In this episode, we speak to Laura Davis, author of The Burning Light of Two Stars, The Courage to Heal, and four other books. In addition to writing books that inspire, the work of Laura’s heart is to teach. For over twenty years, she’s helped people find their voices, tell their stories, and hone their craft. She teaches online and at retreat centers around the world.
She's a featured speaker for The National Association of Memoir Writers and a popular craft teacher at The San Miguel Writer's Conference. In May, Laura will be leading her signature Writing as a Pathway Through Grief, Loss, Uncertainty, and Change retreat at a beautiful retreat center in the Northern California redwoods. You can learn about Laura’s retreats, workshops, and classes, and read the first five chapters of her memoir at www.lauradavis.net.
Writing as a Pathway Retreat - https://lauradavis.net/writing-as-a-pathway/
Laura’s press kit regarding her book, with images, etc.
The Burning Light of Two Stars
We mentioned the Book - The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning
And Laura mentioned The Inner Work of Age: Shifting From Role to Soul by Connie Zweig
The poem we shared was -
Allow
by Donna Fauld
There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightning bolt,
containing a tornado. Dam a
stream and it will create a new
channel. Resist, and the tide
will sweep you off your feet.
Allow, and grace will carry
you to higher ground. The only
safety lies in letting it all in –
the wild and the weak; fear,
fantasies, failures and success.
When loss rips off the doors of
the heart, or sadness veils your
vision with despair, practice
becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your
known way of being, the whole
world is revealed to your new eyes.
You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Also, we would love your financial support and you can join us on Patreon. Anyone who supports us at any level will be invited to a special live, online conversation with Annalouiza and Wakil.
And we would love your feedback and want to hear your stories. You can email us at endoflifeconvo@gmail.com.
In this episode, we speak to Laura Davis, author of The Burning Light of Two Stars, The Courage to Heal, and four other books. In addition to writing books that inspire, the work of Laura’s heart is to teach. For over twenty years, she’s helped people find their voices, tell their stories, and hone their craft. She teaches online and at retreat centers around the world.
She's a featured speaker for The National Association of Memoir Writers and a popular craft teacher at The San Miguel Writer's Conference. In May, Laura will be leading her signature Writing as a Pathway Through Grief, Loss, Uncertainty, and Change retreat at a beautiful retreat center in the Northern California redwoods. You can learn about Laura’s retreats, workshops, and classes, and read the first five chapters of her memoir at www.lauradavis.net.
Writing as a Pathway Retreat - https://lauradavis.net/writing-as-a-pathway/
Laura’s press kit regarding her book, with images, etc.
The Burning Light of Two Stars
We mentioned the Book - The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning
And Laura mentioned The Inner Work of Age: Shifting From Role to Soul by Connie Zweig
The poem we shared was -
Allow
by Donna Fauld
There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightning bolt,
containing a tornado. Dam a
stream and it will create a new
channel. Resist, and the tide
will sweep you off your feet.
Allow, and grace will carry
you to higher ground. The only
safety lies in letting it all in –
the wild and the weak; fear,
fantasies, failures and success.
When loss rips off the doors of
the heart, or sadness veils your
vision with despair, practice
becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your
known way of being, the whole
world is revealed to your new eyes.
You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Also, we would love your financial support and you can join us on Patreon. Anyone who supports us at any level will be invited to a special live, online conversation with Annalouiza and Wakil.
And we would love your feedback and want to hear your stories. You can email us at endoflifeconvo@gmail.com.
Annalouiza
Laura Davis is the author of The Burning Light of Two Stars, The Courage to Heal, and four other books. In addition to writing books that inspire, 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. She teaches online and at retreat centers around the world.
Wakil
She's a featured speaker for the National Association of Memoir Writers and a popular craft teacher at the San Miguel Writers Conference. In May, Laura will be leading her signature writing as a pathway through grief, loss, uncertainty, and change retreat at a beautiful retreat center in the Northern California Redwoods. You can learn about Laura's retreats, workshops, and classes and read the first five chapters of her memoir at www.LauraDavis.net, and we will be posting her information in the podcast notes as well. So welcome Laura, thank you for joining us today.
Laura Davis
It's a pleasure to be invited. I'm excited about this conversation.
Annalouiza
Yay, good.
Wakil
Yeah, well we'd like to start with our first question, which is when did you first become aware of death?
