Sense of Soul - Writing from the Soul

Episode Date: January 22, 2021

Today on Sense of Soul, we have the talented Laura K Roe is the pen name for Laura Roe Stevens, a former parenting and pregnancy editor, and freelance writer and editor. She is the author of three novels and is currently writing a fourth, as well as yoga & meditation books. A southerner with wanderlust, when she’s not writing, she teaches weekly yoga classes and hosts yearly yoga and writers retreats around the globe. Join us as we talk about Laura’s amazing book Between Thoughts of You and about her journey that brought her to her Sense of Soul!  Uriel's Mask, Laura’s next novel to be Published 2022. We can’t wait for that!! Order Laura's book The Art of Flow: Mindful Mini Meditations and get automatically entered to win a spot in Laura's September 2021 Maui Yoga Retreat!  Visit her website www.laurakroe.com to learn more about this sweet soul!  Check out www.mysenseofsoul.com  

Welcome to the Sense of Soul podcast. We are your hosts, Shanna and Mandy. Grab your coffee, open your mind, heart and soul. It's time to awaken. Today on Sense of Soul, we are super excited to have Laura Rowe and she is joining us from sunny California. And Laura, today I'm going to switch it up here. I'm going to ask you to introduce yourself, maybe talk a little bit about your career and then talk a little bit about who Laura is on a soul level. Well, thank you. I'm so honored to be here. So, you know, we all are multifaceted people. If you're on my LinkedIn, you're going to see more about my journalism background, my editing background. You're in social media, you will see yoga sort of class descriptions and know that I'm a single

parent of two boys. And then you'll also see I'm an avid photographer and traveler. So there's a lot going on in my life. I'm a journalist. I've been writing since I was 18. In college, I do well one-on-one with people, but I'm actually kind of shy and very curious and had near-death experiences and a couple of violent sort of situations in high school. And I wanted to jump into this world of understanding that. And I started covering crime for the local newspaper in Athens, Georgia. I've had an all things considered show on BBC when I was in college. I studied with the London Times and with the BBC abroad and worked for some Atlanta newspapers too while I was in college.

So I instantly jumped into that world. I had a job before I even left school up in Maine. Then I worked at newspapers in Maryland and North Carolina and burned out super quickly. So what I'll say is covering crime in politics, it's really difficult on the soul. I'm a firm believer of what you think about, you manifest. Covering murders and covering politicians and the environment, very important topics. But as an empath, I was carrying around with me. And so switched it up a little bit when I was pregnant with my first son and I started writing for Fit Pregnancy Magazine because I was writing for Inc. and Forbes and I didn't have time to actually read what to expect when you're expecting.

And so I started pitching them and then I got to cover all of these topics. I mean, I'll give you an example. I was giving birth to my son and they gave me an epidural because I just wouldn't chill out. It was like I didn't want one, but they were like, girl, you're just not, you know, and it was like, it's like, you're not dilated. And yet it's like a Ferrari revving into a wall. We got it. We got to get you to die. Like another story on the phone with my Forbes editor, because I was on deadline and my fit pregnancy editor called me and just said, this is why you're writing about parenting and pregnancy from now on. You need to just chill out, you know? So I started writing about parenting and pregnancy for a long time. I was a parenting and pregnancy

editor for a magazine. I was an editor of a business magazine for a while too. And I put myself through grad school by working in Wall Street. So working with analysts, wrote my first novel. And then I got married and I went on that track of just sort of traveling with my now ex-husband, who's an international businessman and kind of putting family and him more, you know, on the forefront while I was an editor, you know, things happen. And I've been a single mom now for 12 years. I've got a 12 year old. I've got a 19 year old, live in California.

And my journey really began through that process of dealing with all of that. And I embraced yoga. And I'm now working on my fourth novel. I'm really excited about that. So my creative writing is really on a soul level. I think all creative writing is. And I'm excited to share some things with you about this novel, because it has a lot to do with sort of as you're dying, letting go. And one of the main characters is just haunted by a lover that he

left during World War II. And it's just, you know, the vivid dreams and the communication that he's having. Is it real? Is it not real? And the hospice nurse is dealing with her own trauma from betrayal and losing a child. And she has vivid dreams about her baby. All of my novels have a little bit of the paranormal and soul sort of level. And this woman from Hawaii, she was raised by a healer of the ancient tradition. So the ancestors come into. So I think like it's a fun conversation to have with you too. Awesome.

