Kristen

Welcome to the Close the Chapter podcast. I am Kristen Boice a licenced Marriage and Family Therapist with a private practice pathways to healing counselling. Through conversations, education, strategies and shared stories, we will be closing the chapter on all the thoughts, feelings, people and circumstances that don't serve you anymore. And open the door to possibilities and the real you. You won't want to miss an episode, so be sure to subscribe. Welcome to this week's close the chapter podcast. We have a very important topic this week because we all have a mom. And so many people have mother wounds whether your mom was emotionally available or not physically available or not, or some variation there of there is no such thing as perfect mothers. And this isn't to bring up shame. If you are a mom, this is to reflect on your own healing journey with your mom, and maybe you had a great relationship with your mom, I highly recommend you listen to this anyways, maybe you're a parent, maybe you work with kids, I think it's important to understand the significance and the role that a mother plays in our lives, and to create more insight and understanding into yourself. And before we jump in with the details about our guest today, be sure to grab the healing journal. It is available at Kristen k r i s t e n d Boice boice.com. forward slash free resources. And you'll want to get on the mailing list because I send out helpful blogs information and that way you're just in the know of what's going on within our community. So feel free to jump on that newsletter as well. It's the same place to join the newsletter. And I'm really excited about this conversation because my guest wrote a courage to heal. Like 30 some odd years ago, it became a best seller. It's been used in the therapeutic world around sexual abuse, and she's gone on to write many more best selling books. So let me introduce you to our guest today Laura Davis. She is the author of six nonfiction books including the courage to heal for women survivors child sexual abuse, the courage to heal workbook becoming the parent you want to be a thought we never speak again the road from estrangement to reconciliation. Her groundbreaking books have been translated into 11 languages and sold more than 1.8 million copies. She wrote books that can change people's lives the courage to heal. The courage to heal workbook have paved the way for hundreds or 1000s of women and men to heal from trauma of sexual abuse. Becoming the parent you want to be is a rich resource guide co authored with a parenting expert, Janice Kieser helps parents develop a vision for families they want to create. And the first book she wrote inspired by her relationship with her mother, I thought we'd never speak again. The road from estrangement to reconciliation teaches the skills of reconciliation and peacebuilding to the world one relationship at a time. Her latest book, which is her first memoir, the burning light of two stars a mother daughter story, which tells the story of a dramatic and tumultuous relationship with her mother, from the time of her birth until her death. From a much more dramatic, intimate personal viewpoint, it gives a no holds barred peek at the real inside look of Laura, the woman behind the teacher, facilitator and author. She is known as a communicator, a columnist, a talk show host in her previous life at a radio news reporter. She has other passions beyond writing, which is teaching and encouraging others to write. She loves to build writing communities where people can find their voice and tell their stories and hone their craft. We had a deep conversation she actually reads a little bit from the book, which is amazing, and shares vulnerably about her journey to find healing that how this book was different than her other books she's written. So you're going to want to listen to the whole episode. Let us know what you think on social media at Kristen D Boice. On Instagram. Tick tock is Kristen Boice Facebook, Kristen D Boice. Let us know repost this episode so it can help other people that are on a healing journey and I'm so grateful you're here and you're taking the time to listen it means the world to me. So without further ado, here is my wonderful conversation with Laura Davis. Welcome to the close the chapter podcast I am beyond delighted to have Laura Davis, my guest today. She has written so many books that I've read that I recommend to clients all the time so you're gonna want to pick up probably all of them but today we're going to be focusing on her newest book, The burning light of two stars. And I love the subtitle a mother daughter story, because we all have a mother. And what we know for sure is some of the deepest wounds we carry are mother wounds. And so we spend a lifetime sometimes trying to heal those mother wounds in many different ways. And this is about a reconciliation story, really, I don't want to jump to the punch too quick. But can you share your journey to writing this book,

