sort of way, but I still held her at bay. My wall just got subtler.

It wasn't permeable. It was hard and opaque. And there was, or we only met in the anterior chamber, the common room where guests are received. Only my polished self was on display my mask self, and only in the Anta chamber. Mom never saw my inner sanctum and I never saw hers. I got as close as I could within the constraints I had established, but closed is closed and a closed heart is a lonely one.

The price I paid to keep my mother out at first with withdrawal later with an armed fortress. And finally with the polite rules of detente was love. The pure unfettered love. I longed for the pure unfettered love. she craved. That day in her kitchen. When I couldn't comfort her, I had to face it. My mother was still a stranger to me with tentacles of need.

I was loathe to touch. I wanted to be more than kind to do more than merely. What was. I wanted to love my mother just once freely and with the relief of a lost, exhausted child beyond words and beyond all pretense, I wanted to lay my head on a place that was safe just once before it was too late. 

Monica: I'm listening from such a place of being able to relate.

The words and the images that come, you know, as you talk about that exhausted child that just wants that safe lap, that safe place with her mother, just once it's so provocative to me and it's well, and I was just gonna, you know, add that there's, there's just a hard truth about some relationships. That you know, are just, you know, that, that longing never goes away.

This is all I wanted to say. Yeah. 

Laura: And that's what I was actually gonna say too. Not every relationship can be reconciled and there's a lot of different types of reconciliation, you know, um, different levels of reconciliation, but there are absolutely circumstances where the best choice someone can make is to set boundaries and hold those boundaries.

And to, you know, the person is just too toxic, you know, or. Uh, you're dealing with a mental illness or the person is violent, you know, or they've shut the door and there's no way in, or when you're with that, then it just repeats the same cycle of hostility or abuse. And so sometimes it's just, it's impossible to do anything directly with the other person, but I really maintain that even when direct reconciliation is impossible, that we can still.

Find a place of peace with the relationship on the inside. There was a woman I interviewed for, uh, the book I wrote called, uh, I thought we'd never speak again. This was, it was, uh, it was my first book on reconciliation. It was more of a, how to book. And this woman had come from an incredibly abusive home.

Her parents had sexually abused her and her siblings, and then she grew up and she was certain. It was just her or just them. And so she let her children be with these, her parents and they sexually abused their grandchildren too. So she absolutely was never going to see them again or have them in her life again.

And for many years it was just this, you know, just shut down bitterness. But as many years went by and she went through her own healing process. She began to think of that. In a different way from a distance. And she began to develop more compassion for them. And just to think about what was it like for them to live with that horror of who they were 24 hours a day.

Um, and, and to look at the, the generations of abuse and the whole history that had led to who they became. And she said she was able to. Really released them so that she wasn't carrying them anymore. And the way she described it, she said, you know, Laura, she said I had to close the door, but I left the porch light on.

Monica: So beautiful. Isn't it? Yeah, because it's, you know, it speaks to this,

You know, when we've done our healing work right. Or where we're never done. Well, I'll say that. We, I believe we do get to a point where we can kind of still be these open-hearted people that we were always meant to be like, not just so shut down and bitter and cynical and resigned, right. Like to live with that open heart, but to know kind of like.

You know, to know the difference between what self-abandonment looked like before and what self-love looks like now, and to be able to co-exist with the world in a way that doesn't allow anyone to take advantage of you anymore, but still allows you to be open, should an opportunity present itself. And I think it's okay.

Well, I've wondered if it's okay to stay hopeful, you know, because on one level. There's just the hard truth. And then on another level I've learned that sometimes the way things happen are not necessarily what we expect to happen, but things do happen that help us come to a resolution and. And so that porch light on reminds me of the hope, you know, that I still hold and I'm not waiting for it.

Do you know what I mean? I'm not exactly. I said, there's the difference. Yeah. 

Laura: There's a difference between open-heartedness and longing. And I think we need to get past longing or the, or the sense that if this doesn't happen, I can't be complete. We have to find a way to be complete. And then. wound a place of being open-hearted and I think it, you know, it's a lifetime journey.

This is, this is not easy. And this kind of nuance of the healing process is not at the beginning of your healing process. You know, it's, it might be decades into it that you you're able to get to this place. And. You know, if you had told me when I was in, this is really interesting when I was in my early thirties and my mother and I were the most estranged.