I can't wait. Yeah. So that book is called Between Thoughts of You. Is that correct? Uh-huh. Wow. You've done so much. I love it. We've got so much to talk about. Who is Laura on a soul level? If you were to describe your soul, who is Laura? You know, sort of like a navigator of the cosmos. I feel like every experience that we all have is putting us exactly to the point where we can get closer to our soul's purpose.

And we have that challenge of either opening it and accepting it and letting go, which I know that you really embrace with your Reiki and other things. But, you know, it's our purpose is just love and to be loved. So everything that has happened to me is like peeling an onion. And so, you know, yes, I've sort of survived a lot of things, but I feel like each one is just peeling me back to this place where I can relate more to other people and they can relate more to me. And it's all about trying to get closer to that point of just being love. Complicated thing.

Is it what we do? Is it what we say? We experience and achieve? I think it comes into all of my writing. I know that you are into yoga and you were mentioning before we started recording that a lot of times you set an intention and here in 2021, I think intention is really important. So can you set an intention for this episode today? Yeah, I can. I'd be happy to. So I work with patients up at Torres Memorial Medical Center every week, and it's really important to set intentions. I think it's important for everyone, but I especially understand the high

level of stress and anxiety that cancer patients especially have. And I feel like 2020 put us all on that heightened level of anxiety. And even for those of us who believe that, you know, death is just a transition, we will still miss these people or we're worried about who could be left behind. So I think everyone is on that heightened level of anxiety. And I'm happy to share with you what and how I set the intentions. So I like to incorporate a little bit of breath work. Uncross your legs, have your feet flat on the earth. Of course, if you're laying down, that's fine too. I often do that.

Roll your shoulders a couple of times because it's nice to be loose, right? And maybe place one hand over your heart space, right? That green chakra is verdant for a reason. Place the other hand on top of that. Bow your head. And I want you to take a deep breath in through your nose. Let your shoulders rise to your ears. Pull them back and then exhale out of the mouth. I want you to visualize that green chakra, the heart chakra. It is verdant. And that is because it is where things grow, right? And so if you have a lot of weeds or tangled thoughts of anxiety and fear, that is normal, but we want to untangle them. We want to let them go.

We want to really grow seeds. When you think of a seed in your garden, for months, you don't see a sprout, but you give it the right amount of water, the right amount of sunshine. And we have to do that every day, knowing that we are growing within our heart space, what will really lead us on the path, our soul's path of healing, creativity, right? Light. So I want you to take another deep breath in and fire up that green light, hold it up at the top. And then I want you to exhale again and ask yourself how you would like to feel today. As simple as that, how would you like to feel? Would you like to feel a little bit more serene,

a little bit more at peace, a little bit more trusting, maybe joyful, playful, creative, and know that it is okay to feel good. It is okay to have fun. It is okay to have a little bit of lightness in your space, no matter what is happening in the illusions of this life. So it is okay to feel good when others are in pain because it gives them, it's like lights on a pathway. It gives them the permission to do the same, right? You're doing no one any good if you're on that sympathy plane, or if you're on that plane of anxiety or in that plane of complaining. So we want to lift ourselves up like a child would to reach for those shiny things, to jump in those puddles and to have some fun on our journey. So I

want you to think of what you would like to achieve this week without worrying about the house or the wise or the winds or the bears and let it come in and it could just be as simple as drinking more water and doing a little bit of yoga and meditation or it could be some concrete goal you want to do you know of getting up and feeling grateful and decorating that tree whatever it is that you need let it come into your heart space i want you to it. I want you to imagine taking one baby step, one little baby step to achieve it. The universe will meet you in like a million folds from your baby steps. So just one little baby step you can do, right? Let it come in to your mind's eye.

