Laura Davis

I write books that change peoples' lives. The Courage to Heal and The Courage to Heal Workbook have paved the way for hundreds of thousands of women and men to heal from the trauma of sexual abuse. Becoming the Parent You Want to Be, a rich resource guide co-authored with parenting expert Janis Keyser, helps parents develop a vision for the families they want to create. And the first book I wrote inspired by my relationship with my mother, I Thought We'd Never Speak Again: The Road from Estrangement to Reconciliation teaches the skills of reconciliation and peace building to the world, one relationship at a time. My latest book, my first memoir: The Burning Light of Two Stars: A Mother-Daughter Story, which tells the story of my dramatic and tumultuous relationship with my mother from the time of my birth until her death from a much more dramatic, intimate, and personal point of view. It gives a no-holds-barred peek at the real me-the woman behind the teacher, the facilitator, the author. In the course of my long career as a communicator, I have been a columnist, a talk show host, and a radio news reporter. My other passion—aside from writing—is teaching and encouraging others to write. I love building writing communities where people can find their voice, tell their stories and hone their craft.

My Father’s Hands

“It doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.” —Anne Sexton Tell me your father’s story, as you remember it, by describing his hands. Begin each paragraph with the words, “My father’s hands . . . ”.

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My Writing Process

“Write your first draft with your heart. Re-write with your head.” —From the movie Finding Forrester Can you describe your own writing process? What is your relationship to your own deep creativity and your internal editor?

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Richard Ford writing prompt

The Story of Loneliness

“Loneliness, I’ve read, is like being in a long line, waiting to reach the front where it’s promised something good will happen. Only the line never moves, and the other people are always coming in ahead of you, and the front, the place where you want to be, is always farther and farther away until

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E. E. Cummings writing prompt

Someone Who Believed in Me

“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.” —E.E. Cummings Tell us about a time someone

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Tell me about all the sources that feed your writing.

The Stories I Carry

“I feel strongly that I have a responsibility to all the sources that I am: to all past and future ancestors, to my home country, to all the places that I touch down on and that are myself, to all voices, all women, all of my tribe, all people, all earth, and beyond that to

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When the Bill Comes Due

“The truth about our childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated, our perceptions confused, and our body tricked with medication. But someday the body will present its bill, for it as incorruptible as a child who,

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Turning Points

“There are two kinds of daily life: the life in time, and the life in values: something which is not measured by minutes or hours, but by intensity, so that when we look at our past it does not stretch back evenly but piles up into a few notable pinnacles, and when we look at

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Doing It My Way

“As women we’re told that approval is oxygen, but approval can be suffocating.” —Naomi Wolf, address at San Miguel Writer’s Conference, 2/12 Tell me about a time you stopped needing someone else’s approval.

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