Summer Rewind: Writing to Heal with Laura Davis

Well, hello, Laura Davis! Welcome to the Writing Your Resilience podcast. I am just so overjoyed to have you here today, because I have been a fan of your work for many, many years.

Laura [1:57]
Thank you, thank you. I’m very honored to be here.

Lisa [2:00]
One of the things we were talking about just before I hit the record button is the fact that your work has always come to me when I needed it — and so I always think of that Buddhist proverb: when the student is ready, the teacher appears. You have certainly been a teacher for me. Earlier in my life, The Courage to Heal was a profound experience, but what we’re going to talk about today is your memoir. For those of you watching the video, I have it right here — you’ll notice I have some tabs — The Burning Light of Two Stars. It also came to me at an important time in my life. I’m wondering if you could tell us a little about the book. What would you like us to know?

Laura [2:40]
This is my seventh book, and all the books I had written before were about how to do something — information-based nonfiction, usually full of other people’s stories and interviews. There were four books on healing from sexual abuse, a parenting book called Becoming the Parent You Want to Be, and a book on estrangement and reconciliation called I Thought We’d Never Speak Again. Then I didn’t publish anything for 19 years, so this book was gestating for a very long time.

It’s a memoir — and it was the first time I wrote in a completely different genre. This story drew threads from all the work I had done in the past, but in a very intimate and personal way. It’s a mother-daughter story, and it basically asks — and answers — the question: Can you caretake a parent who betrayed you in the past? That is a question I have lived with my whole life. I think the first time I published something about my mother, I was 23 years old, so I’ve been writing about her and thinking about her for a very long time.

This is a book I didn’t really want to write. I kept trying to put it aside, kept wanting to walk away from it — for many reasons. I didn’t think I had the writing chops. I was deeply concerned about how my family would react, because I had already been rejected and ostracized after The Courage to Heal, my first book, which came out when I was 31. I didn’t want to go through that again. And I didn’t think I had the memory to write a memoir. So, there were a lot of reasons I kept saying, “I can’t do this.” It was very painful and challenging to write — I had to come to terms with so much. But the story just kept reasserting itself: You have to write this. You can’t write anything else or do anything else until you commit to seeing this all the way through.

It took me 10 years to write, and I’m really, really proud of it. I had to learn so much in the process — both about this very primal relationship I had with my mother, and about myself as a writer. Even though I’ve been a writing teacher for 25 years, I had to develop a whole new set of skills to be able to tell this story.

Lisa [5:09]
Isn’t it funny how the stories we have to tell simply will not let us go? We think we have a choice, but we don’t. These stories beg to be told — and I’m so glad you told this one and told it in the way you did. There was such intimacy in this book. You don’t just walk us through the steps of caring for a parent; you take us inside a story that is at times beautiful and at times really gritty and very real. For those of us in this period of life — caring for parents, especially when there’s been a difficult history, when betrayals have happened — we have to ask this question and figure out what our own answer looks like. It can look so many different ways.

For me, I felt like this book was a primer on forgiveness. I teach different classes on that, and I just kept thinking: if you want to see what forgiveness actually looks like, you need to go buy this book right now. There is so much in it. You tell it so gorgeously — no one would ever know you had to learn all these skills.

Laura [6:21]
What’s really interesting to me is that I don’t think I ever mention the word forgiveness in the book. It’s not the framework with which I wrote it — I just told the story. For me, it’s really a story about reconciliation, and reconciliation doesn’t necessarily mean a continuation or resumption of a relationship. It’s an internal coming to peace with a really challenging relationship. That’s what I had to do with my mother.

My mother and I were completely estranged for a number of years. Then gradually, around the time I was in my mid-30s and starting to have children — her grandchildren — we both worked to try to rebuild something, and we reached a kind of equilibrium. I never felt safe with her. I never revealed anything personal to her. But we had a functional relationship, and it worked in part because she lived in New Jersey and I lived in California. That 3,000-mile buffer was really necessary. I exerted a lot of control over the relationship; she often broke my rules, but I was always trying to protect myself from her. That was the core feeling.