You're placing an order with the universal waiter. And just like you're at a restaurant, you would not follow that waiter into the kitchen and you would not demand to see how it is cooked and know when it's coming to you. You place the order and you trust it's going to happen, right? Take a moment. And now I want you to drop into gratitude, shift your vibration into gratitude. When we think about what works, what flows, what brings us joy instead of what annoys, what aggravates, and what frightens, we are so much more powerful. So I want you to enter into that powerful space of gratitude and think of a few people, pets, places, moments that you're grateful for. Be grateful for that intention you set. It's already on its way to you.

And let's take a deep breath in to seal that intention. Inhale. Let the shoulders rise. I want you to hold it and exhale out of the mouth. Good. Thanks. That was great. Thank you. You're welcome. I'm so glad I asked you to do that. And I'm so sorry. I just sprung it on you. I mean, you did amazing. Thanks. So I was going to ask you, you used to interview murders and you were saying how you feel like when you were in the politics and interviewing people who had negative situations, because you're an empath, you felt like you took some of that. Is that right? Oh, I know I took some of that. And I was listening to one of your latest podcasts with

a light worker and about dreams and things would enter into my dreams that did not need to be there. Right. I mean, I really am a firm believer that it's as simple as just saying I'm surrounded by light and you're protected. But when you're an empath, often, I don't know if you've ever felt this way, ladies, but like I can sometimes feel the pain of like my cancer patients, you know, my hands or them. And I don't mean that I take it on and relieve them because I'm not that kind of a person. I don't think, you know, I'm not that kind of a healer, which I appreciate. But what I mean is that I can almost feel like a friend of mine who had broken some vertebrae in his neck for weeks. I would wake up with a massive

crick in my neck and I would feel it. You know, I just feel like some of us empaths, we just take on these feelings and we have to be really careful about our energies because if it drags us down and we're not productive and we're not moving forward, right? So it's just navigating that. So when I was in my twenties, I was such an overachiever, like already working in college, you know, for the radio station, the BBC station, and, you know, and the newspapers. And even my senior year, I was working for a magazine in Maine. And then the Maryland magazine or newspaper rather was really tricky for me because I was covering crime.

And often I would be, you know, asked to ride along with police officers who are undercover going after narcotics dealers. And, you know, sometimes they would tie crack cocaine in a baggie onto their girlfriend's pregnant bellies because they know that they would shoot her so the police won't shoot them. And the little girl would only be 16 years old. That was their girlfriend, right? And you see these images are covering like, you know, a murderer kept coming into the office and sitting beside me saying, oh, let me help you. You know, thank you for trying to solve my wife and my mother-in-law's murder. And it ends up like he chopped their bodies up and put them, sprinkle them all across a farm in Annapolis. And, you know, and I've been interacting with this person on a daily level.

And it's like, you know, that was not needed for me and my soul's purpose. Right. And I entered journalism because, you know, I wanted answers and I liked talking to people and I liked, you know, when the Environmental Protection Agency was trying to shut down all the chicken plants in Maryland because all of the chemicals were going into the bay and it was poisoning our fish and crabs. And you feel good about making a difference in a way because these things need to be reported on. And I still have such respect for my fellow journalists who are in the field covering real journalism that needs to be

covered, especially when it's talking about, you know, how some of our immigrants are treated at the border or overseas. I think these are important topics and how they navigate their own health and wellness is something that is challenging. And so for me, I had to get out and I was writing a murder mystery novel and I ended up getting into a program in New York, my MFA. And that was my out because I could no longer cover those topics anymore. It was really affecting me, affecting my sleep rhythms and my anxiety. And I didn't have the tools back then in my twenties. I did not have the tools.