Laura Davis
Well, actually I was born becoming aware of death. My birth story is that my mother, I had an older brother who was about five years older than me, and then she had two late miscarriages, like six or seven months pregnant. And then she got pregnant again with me. And when she was seven months pregnant, again she went into labor.
I don't know if her water broke, I don't know what happened. They rushed her to the hospital and she was convinced that she was losing a third baby. She was just devastated. Then I was born and I was a preemie and I was 2 pounds, 12 ounces, which is very small. This is 67 years ago. Babies that small then basically didn't survive or would be very damaged by the birth process.
And they took me out and they were rushing me to the NICU, or the equivalent at that time. And the doctor said to her, "'Hold on, Mrs. Davis, another one's coming.'" And I had an identical twin sister that no one knew about. And she was smaller and she lived 24 hours and then died.
And so, you know, for me, they didn't believe in holding preemies then. So rather than what they do today, which is, you know, they put the babies right up against the skin of the parent or whoever, you know, and they hold them and rock them and touch them. And they had me in this incubator called an isolette, which I thought was just a really ironic name for what it was. And I was just in this little thing with, you know, tubes all over me and being fed through my nose. And I don't think they thought I was going to survive. And I never saw my identical twin sister again.
I was born into that loss, and I've had a fair amount of trauma in my life and things that have been challenges. But I would say that experience of primal loss from the moment of my birth has shaped me more than anything else. And it was interesting because the doctors, my family was Jewish, the rabbi said, don't build a monument to someone who never existed. So my sister didn't have a funeral or, I always had this idea that they threw her in the garbage. I mean, I don't know what they did with her, but there was no acknowledgment of her as a human being. But what my mother did, which I really am incredibly grateful for, she named her. So my sister's name was Vicki. And I have my whole life felt like I've had a relationship with her. And it's in a very... I don't talk about it very much. I mean, I wrote about it in my memoir because it was such a critical part of my life and also something my mother and I bonded about. She was the only other person who ever grieved that loss besides me.
Annalouiza
Wow, so asking you how death impacts your life story is actually redundant because you've woven, you've been weaving death and loss throughout your whole life.
Wakil
Yeah, and I really appreciated in the book that you really spoke to that and it really did come up over and over again as kind of just a theme throughout your life of this other personality that was a part of you in such a deep way. Yeah.
Laura Davis
Yeah, I think there's just a way I have felt untethered. And I think it's from that birth experience and then being in this, the isolatte where I was never touched for the first six weeks of my life. I think that affects your wiring forever. And then, you know, I had a really incredibly difficult mother, difficult mother-daughter relationship. I became estranged from my family. I was sexually abused as a child by my grandfather.
So there were a lot of other things kind of layering on top of that, but I think the end result was just this feeling of being disconnected, untethered, and having a very tenuous feeling of connection grounding. And I've spent my whole lifetime healing that.
Wakil
Yeah. And that was really reflected in the book. And I really appreciate that you're willing to talk to us and share yourself in this way. It's I know that trauma can be difficult to work through. And so I appreciate that you've done that work and that you're willing to help others as well. What is your current role or work? Can you talk a little bit more about what kind of work you're doing now?
Laura Davis
Yeah. I mean, I'm an author. I've written seven books. And they all have reflected what I was obsessed with at the time I wrote them. So my first book was called The Courage to Heal. I wrote it with the poet Ellen Bass. And it was the first book that helped women heal from child sexual abuse. So that was in 1988. And that book led to three other books on that topic of of how to heal.
And at that point, that information was not in the zeitgeist at all. So it was really a groundbreaking book. It became very controversial because anytime there's progress towards ending oppression, there's a backlash. So we were the subject of a backlash. And also the book took off and became very well known. So when you're visible, you become a target.
So I had that experience of both having people say, you know, you saved my life. I would be dead if it wasn't for your book. You know, your book is my Bible, these kinds of things, and other people feeling like, you know, I was the anti-Christ, and all at a pretty young age. So I had that, I worked with that subject for a number of years, and then I got to the point where I really didn't want my life to be about this terrible thing that had happened to me. You know, I didn't want my identity to be Laura Davis, incest survivor.
You know, I had done my own healing work and I felt ready to move on and I didn't want my work to be completely surrounded with that topic. So I started writing about other things. After those four, the next one was about parenting because I was a new parent and I teamed up with a great parent educator. And we wrote a book called Becoming the Parent You Want to Be.