The book opens when she’s 80 years old and calls one day — the inciting incident, the thing that kicks the story into gear — to tell me she’s moving to my town for the rest of her life. And then I have to reckon with: How do I feel about that? Am I capable of being a daughter to her for the rest of her life, despite this really complex and challenging history?

It’s worth saying, too — you mentioned the book being helpful for people who’ve had a difficult relationship with a parent, but I’ve also heard from people who are in my mother’s position, facing their own aging or their own death, who have found it really meaningful. And people who had good relationships with their families. I think it’s really for anyone who has been a caregiver and knows the stresses that puts on you — or for anyone who has had a seemingly impossible relationship with someone and is wondering how to find a place of resolution and peace inside yourself, regardless of what that other person does.

Lisa [8:41]
Yes — and I love how you broaden the audience for this, because it’s true. It can reach all kinds of readers, especially caregivers. I love that people who are facing the end of their lives are also finding so much meaning in it.

So, the story begins when the buffer is gone. And I noticed something in the writing — something we’re going to talk about more later — which is that in writing this, you also took the buffer off for yourself. But first I want to ask: What did you have to do to prepare emotionally for the rigors of telling this story?

Laura [9:21]
That’s a really good question. For many years I’ve been teaching and practicing writing practice — something I learned from Natalie Goldberg a long, long time ago. Having a practice of writing about the hardest things and not holding back and having a commitment to write for my own healing, my own clarification, my own self-knowledge — that has been a critical part of my self-care for many decades. So, I think having that core commitment to telling the real truth on the page, separate from how it looks, was very much at the center of what enabled me to write this book.

I also have a friend, Susan Brown — she’s now a retired creative writing teacher who works with a lot of writers — and she read a very early draft of this book and basically tore it apart. She said, “You’re spending so much time making yourself look good. You’re making yourself the hero of the story.” And then she said to me: “Laura, this is not The Courage to Heal — this is the courage to reveal.”

I didn’t speak to her for about six months after that. But I put those words on my wall, right in front of where I’m sitting right now. And that shift — toward the courage to reveal — really helped me start looking at my own underbelly. I think that’s why, when people read the book, they’re struck by what I revealed, by how real it feels.

I wanted people to come to this book and not think, “Laura is the hero and her mother is the villain” — which is where so many writers start. There’s often a little bit of revenge in memoir, a desire to set the record straight. Instead, I wanted readers to say, “On this page I loved your mother and hated you, and on this page, I hated your mother and loved you.” That’s exactly how people respond. There are two very human, flawed characters on the page — and that was very intentional. But it took years to write into that level of truth. I kept wanting to hold back, to protect certain things I didn’t want people to know about me. I had to really let that go to make the book successful, and to tell the story true.

Lisa [12:05]
I want to get to some of the things that are needed to get there, but first I want to read a quote from your book — from one of those additional pieces we’ll talk about in a moment. You write: “A truth teller can only tell as much of the truth as she can face at a given time.” I thought that was such a profound statement.

When it comes to the writing process — and I view it as a spiritual practice as well — I always tell people: if you’re going to write and you have a choice between being published and settling something inside yourself that really opens your soul, do that work. That’s the sacred work of writing. That’s the most important thing. But it takes time, and there are things that can get in the way of us being able to face the truth. So, I want to talk about how we heal with writing and how we do this work, because so many people want —

Laura [13:04]
— to do it. Yes. I’ve committed my whole career basically to serving what you’re talking about, and I love the way you framed it.

For me, I only work in groups. I don’t work one on one — I work in online classes or teach writing retreats, because there’s something about the container of the workshop. I’m responsible for creating a really sacred space where it’s safe for people to open up, but there’s also something that happens when one person writes about something: they crack the potential for that same topic open for someone else.