Laura

this book was by seven, but it was my first memoir. So the other books I wrote were How To books how to heal from child sexual abuse, I wrote four books about that there was a parenting book, becoming the parent you want to be there was a book I wrote about 20 years ago about reconciliation, I thought we'd never speak again. And in all those books, they'd been like little bits of my personal story. But mostly they were books of lots of interviews with other people, and lots of how to deal with these really tough life issues. So to kind of turn the camera on myself and really write much more intimately and personally was a big challenge for me. But this story about my mother, the memoir focuses on really the question, Can caretaker parent who betrayed you in the past, and my relationship with my mother was one of the absolute most pivotal, important, confounding, difficult consuming relationships of my life. And I just felt like I had to write the story. It dogged me, I kept trying to put it aside. And it kept saying, you have to tell this story. And I think the story of my mother and is very complex, she died when I was 57. It was a 57 year story, although she has been dead now for nine years. And my relationship with her continues to evolve. I think, actually, once someone has passed, in some ways, you can resolve the relationship in a lot of new ways, because they're not triggering you in the present. It's just you coming to terms with the relationship. But for me, writing the memoir was a way to really deeply examine the complexities, the incredible complexities of this relationship, and to get beyond kind of the more simple narrative that I had told for decades, which is basically, I was the victim and my mother was terrible. That was sort of the frame in which I often told our story. And in writing the member, I had to get much deeper and much more honest about my own failings, my own part in this dynamic between the two of us, I think that I wanted to tell a story that would be gritty, that would be real that people could resonate with. And also that would be inspiring. And it's not a story with like a happy, perfect ending. It's not like the violins are playing at the end. And everything is wonderful. It ended with complexity. It began with complexity. But when my mother died, I felt at peace with her. And I felt like as much as possible, I felt resolved, I felt a clarity about the depth and importance of the relationship in my life and how much it shaped so much of me, just a story that had to be told,

Kristen

I feel that like, there was no other option but to tell the story. I mean, in a way, he and what resonates for me is I lost my mom in October, and we had a very, it was a tough relationship. Very tough relationships. So what you're saying is so true on once they're gone. There's not that triggering that goes on in the present moment.

Laura

I'm sorry for your loss. And I, at the first couple of years, probably after my mother died, but certainly when I was in the period you are I kept saying, I feel like all my internal furniture has been rearranged. I didn't know who I was without her in the world. Because we went through a very long period of estrangement. I went through periods of like hating her and trying to push her away and set all these boundaries, to not have her in my life. We had years of trying to reconcile with each other and find a place of peace or some kind of negotiated settlement where we could have at least some relationship with each other. And no matter whether she was like very far away, and I was holding her off, or I was trying to bring her closer, she was always at the centre of my life. I didn't want to admit that. But it's like she was I think she wanted to be the sun and she wanted me to be a planet orbiting around her. And I think a lot of our problems came about because I was not going to be anybody's planet. Yes, especially Earth. We were two very strong, forceful women are at odds with each other and that I was not going to be the compliant daughter. I mean, maybe when I was a little girl, but then once I hit adolescence, we were really at war. So yeah, I think that complexity The is what I wanted to express. And that when she died, like she had been this anchor, I felt untethered, I felt like I was floating around the universe, like this little piece of Los dust. She had been so critical to me, I was always living my life in reaction to her. And I think it took me many years to realise that that was actually the case. I think it was even more true when we were estranged that she lived in my head. Yeah, even though we weren't speaking, and her critical voice, her judgments and all that were right in my head, couldn't just shut the door on her and have them go away. They required a lot more intensive inner work to move past.

Kristen

That's I said, when mom was my greatest teacher, similar to what you're saying that I have learned, my kids to also open up a portal into so much self discovery of yourself and patterns and kind of inner child work at the deepest dive. Who in your life, when you think about your mom and your kids? Who are your greatest teachers? would those be your greatest? Or do you have other ones?

Laura

I definitely my mother was a huge teacher, my father too. I learned a lot from him. Mostly good actually. And my children absolutely, because they cracked open my heart, they helped me move into, I was just such a driven person who lived in my head, I felt like I'd climb up into my head. And there was like a little ladder, and my body was not something I was connected to. And so changed. Having kids, I really learned about love in a way that I didn't know before, because I was so protected. My spouse, Karen, who I've been with for over 30 years has also been an incredible teacher, because I've learned about what it means to be in a partnership and what it means to not to think of someone else. As much as I'm thinking about myself. It's been a long journey. For me, I've been a worse student for many years, I think I'm doing better. I was gonna say, Yeah, I think it's my immediate family. Because those are the people who really see you and really confront you. And because I've been an author, my first book, the courage to heal was an underground bestseller, it completely took off, it changed my life, it put me in the public sphere. And so I've always had fans, I've always had people who admire my work. And I've been very prolific and productive. And that part of my life, I get a lot of accolades, and a lot of attention. But the people I work with, they are only seeing a part of me the public part that I choose to put out. My family members, they see everything about me, including all my many flaws. So yeah, I think it's the people I'm the most intimate with have been my greatest teachers.