And then, years down the line, my mother and I had been very estranged and we started working towards kind of reconciliation. And I got really interested in that topic. So then I wrote a book called, I Thought We'd Never Speak Again. And it was a guide for reconciliation, which doesn't just mean making things nice and finding a place of everything's wonderful. And sometimes reconciliation might mean walking away from a relationship that is just too damaging to sustain and finding that inner peace with that split or that schism. So I was really interested in that.
And then, when I was in my 50s, I guess, early 50s, my mother contacted me from across the country, and we had this kind of detente, this somewhat reconciled relationship, but it only worked at a distance of 3,000 miles. And she announced she was moving to my town for the rest of her life. And I was very ambivalent about it. I thought it was going to ruin my life. I didn't think I was capable of being around her with that kind of proximity.
Annalouiza
Hehehehe
Laura Davis
I didn't feel like I had what it would take to be her caregiver, which is what she was wanting me to be. But I said yes to her because for one, she was a force of nature, but I think there was a part of me that just wondered if it would be possible for us to heal our relationship the rest of the way before she died. So that's what I wrote my memoir about, was that experience of taking care of her for the last eight years of her life.
So, writing myself has been a big chunk of what I've done, but I've also been working with writers for the last 25 years, teaching them, taking them on retreats and journeys around the world, but really teaching people primarily how to use writing as a tool for healing. And that's really what I love doing the most. So, you know, people come often when they're dealing with, you know, uncertainty in their life, or they're dealing with a
grief or they're dealing of any kind of grief, you know, a death, a loss of retirement, empty nest, dealing with an illness, becoming a caregiver, disillusionment with the world, grief over climate, I mean, just all kinds of things. And I think writing is a really incredible tool to deal with the things we don't typically get to say or express.
Writing has a way of just enabling people to tell the real truth in a way that we don't get to do very often. So I guess my job is creating these safe containers, either online and in person, where people can write and say anything and have that writing received and heard in a sacred and safe community. And people don't have to consider themselves to be a writer.
It's just, are people willing to use writing as a tool? So that's what I love. And I am a writing teacher, but I really, I think more than anything, I love building communities. So I'd say that's my work.
Wakil
Mm-hmm.
Wakil
Beautiful. Thank you.
Annalouiza
Wonderful. I'm really, I'm grateful that you're in the world and doing this, yeah. And so what are your biggest challenges with this work that you've created?
Laura Davis
I think I could answer that on two levels. One is that I'm 67 years old now and I love what I do, but it's all self-created. I've been a self-starting entrepreneur with my teaching business and my books for pretty much my whole adult life. The last job I had was 35 years ago and so, I think I'm just at the stage now where keeping all those balls in the air, it's just not that interesting to me anymore. Like I love teaching, I love when I'm in the room with people and I'm able to facilitate, you know, some kind of breakthrough or transformation or deep connection with self or others, but everything it takes to run the business of making it happen, getting the people in the room, I'm just getting really tired of it. So that's, I feel like that's a struggle for me at this moment.
I think on the bigger human level, the challenge I am facing, which I think is pretty much everyone I meet and talk to who really talks honestly is how can I be awake to all the suffering that's happening in the world and the danger of the climate, of the theocracy coming into America, the war in Gaza. I mean, there's just so many things that are so difficult and feel like we're moving in the wrong direction. And I feel like there's so much danger and uncertainty. Like, to not numb out to that, and also simultaneously, how do I keep having joy in my own life? How do I keep feeling grateful for the many wonderful things I have in my life? It's like walking this razor's edge of how to be awake right now and not either fall into the pit of like cynicism, despair, numbing, and also not to not look. So I feel like that's what I'm challenged with as a person and I feel like it's a theme in all my teaching is helping people find that balance.
Wakil
Yeah, so important right now, exactly. Yeah, I think all of us are working in that regard. Or, you know...
Laura Davis
So how do you feel like you're doing it? How are you doing that?
Wakil
It's, you know, for me, it's spiritual practice and remembering that there's joy as well as, you know, and holding both and being willing to hold both and not throw either of them out, you know, not push either of them away. But it's also community, as you said. I think I really love what you said about building community and having that community and having the practice you have of writing and, whatever we have that will support us in that way.
Annalouiza
Mm-hmm.