I’m thinking of an example. Years ago, I had — I teach a Wednesday morning writing class that I’ve taught for over 20 years, and one day there was a woman who’d been in the class for a couple of years. I don’t remember what prompt I gave, but she wrote a piece about her son being a heroin addict. I knew that about her, because as a teacher I often know more about my students than the group does — it had never been written about in class, so no one else knew. In a writing class, you only know about people what they share. The group listened with a lot of compassion; her writing was held in a really sacred space. Then we took a break, and when we came back, the next writing prompt was something completely different. But two people came in and wrote about relatives who were heroin addicts — people who had all been in class together for a long time. It was because the first woman had the courage and the need to write her story that day that the topic suddenly became open to the group.

I love that kind of group dynamic. Being witnessed when you write — to me, it’s like writing is the inhalation, but having it shared is the exhalation.

Lisa [15:05]
Yes.

Laura [15:05]
If your writing just festers in your notebook, it’s not the same as having it witnessed — in a group, or with one other safe person. And even if someone isn’t ready to do that, even reading it out loud to themselves makes a difference. When a story comes through your vocal cords and you speak it, that’s a different level of breaking silence than just having it on the page. So, I think that witnessing piece is really important.

In terms of creating a container for safety — a place where people can really write — the first thing is absolute confidentiality. People have to feel like whatever they share in a writing group will never be repeated. When I’m doing this kind of work, which is really an excavation — sometimes of the past, sometimes the present — the important thing is that people go all the way down to the core and write it, and that they feel free to be exploratory, not knowing where it’s going.

I also like to pair prompts. Some of them can be very open-ended. One of my favorites that I’ve been using is: This is the way things are right now — it’s just a repeating line. You write something, and then you put that line in again: This is the way things are right now. Sometimes I’ll suggest that people consciously structure it so that the first instance is something heavy — maybe you’re writing about the images of babies dying in Gaza and buildings being bombed — and then the next this is the way things are right now is about the sunrise you walked out and saw that morning. So, you’re pairing what’s challenging with the beauty that still exists in the world. I feel like that’s so much all of our challenge right now: How can we bear witness to everything that is happening and not go numb or look away, but also find those daily moments of joy?

So, there has to be confidentiality, there has to be safety. I love teaching retreats because at a retreat you leave your life behind and you’re able to go so much deeper. And the other thing I think is really important is not just to excavate with writing, but also to give people prompts that help them find their resilience and their strength. I might give a prompt that brings people into their grief or their pain but then follow it with something like: What gives me strength? or The ground on which I stand. Or: Tell me about a moment of joy you experienced in the last week — and bring us fully into that moment with all your senses intact. So, there’s both a building up and an excavating going on at the same time.

At a retreat, there might be a session in the morning and then the whole afternoon open — and I always want to teach in a beautiful place, somewhere people can go out and be in nature, so there’s that feeling of the earth as container. There are so many ways to create that safety and to hold people’s stories as sacred. Because they are sacred. Everyone has their own story, and they’re all worth telling. They’re all needed.

Lisa [18:34]
Absolutely — every single one. There’s a magic that happens when people come together and simply offer their silence and their attention to your story, and I think that is one of the most important things that can happen in a group. I’m right there with you. There are things that can be accomplished in a group setting that absolutely cannot be accomplished one on one — that connection piece, that inspiration piece. You listen to someone else and think, Oh yes, yes — that.

I also love that prompt you mentioned — this is the way things are right now — both for the purpose you described, that juxtaposition of dark and light, but also because of something I often talk with writers about: when you’re writing memoir, one of the first things that often has to speak is the wounded part of you. And giving yourself permission — even if that first draft is just the revenge draft, which we know is not the finished draft — is so important. Sometimes you have to give voice to the pain in order to gain perspective. And being able to give voice to that pain, while reminding yourself this is the way things are right now, shows that your perspective is going to change. Just writing something down shifts the perspective you have about what happened.

Laura [20:05]
Yes, it definitely does. And I think we need to get all of that out — and to have it witnessed is so powerful. An intense rant is very welcome in a writing group.

There’s a difference, though, between what we write for ourselves — you could call it therapeutic writing, writing for healing, writing for self-exploration — and what we write for an audience. I’ve had many students who do a lot of personal writing, and then reach a point where they think, I want other people to read this. This theme is so compelling, I want to keep going. I want to publish something. Then the stakes are very, very different.