Kristen

So true, because they see our shadow sides, yes, lies that we want to not have anybody else see. And when you give the empowerment to your kids to tell you the truth, it's the greatest gift you can give them in us because there's this dynamic of it's safe enough to say how you really feel and they'll call you out. And I think that's healthy. For me. That's really what I can take it receive it as hard as it is. And I can go thank you for sharing that. I can see how what that created. And I'm going to really work on that.

Laura

That was one thing I really, you will try to emulate maybe some things that your parents did, right. And then you tried to say I'll never do X, Y, or Z. And I think one place where I did really succeed because my kids are all adults now is I allowed them to have their emotional and emotional life. I encouraged them to have an express their feelings. They were emotionally literate from a very young age, they knew what they could say, I'm so sad right now. They were so articulate about their feelings, and they had permission to share them and to express them. And I feel really successful about that, like that feels really good. And I see them as adults in healthy relationships. And I feel like yes,

Kristen

yes, I this is the key, how they connect. That's why I say out of the womb, I was showing them feeling books, how to name their feelings connect in their body to their feelings, right? That empowers them to be able to communicate once they get into a relationship and process what they're going through in a safe way. So were you ever afraid you are going to turn into your mom? In some ways? Did that ever become a fear for you?

Laura

Yes, definitely. There was a period when I was I started dealing with the sexual abuse was with my grandfather. A lot of people will assume it's my father. But it wasn't it was my mother's father. And I had blocked it out. And it started coming back up when I was 27 years old, really in my first deep intimate relationship. And I think that's a pretty common time for incest memories to surface. Up until that point, I always really wanted children. I really liked kids and I always thought someday I'm going to have children. And then I came out as a lesbian but that didn't seem to matter because by the time I came out there were lots of I wouldn't have been the first lesbian to make a family. That was a gay boom. They called it going on So that wasn't really an impediment. But when I started dealing with the incest, I became very afraid that I would sexually abuse my children, because it was just so much my whole life for the first four or five years that I was going to therapy and healing and it telescope, everything else, everything was seen through that lens. And I really doubted my own ability, now worried about it. So there was a time I felt to damage to have children. And some of it was the abuse. And some of it was that I would be like my mother, between doing a lot of healing work. And then having a partner. When I met Karen, she was already had an 11 year old. So I became an instance step mother, she was really a great parent was one thing that really attracted me to her. So I felt like I had someone to parent with who I felt really confident about her abilities and what she knew about parenting, she had come from a very abusive background, and had really learned how to not repeat those patterns. So gave me enough confidence to move forward. And then I remember when my kids when my daughter in particular, because she was a girl, was the age I was when the abuse started, I was really worried, not that I would do anything, but are these feelings going to come up, I kind of feel like hurting her touching her inappropriately. And luckily, I didn't. But I also knew that if any feeling like that came up, I had a really incredible set of resources to deal with it. And that I was very hyper vigilant about the whole thing. And I was fine. Of course, it was really a focal point of me to teach my children how to protect themselves and how to, I don't mean to say that children are responsible for protecting themselves, you know, adults are responsible for not abusing children. But I taught them to be articulate that if something happened, I felt they would come to me they had all that education about touches, or anything like that.