Wakil
So, and that kind of is a good segue, right, to our next question about what do you need to feel supported? What supports you? Or what helps you be supported?
Laura Davis
Yeah, I think for me, the natural world is a huge gift. I live in Santa Cruz, California. I live in a really beautiful place. I have the ocean, a 20-minute walk from my house. There's redwood forests, 20 minutes in the other direction. There's amazing places I could walk to right from my house and a climate that enables me to be outdoors pretty much all year, especially if I'm willing to put on some rain gear in the winter, which I have like big rain boots and a raincoat, rain pants. I will go out hiking in pretty much any weather.
So I think being in the trees, being at the beach, I feel like if I don't get that, I just start to feel anxious and tense and I'm like wedded to my list. And then I just go outside for half a day or an hour and I just, I feel like I'm just drinking in the chlorophyll and that natural world and how it's alive and is going to outlast us probably with the way we're doing things right now. So I think that's really… and moving my body, being physical is really important. And having… I have really good friends. I have… blessed to have… I have three children and three grandchildren, and they don't live around here. They live really far… My daughter's traveling in Morocco right now, been traveling in Morocco, Turkey, she lives in the Middle East. I have a son in Boston, I have another one in Mexico. So it's not like they're right here. But there's something about that feeling of the continuity of the generations. I feel really blessed to have had a family.
And there was a period when I was dealing with the sexual abuse really intensely in my late 20s and early 30s that I thought I was too damaged to become a mother. I just thought I would have to pass on the trauma that I had experienced and that I wasn't capable, you know, but through a lot of really incredible therapy and healing and having a fantastic partner who, you know, has really stood by me for over 30 years, I was able to have that thing that I really wanted and it was very healing for me. So I think that feeling of connection with people who I feel safe with.
I have a cousin who lives nearby who has a baby. I just spent the day with this baby and it was just being with a baby was just fantastic, that experience.
Wakil
Hmm, another wonderful healing.
Annalouiza
Mm-hmm. Yes.
Laura Davis
Being part of a writing community, both the ones I lead and the ones I participated in. And then just like basics, like I really like to go to the grocery store, go to the farmer's market, come home, cook a healthy meal, just grounding. And lately, I've taken up, I've become a crocheter.
Annalouiza
Ooh.
Wakil
haha
Laura Davis
My son and daughter-in-law came for a visit from Boston last summer, and they brought Karen and I these little kits called Wubbles. They're like little crochet kits, and they got us started. They're very artistic. They got us started on this, and I've just been like a crochet fiend ever since.
Annalouiza
I love it. Woo.
Wakil
Hahaha.
Laura Davis
And it's very, it's challenging. It's really hard. It's creative. And it's a really incredible meditation, you know, to be making something with my hands. And so I've been doing that and swimming. I'm a game player, love playing cards, mahjong, just about anything. So I love playing games.
Wakil
Great, sounds like you have a lot of good...
Annalouiza
Yeah, she's got a lot of tools.
Laura Davis
Yeah, I have a lot of, I got a lot of tools. And I think one thing I have taught at this, the grief retreat, one of the things I learned from another teacher that I thought was so helpful that I really try to practice is that when there's a moment of something wonderful, like stepping out and seeing the full moon, or there's a rainbow in the sky, or just like a beautiful, usually it's something I'm seeing, is to just extend it.
Like just 30 more seconds there instead of like, okay, saw that. Now I'm going to go back to the next thing in my trajectory. So just trying to expand those moments and take, take the moment. And it doesn't affect your life, except that it feels better. Take, take the moment to extend those moments of pleasure or beauty or awe. Yeah.
Annalouiza
Mm.
Right.
Wakil
Beautiful. Yeah, what a great practice.
Annalouiza
Yeah, I love that. Mm-hmm. I love that. So what frightens you about the end of life? It sounds like you're living really richly balanced and with curiosity. So do you think about the end of life?
Laura Davis
I do. It's really interesting because last year I just was going through a period of a lot of anxiety about money and the future. I think I was at the beginning of a real life transition, and that's how it was coming up. It was like something inside was saying, you better pay attention. You need to make some changes in your life kind of thing. Now I'm in a better state.