When I’m working with people who are writing as a tool for healing, we’re not critiquing the writing. We’re not saying, “You could do this better,” or “Why don’t you start here and cut the first two pages.” There’s none of that. It’s deep listening and being witnessed. But when someone wants to publish something, the standards are really different, and the question of craft becomes critical.

And I think — just because you suffered, just because you had a really bad experience or even a really profound one, doesn’t necessitate an audience. How many hundreds of thousands of books have been written about sexual abuse trauma, or adoption, or abortion, or a child who died? These are all critical experiences for the writer but making them into something for a reader requires a whole different element: the ability to tell a compelling story. Because people don’t care about you unless they know you — unless you’re in their writing group, or their friend group, or their family. To go beyond that requires a different set of skills. And I like to support people in both: that deep personal exploration, which is my home base, and also how you take that and make it into something someone else will want to read.

Lisa [22:12]
Absolutely — and I do a lot of that same work. In the very first episode of this podcast, I talk about how some of the people I’ve worked with have gone on to publish big books, and then others — I had one client who said, “I just want to write this book to heal my family.” And to me, that was the best experience. That’s the power of this work.

When you’re working with a student — or even just thinking about yourself — how do you know, almost at a body level, that the shift has been made from this is writing for healing to I’m going to take this and make it for an audience? What is that like for you? And what do you see in your students that tells you the shift is there?

Laura [23:06]
Well, I think the first thing is — when people are beginners, or they’re writing for themselves, they write a draft and that’s it. But when you’re writing for an audience, every word in my memoir, every scene, was rewritten at least 100 times. You start to rework a piece, and it’s not just about capturing your experience anymore — it’s about how you translate that experience to someone else. So, people start looking at things like structure, like how to write dialogue, how to build tension in a scene. What do you reveal, and what do you conceal? When do you reveal things to the reader?

I think the first thing is that someone has to be willing to look at their work objectively and be willing to hear how it impacts other people. Sometimes the response to a piece of writing is simply, “Thank you for your courage — keep going.” If it’s really raw and someone is really in the throes of their process, it’s not appropriate to give any other kind of feedback. But when someone is reworking something again and again, my experience is that I got more and more distant from the experience itself, so that it became a product — something for others. I began to look at each scene from the point of view of the reader.

Part of my process for all seven books has been to use a lot of beta readers — meaning I would take my manuscript, usually at several points in its evolution, and send it to many people with a specific set of questions. I struggled a lot with how to open this book. There were so many different threads, and the first third was really problematic. So, one of my questions was: If you hadn’t promised you would read this, would you have kept reading? It was really important for me to ask that — and it was hard when people said no. There was a point where most people said no, because the book just wasn’t constructed properly yet. You need to be able to know that, because as they say, you have about two seconds to get someone’s attention, and then maybe another five if they read the first paragraph. I’m always downloading samples of books and deciding whether to read 20% of them after just a page or two. That’s how people are assessing us.

I can tell when someone is ready because they become more objective about their work. They’re able to see it as something to communicate to others, rather than something just to communicate with themselves.

Lisa [25:45]
Yes — and for me, that shift happens when I begin to think about what question I’m answering for other people, or what gap exists in the conversation. You have to figure out what has yet to be said and how your work contributes to that. Especially when a lot of people have written about certain issues, it’s important to ask: Where’s the gap? What is the thing that’s yet to be said that I’m saying? Because it’s there — if you look for it, it’s just a matter of finding it.

I love that you work with writers in both ways, and that your classes run long enough that you get to see that evolution happen. But one of the things you do that’s a bit more short-term — and that still allows you to build that safe container and really bear witness — are the retreats you teach. And you have one coming up on a topic that is near and dear to my heart as a survivor of suicide loss who has written a lot about grief. You have a retreat on grief. Would you like to tell us a little about it?