Kristen

Yeah, well, you're empowering them. That's the key equipping and empowering, I think is essential. So communication is a way to do that. And you were able to teach them that which is such a gift. When you were writing this book, how was it different than I know some of the how tos like the courage to heal and some of your other books? What was different about this book in your process for you,

Laura

it was completely different because it was really new territory, even though I'd been teaching writing. I'm a writing teacher. And I've been teaching writing for over 20 years at this point. So I teach other people, but I didn't know how to write this book. And it was because I mean, every book is different when you're an author. But this was really about storytelling. How do you tell a story and make it compelling so that people keep turning the pages and can't put it down. So it's like, there was a whole new skill set that I didn't have. This was not about conveying information, it was about how to shape a story how to create a plot, really, even though it's my own life, when to disclose information, when not to how to write in a way that would be compelling to a reader. And so I had to learn those skills. And I really was uncertain whether I could. The other thing that was kind of interesting in my process is that one of the things my mother and I did is that we had this amazing correspondence of letters, I feel like we've lost so much with email, we don't have letters anymore. And from the time I was maybe a teenager, like late teenager, maybe 18, or something like this, I left home at 17 from so from that time until my early 30s, we had this incredible correspondence. And when my mother died, I found the shoebox full of letters, and it was all the letters I'd ever written to her. It was copies of all the letters she'd written to me and drafts of letters that were unsent. And I went through my own. I have these like archives under the eaves in my office. And I hadn't looked at those things in a couple of decades. And when I went through there, I had also saved the same. I had all these letters she had sent to me, I had all these drafts of like angry letters that I never mailed. When I pieced together all of her letters and all of mine, it was this incredible account of this period in our relationship. I am a writer, that's my jam. So my letters were really articulate and funny and angry and aren't very clear. And hers were really good as well. She was a very thoughtful writer. And the thing that was so challenging was that I had been telling the story of our estrangement and our move to reconciliation and everything that happened. And these letters contradicted my storyline. So here was this physical evidence that was different from the way I had shaped the story over the course of polishing it like a stone for many years. So I had to confront the fact of the fallacies of my own memory. And it's a thread in the memoir burning light of two stars is what are the stories we tell ourselves to convince ourselves that we were right, there's a quote I put in the front of the book from a woman writer named Deborah Frou che and she says, every time we look in the rearview mirror the past has changed. Right and so, so Travie, the process of writing this book was really looking at this whole history. And getting much more honest, early on, I had a lot of what they're called beta readers, which are like people who read your manuscript at different points and give you feedback, you're getting not just your own point of view, or an editor's point of view, but the point of view of a reader. And one of the readers I had, as a friend of mine, Susan Brown, who was a creative writing professor for many, many years, has worked with writers and she read it and she basically, an early draft, she trashed the whole thing. And she said, Laura, this is not the courage to heal. This is the courage to reveal it, she just said, you are playing, it's so safe, and you're making yourself into the hero, and you're not being vulnerable at all, I was devastated by her feedback, I put the manuscript aside for months, I was like, I'm not going to do this book. But then it kept asserting itself and saying, You need to come back to me, when I got back into the book, I put that on the wall, this is not the courage to heal, it's the courage to reveal. And that's when I started to get much more honest. So I actually want to read you something from the book, please. That I think, is an example of this kind of honesty that I had to get to. And just to set the scene for this. This is a point my mother, I moved across the country, to California, I grew up in New Jersey, and I basically moved 3000 miles away to get away from my mother to go basically, as far as I could go without crossing an ocean. So we were at this distance. And the book opens, Every book has what's called inciting incident. And it's basically what kicks the story into motion. And the inciting incident in this story is that my mother is 80 years old. And she's starting to have some signs of memory loss. I mean, she's just starting to have some issues. And she calls me one day, after I've just gotten over cancer to tell me, she's decided she's moving to my town for the rest of her life. So that's how the story opens. And I'm, like, shocked, I ambivalent enough that I don't keep her from coming. I don't tell her not to come. Because although I think it's going to completely disrupt my life. And I don't think I could be the daughter I need to be to be with her for the rest of her life. And I have so many ambivalent feelings about her. I also, there's a little part of me that has this hope that maybe we can actually heal our relationship the rest of the way, because at this point, when she was at, we had already done a lot of reconciliation work. And we were able to have kind of a cordial relationship with a lot of boundaries in it. I think our relationship worked because she lived 3000 miles away. But suddenly, she was going to be in my town and be vulnerable and needing me. And I was also had two teenagers and a full on business. And I was just like, I don't think I could handle this, but yet she came. So that's how the book starts. And at this point, for this little scene, I'm gonna read, she is living in a mobile home park across town, in SR 55, and older community, and she's starting to her dementia, she did have dementia, it's starting to increase and her vulnerability is starting to increase. And I'm going to visit her. And at this point, I've gone over to see her after being away on a work trip. And I'm over there, like helping her fix her printer and her computer, she was totally technologically incapable. And I would go over and like fix all these things for her. And she starts complaining about everything, and I just go to put my arm around her, but I don't want to touch her. And she just says stop like you're faking it, which was true. And she confronts me about the fact that my caring for her is so controlled and fake, which it was. So this is what I had to say, in reflection, because a memoir is more than just the events that happened. It's how we reflect on those events, and what we learn from those events, and how we look back at our life with some perspective. So this is that section. Three decades earlier, I had erected an impenetrable wall between us a fortress with narrow slits so I could watch her approach. I ensured that my defences 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 kind 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 no door. We only met in the antique chamber, the common room where guests are received. Only my Polish self was on display my masked Self Only in the antechamber. Mom never saw my inner sanctum and I never saw her As 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 the 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 loath to touch. I wanted to be more than kind to do more than merely what was right. I wanted to love my mother just once, freely and with the relief of a lost exhausted child. beyond words and beyond all pretence. I wanted to lay my head on a place that was safe, just once, before it was too late.