And when I was doing that, I started working with this book about aging. And it had you create a timeline of your whole life looking at your life by decades. And it's really like a life review. And the idea was to look at your life in these decades and look at what was put in the shadow at these different points, like what got buried and how can that be re-
brought to the surface again as you're getting older. And what I found was that I couldn't imagine my life into the future. It was like a blank. So I think envisioning an old age for myself is really difficult. And I think my biggest fear is that I will have dementia like my mother did and like my grandmother did. So I think that's what really frightens me the most.
And there's some of the things I do that I mentioned, like playing Mahjong, crocheting. I do things that are really good for the brain. And just like the past week or so, I've been on a cleaning binge. I clean my whole office. This has been going on for months. I clean my whole office. There's a book that I read called The Gentle Swedish Art of Death Cleaning. Do you know that book?
Annalouiza
Oh no! That sounds amazing!
Laura Davis
Yeah, it's a really interesting book and it's actually quite positive. I mean, it's not like a... And it's this woman in Sweden who's now, I think, 99 years old or something. And she just talks about, what if you didn't leave a huge mess for your children or your heirs or your friends or whoever's going to be there for you, be there after you die? And it just got me going on, like cleaning out my shit...
Annalouiza
Mmm.
Yes.
Laura Davis
and not just having my life be chaotic in terms of all my papers. And so just I've been doing that process for about six months, which has really felt incredibly positive. Like it's just freed up this energy where I feel so much happier.
Annalouiza
Oh, it's so beautiful.
Laura Davis
And I so lately I've been revisiting my like, I have a living trust I made decades ago. I have my end of life paperwork. So I've been going through all that because I haven't looked at it in 10 years. And one of the things that one of my students, I learned from one of my students, there's something called a dementia directive. So I downloaded it from the internet and I filled it out. And it basically talks about these different phases of dementia, early, medium, and then you put in writing what you would want to save your life if you were in that state. I said basically nothing, nothing. That's not how I want to live. And I'm choosing someone besides my partner Karen, if I outlive her. I chose a friend who I know would be able to do my wishes because I don't think my children could. I mean, I think I could imagine them like they're 27, 31, and 45. I just can't imagine them not saying, just save her. I don't want to just be saved.
But I know you can't control what happens at the end of your life. You just can't. And my mother was someone, uh, I wrote about this a lot in the burning light of two stars is she used to say things like, if I ever need to be in a walker or a wheelchair, just take me out back and shoot me, but then there she was at the end of her life, um, with her walker and a wheelchair and sitting on a bedpan with a big smile on her face. And it was like, we don't know. You know,
Annalouiza
Right.
Wakil
That's right.
Laura Davis
And I've seen that with other people too, that as they decline, their standards of what's acceptable keeps changing.
Annalouiza
It changes. Yep. I actually am really delighted by how you were so prepared for your mom's death. Like there was at the end when you showed up and you had her advanced care directive plan at the emergency room and you and that nurse said to you, I wish more people had everything put together. And I just want to say to you, like, that's my dream for everyone. And you did it. You, that was so beautiful.
Laura Davis
Well, you know, actually she did. I mean, yes, I did that. And I remember her saying, I think what she was responding to was not the paperwork, but what she responded to was that I defended my mother from getting unnecessary treatment. Like she was at a place where, you know, she had a DNR, she didn't wanna be resuscitated. Her dementia was probably moderate, going, you know, at the far end of moderate. She was in really bad shape. And she hit her head and they. she was in an assisted living place, and they insisted I take her to the emergency room. I was like, I don't want to take her. And then when I brought her there, they wanted to do all these tests, all these invasive things. And I said, no, just take the picture of her head. That's required because we're not going to treat any of these things anyway. And that's when she said, I wish people had an advocate like you. But my mother was super clear. I think one reason I feel good about catching up on all that paperwork is that—
Annalouiza
Right. I love that.
Wakil
Yeah, yeah.
Laura Davis
When she died and my father, both of them, their affairs were so in order. As the person left, it was easy to follow their instructions and she had been super clear with me about what she wanted.
But a lot of times people don't want to, family members don't want to have the conversation.
Annalouiza
Right.
Wakil
Yeah, yeah, we just finished a class. I just finished a class yesterday talking about end of life preparation and all of these things you've talked about are on the list as well as a lot of other things, but it's so important and it's such a gift to give your loved ones to have cleaned stuff up, you know, to get all the stuff and get all the preparations in place and before you are not able to be having those conversations and talk about you know, what do you want to have happen and who's gonna be able to deal with it? I think what you said about your kids not necessarily being the right people to be in charge is really important sometimes and important to think about who in your life is gonna be capable of dealing with this stuff. And I think Annalouiza and I've talked about it's good to have younger friends because... Right?
