The Official Laura Davis Website

"I went home and started to read your book. The tears and the words came pouring out as if a faucet was turned on and a release valve was opened. Thank you for helping me let go�of the hurt I was carrying."

Adonica, Charleston, South Carolina

Reviews

Harold McFarland, Midwest Book Review

We all become entangled in an estranged relationship from time to time. Often there is a big hole in our lives where a relationship once flourished. Feelings are hurt, opportunities lost, time passes and more special times are missed because of the estrangement. When do you find that enough is enough? When you have decided that the cost of the estranged relationship is too high, how to you go about reconciling? What if the other person is not ready to reconcile? How do you bring peace back to your life? These are all valid questions and here, finally, is a book on how to deal with these and other questions. Here is a book that details how to get past the barriers and start onto that road to reclaim that which was lost.

The book is filled with examples of minor differences that have caused complete separation to the much more serious problems of estrangement due to child abuse and similar very serious problems. She details her process of reconciliation with her mother after not speaking for ten years. She also details how others have moved to the point of reconciliation and what they have done. She starts by pointing out that all the 'knowledge' that she had gained over the years was not necessarily correct. Must you forgive the other person first? Conventional wisdom is 'yes' but she gives examples of people who have reconciled without forgiveness. Do you have to discuss the issue completely and get everything out in the open? Conventional wisdom is 'yes', yet she gives examples where reconciliation was possible only because they agreed not to discuss it between them. We are not dealing with a cookbook where you can say the process of reconciliation is step one, step two, step three. We are dealing with people and emotions and what is required for reconciliation is whatever the two people involved require.

Reconciliation is a very personal process.

What types of reconciliations are discussed? Reconciling with a drunk driver who killed your child, a man shot by and then reconciled to his assailant, a young man who vandalized a church because of highly charged ethnic feelings but was reconciled to the church members. Extreme examples that sometimes are hard to understand how a person can rise to that point of reconciliation. But the world is a better place because people can.

The last of the book contains a simple test that the reader can take to determine if they are ready for reconciliation.

Part of the process is based on being ready to reconcile and having the common ingredients that make reconciliation successful. These common ingredients include time, maturity, discernment, compassion, honesty, determination, courage, listening and accountability.

If you are entangled in an estranged relationship or know someone who is then this book should be required reading. If you are ready to reconcile a relationship but don't know how then find the courage in the examples in this book. If the cost of being apart has become too great then learn how to quit paying the costs. An indispensable book for those who are ready to move on with their life after an estranged relationship or those who want to help prevent an estranged relationship in the first place when possible, it is a highly recommended read.

Jill Lightner, Amazon.com

We've all been advised to forgive and forget, but rarely has anyone suggested a way to reconcile without necessarily forgiving. I Thought We'd Never Speak Again does. It covers every sort of contention, from seemingly minor differences that can escalate over time to larger issues of abuse, neglect, and dysfunction. Author Laura Davis (The Courage to Heal) once again comes from a very personal place in this book; she has slowly renewed relations with her mother's family after 10 years with no contact. As she interviews people and shares their stories, she uses the wisdom they've gained to illustrate numerous ways to reconcile--sometimes involving forgiveness and sometimes not. From the family who lost a member to a drunk driver or drive-by shooting to generations of kids on opposite sides of racial, religious, or political issues, the process of coming to peace is a lengthy one, marked by both pain and rewards.

Useful for adults who are dealing with personal issues or families trying to move beyond the emotional aftermath of 9/11, this loving and thoughtful book examines how we can all work together to achieve understanding.

Library Journal

Davis is coauthor of The Courage To Heal, about surviving childhood sexual abuse. Inspired by her reunion with her estranged family, this exploration of reconciliation features interviews with people who have made amends with others from crime victims and their perpetrators to Israeli and Palestinian girls. Before she sat down to write, Davis sifted through the narratives to see whether she could find the "right" or "best" way to reconcile, but she discovered instead that there are as many ways to do so as there are human beings. So that readers may see how people with deeply held, diametrically opposed beliefs can still come together, Davis also shares the story of her reconciliation with her mother, who continues to believe that her daughter is a victim of False Memory Syndrome. Recommended owing to the depth of the examples and Davis's optimism.

Vanessa Bush, American Library Association

Based on interviews with people who have suffered estrangement from friends and families for a variety of reasons, Davis explores the myriad ways people become estranged and find their way back to healthy relationships. Davis doesn't offer easy answers or specific rules for reconciliation, but she lays out the experiences of a wide range of people, their grievances, and their eventual efforts to make peace. The common ingredients she does identify include maturity, discernment, compassion, honesty, and accountability, among others. Davis identifies a continuum of reconciliation, from the deep and transformative to the utilitarian agreement to disagree, and distinguishes between reconciliation and forgiveness. She includes first-person accounts of estrangement caused by family disagreements, as well as accounts of crime victims meeting the perpetrators, war veterans returning to Vietnam, and reconciliation efforts between children of Holocaust survivors and children of Nazis. A fascinating look at how we reconcile our differences.