I went for a hike with my brother. Uh, he was living in Colorado and we went hiking in Rocky mountain national park, and we had this conversation and my parents had been divorced since I was 14. And I said, uh, when they get old, I said, I'll take care of dad. You take mom. I said, I cannot possibly take care of her when she gets old.

Like there was no way. And he said, sure, you know, as brothers do, uh, he said, sure, I'll do that. And so that's where I was at, you know, in, when I was in my early thirties, I never, if you had told me that I would be at my mother's death bed and that I would be her caregiver at the end of her life. Um, and that I would choose to do that.

I would've just looked at you like you were absolutely insane. Like I just could not perceive that as a possibility. So I think, you know, one of the things, I hope that my story communicates is that. Sometimes change is possible in the most intractable relationships and that we just really don't know what's going to happen.

And sometimes it's with the other person. And sometimes it's just a really deep shift inside ourselves that allows us to perceive differently. There's a, there's an epigraph that I used by a former student of mine, a writer named Deborah Fershea. And she said, Every time. I look in the rear view mirror, the past has changed and I, you know, to me that that really sums up my experience in this, you know, epic mother daughter relationship.

Every time I look at the past, every time I look in the rear view mirror, the past has changed and you know, my perception of the relationship, my perception of my mother, my perception of myself, has just gone through such an evolution. And I had to, you know, I had to work really, really hard when I was writing this book to become more and more vulnerable.

As I wrote it at the, at the beginning, my mother was the villain and I was the hero like in the early drafts. This is one reason it took me 10 years and I had a friend. I read an early draft and she just said to me, she said, Laura, this is not the courage to heal. It's the courage to reveal. And she said, you just are so buttoned up and you know, you're making yourself look so good and you've got to get over that.

And so I really worked hard to become vulnerable and to look at my own failings and, and to really see this as a relationship between two flaw human beings. 

Monica: I'd love it, Laura, if you could actually summarize the. On 1 0 5 it's beekeeper and read, you know, summarize what you were doing there. But I would love for you to read the last piece on 1 0 8, because I just, that hit me.

And what you did, there was take responsibility. And you've done that in several places in this book, which is why I think it's so compelling to me because there are so many ways that there was and have been, you know, like. Looking at my piece in, in some things, whether it's because it was my perspective or it's because I was not aware that I was doing certain things that were kind of making it even more impossible in some ways.

But I wondered if you could address that one. 

Laura: Yeah. I mean, there's when my mother died. I discovered in her things, this cache of letters and big folder of letters and, and she had saved every letter she'd ever received from me. And she had saved copies of every letter. She had written to me, including like first drafts of letters that were never sent, you know, the really raw ones.

And I had done the same. So when I put those letters together, there was like two huge file folders of handwritten correspondence. I mean, this was, this was taking place when we were estranged and it was before the internet, before email. And so there was this incredible set of letters. And my mother was a good writer as well.

And readings letters was such an incredible confrontation for me because. You know, as I mentioned earlier, I had this set story, this habitual story of how things had been. And then when I started reading the letters and it was written evidence, I found out that my story had a lot of holes in it and it was true, but it was only part of the truth.

Like I used to say my mother and I didn't speak for seven years, but then this dusty moldy. Letters from the past, they proved otherwise because we were writing to each other when we couldn't see each other, we were writing letters to each other and, and they weren't, some of the letters were hostile and angry and confronting, but some of the letters were kind and loving and generous.

And I suddenly had to see that I had created a storyline that I needed to support with evidence that I was wronged in my mother, by my. And yes, she did wrong me. I'm not saying she didn't put, but it was this, this rigid thing. And so once I started reading them, there was an intimacy in these letters that I didn't remember.

And then there was, there was like, this is a little exam. And you know, I, when I was working on this, I worked with a lot of editors and almost everyone said, you have to cut these letters out of the book. And there's not a lot of them. I think there's like maybe eight in a 360 page book. So it's not a big element, but I was just determined to hold on to them.

Even though if one said the book is too complicated, just get rid of them. But it's really the only place my mother gets to have her own voice, otherwise, all the scenes where there's dialogue, that dialogue, that I'm recreating for her is through my own filter. And it's not really purely her, but these letters are her actual words.

So I just, I want to read just a little bit of one of her. Just to get her voice here. I wrote to her, you know, basically saying, you know, I do you think I like hardening and rage? Don't you think I want a nice family to visit? I want reconciliation, but not your way. I can't sweep the last year away. Like it never happened.

So we could go back to trading, chop, liver recipes over the. You asked me to tell you about my life? What should I say that I got laid off my job and now I'm seeking funding to work on my incest book. Full-time that I spend my days interviewing women survivors of sexual abuse out of a need for inspiration.