Annalouiza
Mm-hmm.
Laura Davis
Right, my friend is actually older than me, the one I appointed. Right, exactly, that's the problem. So is this a written list that you have, like a checklist of what to do? Because I would love to get that checklist if you have it.
Wakil
I have, yeah, I'll send you the curriculum that I do. It's got a lot of links to a lot of resources and I've got to send it to Annalouiza too. Sure, I'd be glad to send it to you.
Laura Davis
Yeah, I'd love that. That would be fantastic. Thank you.
Wakil
Yeah, yeah, and you can come take the class and help us with it if you want some time.
Annalouiza
Should we, should we go to the final? What do we, what do you wish we'd asked you?
Laura Davis
What do I wish, I didn't prepare for this question. Yeah, what do I wish you'd asked me?
Laura Davis
Yeah, okay, I know. There's an epigraph that I have in the front of the book that was a quote from a former student of mine from some piece she wrote in a class like 20 years ago. And it was, "'Every time I look in the rear view mirror, the past has changed.'" And her name is Deborah Fouchet, who said that. And I just, I remember at the time, sometimes when you're a writing teacher, you're hearing people's work, thousands and thousands of things.
But I remember that was one of the ones that was just like, oh, wow, that's incredible. So that's the thing I'd like to talk about, is that I could not have anticipated being where I am at this point in my life when I was younger. And I can't really anticipate what the future is either. And that my perspective on things is so different, and that there were different decades of my life when I was completely obsessed with certain topics or difficulties, usually something traumatic.
And how things change over the…I feel blessed to have lived this long. I had cancer when I was 50, so I feel like every day I have is a gift. I think that's true when I'm teaching memoir writers. You could write about something in the heat of the moment, which is very important to record the details and to get the emotions out.
But what you don't have in the heat of the moment is a perspective on what happened. And that's why when I wrote my memoir, it took me 10 years to write it, in part because it took me 10 years to be able to have the perspective on my relationship with my mother, which was the theme, and to go from, at the beginning, I was the hero and she was the villain, and I knew that's not the kind of book I wanted to publish. And it took me 10 years to get to the point of really being able to create us as two flawed, human, complex, hypocritical human beings, which we all are. Paradoxical, a lot of paradoxes. And the same thing I'm saying about, like I'm filling out these forms, like I wouldn't want to live this and this. Who knows what will happen? I don't know.
Annalouiza
But at least you have a guide, right, for the person who's coming. I think that that's a real gift too. Like in this moment, I think this, and you know who I am, so if you get stuck, because it's something like that's not on this list, you'll at least know what I might have chosen.
Laura Davis
Yeah.
Wakil
Yeah, yeah. You mentioned a book earlier that you've been reading. I'd love to get the name of that and add it to our notes that you were reading.
Laura Davis
Yes, I don't have it in my, my brain doesn't retain names of things, but I have it right on my shelf.
The gentle art of Swedish deathclaiming, that name I did remember.
Annalouiza
I'm going to get that book.
Wakil
Yeah, that's definitely important. I mean, one of the things in my class, I always say, okay, take a minute and look around at all the stuff just in your room where you are now, what's going to happen to all that stuff.
Laura Davis
Well, one of the questions in that little death cleaning book was, I wish I knew the exact language, but it basically was hold up an object and then is there anyone beside you who would feel sad if you got rid of this item?
Okay, the name of the book is The Inner Work of Age, Shifting from Role to Soul is the name of the book. And the author is Connie Zweig. It's a good book.
Wakil
Oh, yeah, I've heard that author before. Great, great.
Annalouiza
Oh, just, just to go back to the last thing you just said, you know, so I'm 55 and I have two teenage kids and I do tend to get rid of a lot of stuff because I'm like, you know, I don't want my house to get like, you have to do all this work. But the kids last week were fighting in the kitchen because they're like, stop getting rid of stuff. We want to decide who, you know, what is important because even those little like silly trinkets, my daughter's like, I want to keep those. I want to remind myself of who you are. And so you're not allowed to just get rid of things willy nilly, which is also like, seriously?
Wakil
That's true.