Laura [26:55]
Yes. This is a retreat I started teaching after my mother died, which was about nine years ago, so I think I’ve run it maybe 10 or 11 times now. It’s called Writing as a Pathway Through Grief, Loss, Uncertainty, and Change. It’s a week-long retreat, structured so that people can come dealing with all kinds of grief — someone who has died, a survivor of suicide loss like you mentioned, someone facing a diagnosis, someone dealing with aging and the losses that come with it, someone about to retire wondering what the next phase of life looks like, someone going through a divorce, or navigating empty nest, or just that quiet ennui of my life feels stale and I need something else and I don’t know what it is. So, it has a big umbrella, and it’s an incredibly intimate and powerful container for deep self-exploration.

One of the things I love about it is that people get incredibly bonded — and yes, there are often a lot of tears, it’s a grief retreat — but there is also so much laughter, concurrently. When you crack things open for people and they feel witnessed, joy and connection come out alongside everything else. People leave feeling very, very bonded.

The retreat is in Northern California at a center called Mount Madonna in Watsonville. The dates are May 7 through May 13, and you can find out more at lauradavis.net/grief — which will also be in the show notes. I teach it with a wonderful woman named Evelyn Hall, who creates an incredible sacred space for the group and helps keep everyone grounded and present. It’s really one of my favorite things I do all year.

Lisa [29:09]
When I was looking at the description and seeing the pictures — it is absolutely gorgeous. I was like, if only we could all live our lives right there! But then if we did, we wouldn’t be able to appreciate the beauty of going to a place like that. And something else I noticed is that while there are structured times when people come together, there’s also an invitation for rest, for joy, for play — and that is so important when you are navigating grief, whether it’s fresh grief or old grief or grief of many different kinds. That opportunity to rest is so essential.

Laura [29:50]
Yes, it is. I love leading retreats, and one of the things I love is that I have to really read the room. I have a curriculum — a sense of the flow — but there’s always a certain organic flow that emerges too, and I have to respond to what’s happening in the moment. It may be that I’m planning to give a certain writing prompt, and I look around and the energy in the room is already so heavy that I need to do something to lighten it up and ground people. So, we’ll do something completely different.

And yes, like you said — people go for hikes, they sit outside, there’s a little café where you can get a tea, there’s a bookshop, there are opportunities to step out of the intensity while still being on this incredible piece of land that is separate from your daily life. What you can do in seven days when you really let your life go is very different from what you get week by week in therapy or a writing group.

Lisa [31:00]
I think we need retreats now more than ever — we are so overstimulated. We need to be able to hear ourselves think, and that is so essential to the creative process. And speaking of your creative process — one place where you really had to listen deeply was in figuring out where in the world to start this book.

Laura [31:18]
Yes — that was a big struggle.

Lisa [31:20]
I feel your pain as someone with a book on submission who rewrote the beginning of my own book a hundred times. It wasn’t just rewriting the sentences — it was figuring out where to begin, how to move through time, what actually belongs. It’s so challenging. But you have crafted this so masterfully, and I’m a deep admirer of both the book and this particular piece. Would you be willing to read the prologue and then talk about why you’re starting here?

Laura [31:53]
First, I just want to say — I didn’t call it a prologue. I’m laughing, because if you listen to a lot of people who give advice about literary submissions, they really tell you: don’t have a prologue. Publishers don’t like it, editors don’t like it, agents don’t like it. So, I broke the rule by writing this little piece and putting it in the front anyway. I’ll read it, and then I’ll talk about it.

This is called “Spark” — Summer 1956, Long Branch, New Jersey.

I started life in a glass box. I lay alone, barely breathing, eyelids thin, light stabbing, body on fire, nerves raw, beeps piercing my tiny ears. I couldn’t swallow, I couldn’t suck. Tubes down my nose, wires on my skin. Where was she? The heartbeat that had answered my own. That soft, slippery chest pressed to mine for seven months. I’d held my twin in my arms, even when we had no arms. I held her. She was always smaller, even when we were just a thought, a zygote, an embryo. She grew beside me, quarter ounce by quarter ounce, her pulse the echo of my own.