That healing is possible. What can I write to you about the weather in San Francisco? The fact that I have no love life, because my sexuality was decimated by your father's touch. How can I tell you any of it? You don't want to hear. Writing this hurts. It is an actual physical pain, a longing for something out of reach.

I don't know how to reconcile such rage with the depth of love. I feel for me, there was only the terrible rage and the awful love, and I don't know what to do with either of them. So why that's a little bit of what I wrote to her. And then she writes back. She says, I read your letter, amid mixed feelings of anger, hurt, and compassion, and decided to send a reply.

I deserve at this time in my life, not to have to defend myself against such rapid attacks, whatever I say will only end up as further ammunition of all the evil I inflicted upon you. But silence is not my way, especially when I feel your terrible pain. I pray. You will be able to work through your suffering.

Assuming you were a victim of child molestation. Are you going to hang onto it forever? Make this the cause of your life and destroy your potential for happiness? Yes. I hear your ambivalence. The love for families. You are wrong about one thing, you do have a family. You certainly have a mother, but I no longer wish to play the masochist who happily accepts the abuse.

You seem to need to heap on me when you are ready for the relationship we deserve together, I shall be ready. Nothing is ever perfect. So this is what we were going back and forth. And you know, the, the dynamic really was that this whole time we were estranged, I was. Reaching out to her and setting up a wall at the same time.

Monica: And I would love to read this if I could this last paragraph, because it's just so beautiful. As I study our correspondence, one dynamic standards. I was reaching out to my mother and pushing her away at the same time. I never stopped yearning for her. Even as I held her at bay, like a beekeeper who wears protective gear to reduce the number of stings.

I protected myself as I extended my hand, like, wow. Oh my goodness. Right. So Laura, what. What does the healing process from trauma look like over the course of a lifetime? 

Laura: Well, I think it, it, um, at first, I mean my experience and, and many others, there's, there's a fixation first on the trauma. I mean that you have to really focus on what happened to you and that, that involves naming it.

And it involves grieving for what you've lost. It involves getting angry at what had happened to you. It means breaking silence and not keeping it just inside yourself and you know, many other steps to actually confronting the trauma. And, you know, for me, I did a lot of therapy, um, and really needed the help of a therapist.

People use a lot of different modalities to help along their healing journey. And for me, you know, and then there's like all the ways we cope with trauma. Then we have to deal with those, you know, like the habits, like it could be an addiction, it could be some other compulsive behavior. It could be the way we dissociate.

That was a big one for me. Um, we have to deal with those things. We did that at one point were functional and saved us. But then when we become grown up, really interfere with us living the lives we want to live. So then we have to deal with all that fallout, you know, and then we have to deal with intimacy and

are we capable of being intimate when we've been damaged? In an intimate relationship, you know, so that's like a whole other level. And then, you know, there was a certain point, there was a, a woman I interviewed for courage to heal and I never forgot her. It was two sisters. And they said it was like that they, they were focused on their healing intensively.

And then they said it started to feel like they were wearing a sweater that was too tight and they had to take it off. But that taking it off would mean that they would feel so exposed to the world. And that. For me, there definitely was a period of point where I didn't want to identify with being an incest survivor anymore.

I mean, you know, if you'd asked me at 27 who I was, I would have said incest survivor, and that would have been the only answer because it was so consuming, you know? And now if you were to ask me who I am, you know, I would say, you know, I'm an author, I'm a teacher, I'm a workshop leader. I'm a wife, I'm a mother, I'm a grandmother.

I'm a swimmer. You know, I'm a hiker, I'm a sister, I'm a friend, an incest survivor would not even be on the list. It's not that it doesn't exist. It's like, it's like in the fabric of who, what shaped me. So I think there's a point where you, you get to where you stop identifying with the injury and it stops becoming your identity.

And then, then it's like, okay, if I'm not going to use that, As the reason I am the way I am. Like when I'm looking at my flaws, my human flaws, then I have to take responsibility for myself. And, and then it's like, who, who would I have been if this had never happened to me? And how can I reclaim that person?

And that, you know, that that's like the journey of the rest of your life. And, you know, I find that as I go through different cycles in my life, that there are certain. Kind of in the evolution of a life that there are certain moments when I get triggered again, and some of the, the old pain or the old anxiety or the habit toward dissociation, um, comes back and it could be, you know, I had cancer, you know, I, when I had cancer, a lot of stuff came up for.