Laura Davis
Well, one thing you could do is get one of those big plastic bankers boxes at a stationery store and put their names on it. And they each get to put things they want to keep in that box.
Annalouiza
Yeah, that's a good idea too.
Laura Davis
So they feel empowered. And I have a box like that for each of my kids. They haven't asked to save things. I've saved things because I couldn't let go of them. But give them a container that's decent size.
Annalouiza
Right. That's a great idea. Actually, they're going to be fighting for all my toys. I know this.
Laura Davis
What kind of toys?
Annalouiza
I collect a ton of Pop Funko and old Star Trek and Star Wars figures. I have a ton. It could be, but no, I doubt it because I didn't keep them in their boxes, but they literally walk around the house and like, that's mine. And like they were fighting about my artwork last week. They're like, and you know, my son's like, mom, I really want that painting that you have in this. And I was like, well, you also talked to Lucedo about that because it sounds like you never wanted my artwork. He's like, oh, now I do.
Laura Davis
So is that your painting right behind you?
Annalouiza
Okay. Oh no, it's an artist from Guatemala. Yeah. So yes, so there's, you know, and it's all kinds of stuff. I mean, we can all do the work and we'll still be kids who fuss or. Yeah.
Wakil
There'll still be stuff, yeah. I'd say my mom and dad, or mom especially, my dad had dementia so I went through that with him, but my mom did a really good job of kind of getting everything cleared and taking care of stuff and making sure I knew where all the records were and all that. And it was still like a three-year process after she died, after they both died, they both died in the same year to take care of all that, you know?
So it just takes time and the more you do the better. I guess that's kind of the message. And I thank you for bringing that forward, Laura. It's really important.
Well, great. I think unless there's anything else, we can move into the end. And that's the poem that you brought. Yeah.
Annalouiza
Right. Yeah.
Laura Davis
Yeah.
Annalouiza
Yeah.
Our poem.
Laura Davis
Oh, a poem, right? A poem I brought. Okay, this is a poem I've shared many times on retreats. Usually there's certain poems you read at certain points in the evolution of a retreat because there's like an ebb and flow of energy. And this is usually something I read at a point when people are kind of at the bottom, like really open, cracked open and feeling a lot. And it's called Allow. It's by Donna Fauld, F-A-U-L-D.
Laura Davis
There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightning bolt,
containing a tornado. Dam a
stream and it will create a new
channel. Resist, and the tide
will sweep you off your feet.
Allow, and grace will carry
you to higher ground. The only
safety lies in letting it all in –
the wild and the weak; fear,
fantasies, failures and success.
When loss rips off the doors of
the heart, or sadness veils your
vision with despair, practice
becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your
known way of being, the whole
world is revealed to your new eyes.
Annalouiza
Hmm.
Laura Davis
Allow by Donna Fauld. She's got a lot of really incredible poems.
Annalouiza
It's beautiful.
Wakil
That, yeah, thank you. What a beautiful, beautiful way of thinking about allow and grace will carry you to higher ground. May that be so.
Annalouiza
Yes, may it be so. And also, you know, when you resist and the tide sweeps you off your feet, like, yeah, you don't want to have that happen, but as soon as you've read that, I remember the times when I resisted and it's been flung. And you know, that's part of our life experience, you know?
Laura Davis
In the flow of that grief retreat, there's a period where people are naming their losses and they're talking about their grief and they're writing about it. But then there's also this time of almost like where everything comes undone. There's this in-between time of limbo which we are culturally so uncomfortable with. But if you don't enter that space of nothingness you know, or emptiness or not knowing, then nothing new can be born, you know? So it's like, how do you normalize that? It's like, this is part of the process of healing. This is part of the process of cracking open to the next new thing.
Annalouiza
Right. And growing.
Laura Davis
And I think the other thing is just that, you know, you don't get over things. You learn to carry them, you know?
Annalouiza
Mm-hmm.
Wakil
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. As I was thinking of that metaphor of the being of the tide, it's, I was thinking, you know, that part where you're tumbling in the surf and you don't know if you're going to come up again.
Annalouiza
Mm-hmm, totally. I've been there.
Wakil
Me too. I mean, that's, that's kind of what we're talking about. You know, can you let go and just be there with that? Yeah.
Annalouiza (38:09.3)
Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much, Laura. What a pleasure.
Laura Davis
Your so welcome, it has been a pleasure. It's been a nice conversation.