Weeks went by, then months — she floating in the safety of my embrace, till the walls of our watery home began to squeeze. Our mother was 28 years old. She’d already had two late miscarriages. She thought she was losing another baby. She had no idea that we were two.

At birth, a nurse placed me on the scale: two pounds, twelve ounces — a scrawny chicken. As they rushed me to the neonatal intensive care unit, the doctor said, “Hold on, Mrs. Davis — there’s another one coming.” That’s how she learned about my sister. Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. The two of us, identical. My twin lived 24 hours, and I never felt her again.

The rabbi advised: don’t build a monument to someone who never existed. So, my secret sister never had a memorial, or a funeral, or a grave. But Mom insisted on giving her a name. Vicky.

For six weeks after my birth, no one was allowed to hold me, and I touched no one. Doctors didn’t believe in holding preemies in 1956. I spent the next six weeks in a hard glass box — an isolette, the perfect name for my healing prison. It isolated me from the broad expanse of my father’s chest, my brother Paul’s laughter, my mother’s eager arms. Nurses wearing rubber gloves reached in to adjust my tubes, check my wires, change my tiny diaper. The whoosh of machines, the ticktock of the clock — a pale shadow of the heartbeat that had sustained me, the one I had sustained. The nurses took notes on hard brown clipboards and moved on to the next tiny baby. They did what they could and left me alone. Babies my size weren’t supposed to survive. If I made it, the doctor said, I’d probably be blind or disabled. If I made it, I’d be strong. A survivor. My whole life rolled out from that beginning.

When I think back now, here’s how I imagine it: a newborn, tiny, weak, and in pain. My twin had died, and I could have followed her. Perhaps part of me wanted to just let go and disappear. But then I felt her — Temmie Davis, the woman standing outside my clear glass box, pulling me to her, willing me to live. My baby, oh my baby, let me hold you in my arms. Beaming her life force through those hard walls. Stay with me, darling. Please be my baby. She pulled me into her blazing, broken heart and claimed me as her daughter. Stay with me, she said. Whatever you do, don’t ever leave.

And so, I said yes to life, yes to my mother. I had no idea just how much of a challenge that was going to be.

Lisa [36:40]
Such a great opening.

Laura [36:44]
It’s fun to read it out loud. I haven’t read it out loud probably since I recorded the audiobook a couple of years ago.

Lisa [36:50]
Those of you who were watching — I was looking down at the book, and then I thought, no, I don’t need to look down. I just need to listen to Laura’s beautiful voice. So — why did you start here?

Laura [37:00]
That’s such a great question, and it was such a challenge. I mean, I’m a sexual abuse survivor — my grandfather sexually abused me, which is a thread in this book. I had a mother who was an incredible narcissist, although I never name her as that. I don’t think you ever label people; you just show their behavior. I grew up in the 60s, my father left and became a hippie — there were a lot of strong influences in my life. But from the perspective I have now, I feel like the most significant thing was the loss of my identical twin sister. I feel like it shaped everything about me, and it felt really important to include it in the memoir.

And yet I got so much pushback — from editors I worked with, from readers. “You’re trying to do too many things, it’s too complicated, just cut the twin sister.” I refused. I insisted on keeping her as a thread. She’s sort of like a little guardian angel who sees me through the book — there aren’t many mentions of her, but she’s there.

When I was working with a coach on this book, he had me write a list of the secret bonds I kept with my mother — because there was so much tearing and destruction between us, so many points of disconnection. He wanted me to make that list because readers might otherwise think, why did these two people ever even try to reconcile? This situation is impossible. And one of those bonds was my twin sister. My mother named her, and throughout her life, periodically, she and I would talk about Vicky — and my mother was the only person in the entire universe who shared that loss with me.

Lisa [38:48]
Yes.

Laura [38:49]
That really created a bond that I don’t think I fully understood until many, many years later. But it was a connection, and I put that thread in the book. I tried this book without this opening many times, and I kept putting it back — though I did make it much shorter over time.