Kristen

I could feel all of that emotion because the guardedness was to protect yourself the defences? Would that be a way to describe it? Or a sense of protection?

Laura

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Because she could devastate me with a word or phrase or a look, my mother was a incredibly complex woman, you know, I think some people listening may have a parent or guardian or whoever, who was just 100% toxic. In that instance, often the best choice is to walk away and to create a life separate from that person, because any interaction is going to be emotionally devastating. Although I wrote this book, which is about a kind of reconciliation, I don't at all want people listening to feel like that is the ultimate solution or that that is right for everyone, because it absolutely is not. But my mother had some really incredibly good qualities and good qualities connected to me as well. And so it was really more like walking through a minefield than it was just unremittingly evil or horrible or something like that. So there was enough good in the relationship that made me want to thread the needle and see was there a way to reestablish it. And then as she got older, I had to think about not just her needs, but what kind of daughter did I want to be? That was a huge question for me. And caring for her. You know, a lot of the book is the story of what happened from the time she moved to California until her death. It's a lot about ageing in America. It's a lot about dementia. It's a lot about being a caregiver and stuck in the sandwich generation, between kids and an elderly parent. And it's a lot about my growth, my own spiritual and emotional growth. And then it's also about everything that happened before that made this relationship so incredibly difficult. What do

Kristen

you think was your mom's core wound or unmet need, if you'd have to just take a theory or a guess?

Laura

I think she felt empty. She was incredibly busy. She always had like three calendars and a totally packed schedule. She was beloved by many people. She was an actor. So she had like her theatre friends, she was a storyteller. She was in folk dancing. She was a school social worker, she had a career. She travelled around the world after my father left, and they got divorced. I mean, she was such a maverick for her generation, in many ways. But she also was deeply traditional. When she was dying. At the end of her life. There was this one moment that I write about in the book where she was in the emergency room. And I came in, she didn't know who I was, she was just like, in this state of anguish where she was just crying. Ha, it was, I mean, the most horrible thing I've ever heard. And what I saw, and I was trying to connect with her. This was very soon before she died. I was trying to connect with her. And what I realised what I saw in her was kind of the broadest, unhealed part of her, which is what you're asking about. And she grew up on the Lower East Side. My grandparents were immigrants from Russia. And so she grew up in a very poor household with immigrant parents, and I think there was an emptiness, and my perpetrator was her father. So of course, the question comes up, did he abuse her? And that's a question that I is one of the threads that goes through the memoirs me asking that question in my own head and of her. So I think that she had a lot of unresolved trauma that she carried through her life that led her to become who she was, and in some ways she coped quite well. She was lived a successful life by many standards. But I think in her intimate relationships, that's where the damage really, really showed up. And as her daughter I was the focal point of a lot of that she had such an incredible need to control me and I was not controllable. In fact, I was incredibly difficult as a young person to raise. I just I was very rebellious. And I tried to Colt and I did all kinds of things. And everything I did, it was like, you're just doing this to destroy me. That's what she would say about every choice I made in my life. She was very difficult.