Um, or, you know, when people are aging or they retire or they're, they're suffering, uh, a loss of a death of someone close to them, but all kinds of situations where you have less power can bring up again, this trauma from the past, even though it's feels like it's resolved. So I feel like it's always. It's always with me in a way, but it's not, it doesn't shape my life.

It's just, it's given me both. I, the way I look at it, both strengths and vulnerabilities and I, I just fully accept it. You know, it's not something I want to get away from or, or think I should get away from. And it's, it's brought me huge strengths and huge courage. And. Deep compassion for other people who are suffering.

Monica: Yeah. Well, the word I often use is it tenderizes us. Oh, 

Laura: I love that. Yeah. You know, 

Monica: like it's like that doesn't happen without a few really hard wax, you know, like, well, and there's a way that trauma continues to inform you, but it no longer shaped. Yes. That's what I heard you say. And, and it's, it's so beautiful that you.

Are bringing this book out into the world, because again, I just want to acknowledge your eloquence in, in how you wrote it. Because I know as somebody who feels the level of complexity that this brings, like what it's like to write about this, and it's, you've given me, you know, real inspiration for being able to do it myself in a really.

Generous and compassionate way towards both of us. And, and I love the way that you've brought your mother's voice and gifts. I especially loved, you know, you were sharing and I don't want to say too much, but you were sharing about witnessing your mom kind of in the, in the spotlight and just how magnificent, you know, she also was.

And so there's the both and of. Living with a complicated parent or a parent relationship. And then, you know, also just what it really does take and the courage it takes and the grit to heal. You know, to really just have the courage to heal. As I heard, there was a pretty amazing author that wrote that.

So, you know, I know that we're coming up on time here, Laura, but this has just been beautiful. I can't wait to finish the book myself and I wanted to invite you to invite our listeners, to follow you into learn more about what you're up to right now. Yeah. 

Laura: So I have posted the first five chapters of the book on my website and I, I really want to invite people to go read them for free.

The URL is www. Laura davis.net forward slash chapters. And, and since I posted them, I've heard from almost every day. I hear from, I get an email from a woman and she'll say something like, I know I'm going to have to take care of my mother and I've been dreading it, but now I'm looking at it as an opportunity, or I'm thinking about my mother.

Or my daughter in a whole new way. I mean, one woman even wrote and said she had picked up the phone and called her mother for the first time in 18 years. So, so I invite you to read those chapters again. It's www Laura davis.net forward slash. Chapters. And I also, you know, if you were a writer and you're interested in creative expression, I teach a lot of writing workshops.

Many of them online, I'm taking a, um, a group of writers to Tuscany next June. It was a trip that was postponed in 2020. And of course in 2021 and 2022 is going to be the time to go. And if you're interested in, uh, um, Eco-friendly vacation and a gorgeous Villa in Tuscany that has a creative element of writing a couple hours every day, and then exploring it's Laura davis.net forward slash Tuscany.

And, um, I'm really excited about that. I have missed those trips. I used to do two or three a year. I'm taking people all over the world and, um, I I've never been to Tuscany. So I'm, I'm really excited about that.

So Laura just come to Laura davis.net and you'll see my social media. There and, um, I hope to meet you sometime. 

Monica: Well, I have a feeling that, you know, there's way more to talk about too, cause I know that you just, just learning about you and hearing now and reading your writing has just, like I said, I mean, this is a beautiful, beautiful book for our listeners, so please by all means, pick it up and.

I love that you published the first five chapters because there's a that's a surety that people are gonna, you know, like what happens next, because it is like that. I mean, it's really compelling read. So again, Laura, thank you. And we're gonna, I would love to have you back really like to have another conversation even about, you know, some of your.

Work with the courage to heal, because I think there's such a big conversation. There are so many, so many people who can continue to relate to and read and benefit from that. That work. 

Laura: That'd be great. I mean, I'd also love to come and just talk about using writing as a tool for healing, which is what I've been doing for decades, helping people do that.

So, yeah, I think, I think your audience might enjoy. 

Monica: They absolutely would. And, and just so you know, everybody knows too, and Laura, we'll be sure to put your links as well in the show notes so that everybody can easily find you. And until next time more to be revealed,

We hope you enjoyed this episode. For more information, please visit us@jointherevelation.com and be sure to download our free gift, subscribe to our mailing list. That's a review on iTunes. We thank you for your generous listening and as always more to be revealed.