I also came to see my relationship with my mother as a kind of epic spiritual journey. I don’t even know if I believe in past lifetimes, but it feels like this relationship extended through lifetimes — and that the frame from my birth until her death is the framework of the book. The intensity with which this relationship played out over those 57 years was very, very strong. It felt like it started at this moment, and like there was a pact between us — that I was going to be there for her. When she came to California at the end of her life, it almost felt like a karmic duty.

And I want to be clear — I don’t mean to say that daughters in particular are responsible and should always show up for an elderly parent. I actually wrote an afterword at the end of the book that essentially said: if you are struggling with a difficult relationship, you do not have to do what I did. Sometimes the best choice is to walk away, for your own mental and psychological health. If someone is truly toxic, then no — you should not take care of them at the end of their life. Each person’s situation is different.

With my mother, there was enough glue, enough that was positive, that for me it was the right choice. And it aided my own evolution as a human being. Giving birth cracked me open — both times I did that — and then seeing my mother through her death cracked me open in a whole different way.

I think one of the things about reconciliation is that in order to find peace, we have to see these relationships from a much bigger perspective. When you’re caught in the day-to-day of it — the me and mom of it — you can’t. But over the course of time, I started to see her as more than just my difficult mother. I started to see her as a daughter. As the child of poor immigrants in New York City. As someone shaped by so many things in her own life. And then I was able to view her through a completely different lens. But that took many years of therapy, of healing, of being able to shout out my anger and rage and frustration — all of that had to come first, before I could see her clearly. Before I could see her as fully human.

Lisa [42:09]
And you render this so well in the book. There is such great storytelling throughout — and interspersed within that storytelling, there are also these other sections, which I’ll let you label. I read all of those sections together, and they tell their own story, which I really loved. So — why did you include these pieces? The letters between mother and daughter, and the other materials? What did you hope to accomplish by interrupting the narrative with them?

Laura [42:49]
Well, that’s another thing so many people said: take them out. Take out the letters. So let me explain for people watching or listening.

There’s the story — a ticking clock that runs from the moment she calls to say she’s moving to California, all the way to just after her death. That’s one storyline: her arrival, the accommodations I have to make, her aging, her dementia, the choices I have to make at the end of her life, what happens to our relationship through her diminishment — and a lot about aging in America. That’s one thread.

Then there’s a second thread — all the things that happened in the past that brought us to the point of such deep estrangement, and the process of reconciliation we went through when I was in midlife. So, there’s the past, and there’s the contemporary frame running from her arrival to her death.

And then there’s this third piece you’re talking about. During the years my mother and I weren’t speaking — and beyond that — we had a really remarkable correspondence. When she died and I was going through her things, I found a shoebox containing every letter I had ever written to her, and every letter she had written to me. She had kept copies. And in my own things, I had the same. When I put them all together — because we each had some the other didn’t — there was probably a foot and a half of this incredible correspondence, starting when I was a teenager and ending in my early 30s, when people had stopped writing letters and we were starting to have more direct connection.

At first, I actually wrote an early draft of this book that was entirely epistolary — only the letters, plus new letters I wrote to her after she died. The whole book was letters. I sent it to people and they said, “I feel like I’m on the outside of a private conversation. Just write it in scenes. Give us the story.” So, I abandoned that approach, but I remained committed to including the letters — for a few reasons.

The letters from her are the only place she gets to speak in her real voice. Otherwise, everything is through my lens — my interpretation, my recreation of what happened. The letters let her speak for herself, and that felt really important.

The other thing was this: when I sat down and actually read those letters, I realized that the story I had always told — this is what happened, this is how she betrayed me, this is how difficult she was — was not inaccurate, but it was incomplete. I had focused so heavily on all the negative. And when I started reading, yes, there were some really nasty exchanges — but there were also a lot of incredibly loving, generous letters from her to me, and some from me to her.

Laura [46:40]
And I realized we had never actually had those seven years of complete silence I always claimed. We had been writing these letters. I felt like the letters could tell a different level of truth than I could with my biased point of view and my poor memory.