Publishers Weekly

Families, partnerships and friendships can break up over what appear to be surmountable conflicts, and efforts at damage control are often unproductive. Davis (coauthor, The Courage to Heal), a counselor to survivors of childhood sexual abuse, does an excellent job of mapping out an effective reconciliation process. She explains how to rationally assess the possibility of success, recognize the value of partial reconciliation and establish the rules of engagement. Throughout the book are riveting first-person stories by a neglectful mother who made amends with her grown children, a man who organized a reconciliation workshop between children of Holocaust victims and children of Nazis, and many others that illustrate how compassion, honesty and the ability to listen are indispensable.

Donna Robin Lippman, New York's Incest Awareness Foundation

Laura Davis, so deeply trusted by our community, presents us with yet another cutting edge book: I Thought We'd Never Speak Again: The Road from Estrangement to Reconciliation. It is inspiring, challenging and down-to-earth, as are all of Laura Davis' writings that we in the incest recovery community know so well. Reconciliation is not the first thing most survivors want to talk about. Upon first hearing of the topic of this new book, I was taken aback. Survivors first and foremost need to reconcile with ourselves. The idea of seeing family members, who are entrenched in vicious denial, is loathe to us. How do we take the leap all the way to reconciliation?

Gently, with warmth, strength and clarity, the book acts as a guide. One after another, stories tell of lives that were traumatically changed forever, describing how the process of reconciliation does lead to full, satisfying lives. Many of the people in Laura's stories are victims of violent crimes other than sexual abuse, like a gunshot wound or death by a drunk driver. Many are incest survivors. The stories are as much miraculous as they are real, describing the many ways hurt can be transformed into healing.

People like you and me, people whose lives were put on hold after horrific trauma, find ways to climb out of the hole of despair, find ways to express themselves and have that irreplaceable satisfaction of feeling heard by the person who hurt or denied them, leading to a long-awaited sense of real relief. It is fortuitious that it is Laura Davis who is leading us through this most difficult and final aspect of healing.

Reconciliation is not forumlaic; its unfolding varies from situation to situation. The most desirable experience is when two parties reconnect and meaningfully participate in each other's lives. Obviously, this is not alway possible. For many survivors the opposite type of reconciliation is available; the realization that no viable relationship is possible, leaving the only choice to nurture peace within oneself.

As I read, I experienced a deep workout of my emotional muscles, like getting really good massage. Challenging the status quo, making changes in how one sees oneself deeply and finally, promises relief that can last forever. In addition to carrying the unbearable pain, confusion, shame and guilt of having been so deeply violated, incest survivors carry the burden of having to deal with families that "just don't get it." Even the best of friends are often at a loss as to just exactly how to be supportive. Incest survivors suffer the consequences of the "just get over it" syndrome to which survivors of non-sexual violent crimes are never subjected. We endlessly find ourselves burdened by having to explain every aspect of our violation, and to structure our healing ina way that no other community of crime victims does, adding tonnage to the already heavy legacies we carry.

Reconciliation for you may or may not mean bringing previously outcast people back into your life. It does mean acknowledging all of yourself, of getting to know yourself by examining the very challenge that for so long has undeniably had to remain unopened. For incest survivors, as apparently for survivors of other trama, an incubation period is necessary. Most important is your willingess to explore yourself. I Thought We'd Never Speak Again is a resource that merits reading and rereading. It acts as a respectful guide as much as a well-written story. I welcome Laura's unabashed positive energy and her clear determination that there is, after all is said and done, life after incest recovery.

Veronica Swain, South Carolina Victim Assistance Network

Most of us know Laura Davis through her work on behalf of survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Her groundbreaking book The Courage to Heal was written in the days when childhood sexual abuse was simply not discussed; no one was writing about it and no one suggested publicly ways to deal with the pain of that experience. I got my hands on The Courage to Heal when I was in the beginning stages of my own healing from childhood sexual abuse, read it from cover to cover, finished it, turned right back to page one and read it all over again. It changed my life and gave me a huge perspective on how other people coped with the trauma they experienced, and gave me tremendous insight into how to begin to heal this broken part of my soul.

Well, Laura's done it again. She's begun a new mission and has discovered a new avenue to help people recover--not from sexual abuse, but from the pain of broken relationships.

My own family is experiencing the sorrow that comes from people having a falling out and consequently refusing to speak to each other. For two years now, our holidays have been fractured, family members are missing and are missed, and everyone is suffering--some because they've made the choice to exclude people from their lives, some because they've felt excluded.

Laura's new mission is to explore this experience and help people through it. She's traveling around the country with one goal in mind: to help launch a national reconciliation movement. Her new book, I Thought We'd Never Speak Again: The Road from Estrangement to Reconciliation, landed on my desk about two months ago. I read it from cover to cover, finished it, and turned right back to page one and read it all over again. Then I sent copies of it to everyone in my family. Because of Laura's new book, our family now has a tool to begin thinking about how this rift should be healed, could be healed, and how to go about doing it. I think everyone needs to buy this book. Once again, a book written by Laura Davis has changed my life.