Kristen

Well, you're trying to gain some sense of power and control in your own life. No sense. Because it sounds like she would get dysregulated if you would speak of anything separate from her. And I fell, it's my mom, her abandonment wound was deep. I mean, it was like a perceived abandonment. If I wasn't returning calls, or I didn't text or I wasn't there, it was like a perceived abandonment. And that was the wound that she would kind of unconsciously put on me to not abandon her, not leave her. And so that burden, you end up internalising and carrying, and of course, years of therapy, to work through that. But it is something that they're not even consciously aware of.

Laura

My mother did actually decades of therapy, she was into psychodrama. She had a psychiatrist, that mean, she was someone who worked on herself. But there were just these blind spots where she couldn't see. And I think one of the things and I think this happens for many people as they get older, I think having children now I have grandchildren, my perspective is really different. And there was a certain point, I really was able to start looking at her, not just as my mother, but as a daughter, as a woman of her generation, as someone who grew up in the Depression, and just all the different factors that influenced who she was, and the constraints of her generation, her time, her era, her location. And that did help me feel much more compassionate towards her because I saw her as more than just this looming obstacle in my life.

Kristen

I think that really helpful point to make. And I think the other piece that struck me is this letter writing, I have clients write letters to their paragraphs, I write letters, I'm a big letter writer in my journal. And I think there's something to be said about, there was an attempt to somehow heal this relationship through these years and years and years of letter writing.

Laura

On one hand, I think it's this idea that the letters communicated something different than what I remembered. But the other fact is that when you write a letter, you're not having to deal with someone face to face like, it's not really, it's a real communication. But it's not the same as actually being in a relationship with someone directly. Because when you write a letter, when you get a letter, you can read it, you could reread it, you could think about it. And then when you craft your response, you can write it and rewrite it and rewrite it again. And there was a certain distance at which our relationship worked. I think that's what it always was, like, when I was 3000 miles away, we were able to maintain something. And in these letters, we were able to have a relationship, even at the very worst time of our estrangement, because we didn't have to face each other, I was afraid to be around her because I would just get so triggered, I would, I would just revert back to being a little child. And I would just freeze that was my response to her. She was very emotionally intense volcanic, and I would get cold and still and tight. It was hard for me to be my current age when I was around her for many, many years. Another factor for us was when I had children, she really wanted to be their grandmother, you know, and I wanted her to be their grandmother. And again, this would not be appropriate for everybody. Because if you have a parent who's going to be, there's a chance they would be abusive to your children the way they were to you, then they should not have contact with your grandchildren. But I had seen her with my brother's daughter, my niece, and she really brought a lot of value and love into that girl's life. And I wanted that for my kids. And she really wanted it I think that motivated us a lot to work harder at our reconciliation.

Kristen

Yeah, I did that same with my mom. And my mom was a therapist, by the way. So similar, I'm like, is a whole different dynamic. And I think you're saying something really deep here in terms of healing, that you're noticing the age that you feel when you are around her. It's so powerful when you go, oh, there's my eight year old self. I've lost my adult self in this moment in the activation feels so intense. How did you work through that? Because a lot of people like that sounds great. But how did you work through the triggers and the intensity that you felt? Because mom didn't change necessarily? I mean, she did with some dementia. But how did you work through that? Well,

Laura

I had really good therapy. That was one part. Yeah, but have a plan. So if I got triggered, I would get out. I wouldn't just stay in that state or I would get out of the situation. Or I would titrate the situation. So instead of I would say to people well, instead of like visiting for a week and staying with your parents, maybe go for one day and stay in a hotel and maybe bring a friend I mean, like just another words. What do you need to do to stay in your adult self and it's a lot about setting boundaries. Is and those boundaries may not be respected by the other person, but you could set them for yourself. So that's a lot of what I did was kind of circumstantially setting up things that would be more successful and having an escape plan, basically. And also support so that if things were went south and I was on a visit, I would have someone I could call and talk to. And actually, my mother's dementia was so interesting, because it did change things. And in some ways, I was quite lucky, because I thought that as she progressed into her dementia, that she would get become much more rageful, and that her worst qualities would be exacerbated. But actually, I was fortunate, there's no control over this, she turned really sweet. And I would walk into her room, and she would say, you're the best daughter in the whole world, what would I do without you, it's like, I had longed to hear these words for my entire life. And suddenly, this is what she was saying to me. And she was funny, too, she would say things like, you would care and have done such a great job with those kids says lesbians shouldn't have children. And so she was very loving to me, and she absolutely could not hurt me anymore. And I think the other thing, which is harder to admit is that in these last years of her life, I had control over her, I was her power of maturity, I made all the decisions about her life, I decided that she couldn't live alone anymore. I mean, that was a huge battle, which I document and talk about a lot in the burning light of two stars. But I think I was in a position of power. And she was the one who was vulnerable and dependent. And I think it was much easier for me to be generous when I had control. And I liked having control over her life. And it's hard to say that, but it's absolutely true, I addressed that. And that I knew that I actually taken advantage of having control over her life. And everyone saw me as the good daughter who was taking such good care of my mother. But I could have taken advantage of that. And so when she came to live at live here, I got back into therapy at that point, because I was triggered a lot, a lot came up and I didn't want to act from that triggered place. And so I needed support to be able to stay in my adult self and make choices from there.