There’s an epigraph at the front of the book by a writer named Deborah Fruchet: Every time I look in the rear-view mirror, the past has changed. I think that’s so important for memoir writers. When I started this book, I wrote it one way. When it was finished ten years later, the story had evolved and was centered differently. If I wrote it now, it would be different again.

So, the letters were a way of bringing in her voice — and of raising the question: How accurate are our memories, as memoirists? That’s one place I wanted to be really honest: all the ways I had held on to a fixed story. And I think this is why people can’t reconcile — even within themselves. We become very attached to our victim story. That’s not to say we weren’t victimized, or that terrible things weren’t done. But there’s a way we have to hold things more loosely as we heal. For me, it was a natural outgrowth of my own healing process — being able to move from this is what happened and it is fixed to something more open. And that’s what I wanted the story to reflect.

Lisa [48:27]
I’m so glad you trusted your gut and kept all of those pieces in, because I think they are absolutely essential. You’re able to do a certain kind of reflective work by including them that I don’t think would have worked if you’d tried to weave it into chapter endings or anywhere else. It works perfectly as it is.

And as you keep talking about reconciliation — I think your reconciliation and my definition of forgiveness are actually the same thing, just two different words. I love this book, and everyone needs to go out and buy a copy, because it is gorgeously written. I’m just such a big fan.

I always end with three lightning-round questions, and I want to keep them quick because I know you have somewhere to be. You’ve given us so much writing wisdom today — is there one last thing you’d like to say to the writers listening?

Laura [49:27]
Start by going really deep for yourself. Don’t begin with the idea of a product or a project. Write because you want to get to the deep truth for yourself and commit to that process first — before you try to craft something for other people.

Lisa [49:45]
Beautiful. And what is one way you nurture your resilience?

Laura [49:48]
This might sound a little silly, but — my son and daughter-in-law came to visit from Boston in August, and they brought these little crochet kits. And I have become a crocheter. I’m a beginner, but I love it. Every day I spend an hour or two crocheting, and it feels almost like I’m crocheting the world back together. It’s also very good for the brain — and given that my mother had dementia, I’m really interested in brain health. It’s like a meditative practice. I just love it.

So crocheting, and being in nature — hiking, being physical outdoors. Those are the two things that feed my soul the most.

Lisa [50:29]
My grandma was a huge crocheter — she could make anything. I can barely make —

Laura [50:36]
— and I’m still really enjoying just being a beginner.

Lisa [50:38]
That’s the thing — when I crochet, it’s a crooked chain, and that’s about as far as I get! So, to wrap up — what are the best ways for people to reach you, whether they want to learn more about the retreat, the book, or anything else?

Laura [50:54]
The best place is my website: lauradavis.net. The memoir is currently available at 70% off through the end of January — you can get to that link at lauradavis.net/70, that’s the number. And for the grief retreat we talked about, that’s lauradavis.net/grief. My website has everything — all the other classes, workshops, trips, and other things I lead. I hope I get to meet some of you in the coming year.

Lisa [51:37]
All of this will be in the show notes, along with any social media handles you’d like us to include. Thank you so much, Laura — I hope I get to meet you in the coming year too.

Laura [51:48]
I would love that. I would love that.

Lisa [51:49]
Thank you again for being on the podcast today. It has been a joy and a pleasure. I’m going to be reading and rereading your book, because it speaks to the season of my life and the reconciliation work I have to do.

Laura [52:05]
Thank you. Such a pleasure talking with you.

Lisa [52:07]
That’s it for today’s episode. Thank you so much for listening — I couldn’t do this podcast without your support. If you loved this episode, here are three simple ways to keep the show thriving. One: subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. Two: leave a five-star review so others can find the show. Three: join our engaged, dynamic community by signing up for the Writing Your Resilience newsletter. As a thank you, you’ll receive a free copy of Ditch Your Inner Critic: Five Tools to Transform Self-Doubt into Self-Support.

Until next time, remember — your story matters. As you write and connect with the truest, most authentic version of yourself, you become not just the writer, but the person you’re meant to be. And that, my friends, is the real freedom writing can offer you.