Kristen

This has been such a beautiful conversation. And the part that stuck out with me is when your friend who said this is the courage to heal, it's the courage to reveal I mean, yes, because that takes all those guards all those protector parts now kind of kind of be nurtured and Sue so you could step into more vulnerability, and to kind of go to some deeper places of sharing your journey. That is that seems like the breaking open point that you had in writing the book. It's the courage to reveal. Did you think about naming the book that I was just curious.

Laura

I did consider it. I mean, that's actually the name of this book went through a lot of changes, it was originally going to be called wholehearted because I saw the journey of the protagonist which is me from being kind of more closed and mental and in my head to really being more open hearted and having a greater capacity to love which grew in the experience of caretaking my mother. But then that word is over. There's many books with that title and I would be connected to Brene, brown and brown. Exactly. Anyway, that title that I have was actually was came at the very zero hour I put it out on I crowdsource the title. And a woman who was a former student of mine actually had once been a nurse for my mother came up with the burning light of two stars. And I just love that I love that we were these two intense Yeah, aiming the intensity. Yeah, the intensity of the women. So anyway, that was kind of a fun story.

Kristen

I love that. Where can people find you? If they want to buy your books, they want to know more about you. Maybe they want to write more? Where can they find you?

Laura

Everything that I offer, which is weekly writing classes, writing retreats, I take people travelling to exotic places, I'm taking a group hiking in the Camino de Santiago in just a couple of weeks, taking a couple groups to Bali next summer to study always wanted to go there to study with healers, and to learn about the spirituality of the Balinese. And these things all have a writing component. And I teach memoir, writing a lot of different things. You could find out about all of that and get information about ordering the book at my website, which is Laura davis.net Laura davis.net. I'm also on Facebook and Instagram, the website is the best place to start. And you'll find out what I'm offering at the current time.

Kristen

There's lots of lots of great information on there and you're giving away a lot of freebies.

Laura

Yeah, there's a if you sign up for my mailing list, I created a really very substantial and beautiful ebook, and it's a month long practice called Writing Through courage. That might not be the exact title, but it's a really great book of writing prompts and to help people who are on a healing journey. Find courage, and it's got a lot of great quotes and little examples and you could download that for free When you go to my website and that's a good interaction it

Kristen

we're all people listening they know I'm a big into writing as a healing as a way to get to some deeper work and exploration of yourself. So I highly encourage go get the freebies on Laura's website she's got a lot of information there are a lot to offer

Laura

you could read actually read the first five chapters of the book are posted there. So read the opening of the book for free and then see if it's you want to read more than you could get yourself a copy.

Kristen

Yeah, the birdie light of two stars grab it, I'll be she has got so many more books, but this is the one you're gonna want to grab now. You won't want to put it down in Laura, thank you for your heart, your time and your energy and your soul for being here today. I am so great

Laura

all going to pleasure talking to you

Kristen

that you kill. Thank you so much for listening to the close the chapter podcast. My hope is that you took home some actionable steps, along with motivation, inspiration and hope for making sustainable change in your life. If you enjoyed this episode, click the subscribe button to be sure to get the updated episodes every week and share with a friend or a family member. And for more information about how to get connected visit kristendboice.com Thanks and have a great day.