I hadn't discovered meditation and yoga and I, I didn't have the tools, you know, to deal with it. Interesting enough. So I'm like obsessed with like true crime sometimes, which is very interesting. Yeah. I do enjoy listening to it. And what's interesting is I've noticed is that, and I always have been, even since I have filled my toolbox up with stuff that can help relax me. But that is something that I go to when I am feeling like I've been feeling lately a little dissociated. Why I go there, I don't know. Possibly Eckhart Tolle like may describe this in his book,

New Earth, where he describes that sometimes when empaths or people who are highly sensitive are sensing like this pain or something like that, they have to associate it with something. And so they fill their time with something right. Like that, which has been, I'm thinking maybe that's why like people cut themselves or like hurt themselves in some way. And maybe that's my way of experiencing, or I'll listen, I'll watch a sad movie. If I need to cry, if I can't actually do it for myself and connect with those emotions but yeah I can feel them coming up you know watching like a good tearjerker has always been my go-to which I haven't done I like I like this is us that's like my weekly cry like you know I think you really hit upon a topic that I mean that's a whole nother topic, but it just, a lot of Americans are desensitized. And I think like the main character of my, of my novel, Lulu, like at one point she,

she's running, she's a, she's a hospice nurse and she's running in this Tuscan villa to her patient, this old man. And she steps on a shard of glass in her foot and she keeps running and the blood is going, she yanks it out and she puts a towel over it and then she goes to him. And it was really something that I could relate to, which you triggered that in me just now, because physical pain was something that reminded her she was alive and she could handle that. Whereas emotional pain, she could not handle, you know, she could not handle the emotional pain

and it gave her something to immediately like Eckhart Tolle immediately focus on the now it's immediate something I could do in the immediate and so she goes to help this man who's dying and he's gasping for breath and he's trying to hold on and he can't handle the emotions of the dreams about his you know dead lover that's haunting him and he can't handle the emotions of the dreams about his, you know, dead lover that's haunting him. And he can't handle the emotions. And it's just like, they were just a yin and yang experience. And I've done that before. Whereas like, I have a high level of tolerance. I almost, well, I did die and come back, but it's like, I had spinal meningitis twice and going through spinal taps. And I've been through multiple of them because they weren't working and they had to keep redoing them. And apparently that's one of the most painful things you can experience is

spinal taps, especially when they go wrong and they keep doing it. I could handle that, but I couldn't handle some of the emotional things in my life. So it's interesting. I think that's maybe what we do is we detach from that emotional pain and then find something else. Yeah. And I think that for me personally, I think I know what it is. Like I have, my mom is moving right now and there's all these emotions around not having any parents here with me anymore and all this stuff. And instead of me actually just allowing me to experience that, I'm trying to fill that with something else. And I go to like the most gory true crime podcast I can possibly find to satisfy that in me. And I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with me? It's so disturbing. There's nothing wrong with you. I mean,

at least you're not hitting the bourbon every night. You know what I mean? Right. I guess so. But I'm like, I don't have dreams about him. Thank God that I could see how somebody would. Absolutely. So can you tell us about your near-death experience? Well, I mean, luckily I sort of remember it sort of don't, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's kind of like childbirth in a way, like, you know, like you just sort of, I mean, I've met some women that really remember it over and over again, and I just don't. I don't either. I don't either. I remember it, but I don't remember the pain. Yeah, totally. Yeah. First time I had it. So, you know, you've got spinal and you've got viral meningitis, the kind that spreads at college campuses, you know, it spreads for a reason.

And then the kind that I had is it's not contagious. And you're really only supposed to get it once. Lightning doesn't strike twice. You're not supposed to ever get it twice. I got it twice, which is very interesting. So the first time I got it, I was six months old. And it's interesting, my book, Uriel's Mask, which I wrote before Between Thoughts of You, but this is what happens sometimes Between Thoughts of You is getting published first. But in Uriel's Mask, a little bit of this story pops in. I mean, it's fiction, but of course, sometimes you sprinkle as an author some of your experiences, right? And so when I was six months old, I died and came back. So my dad is a doctor.

He's head of pediatrics and genetics at Duke University, or he was for many years. And a nurse had called my mom. At time. Back then doctors could spend three days at the hospital. Now they limit it. But back then, you know, they would make doctors when they were like interns on their rounds, whatever. And so he'd be gone for a long time. And I'm the youngest of four. So my mom's pretty exhausted. And this nurse called in the middle of the night, scared the bejesus out of her, as we say in the South, because I'm from North Carolina, said that she dreamed that her baby girl had died. My mom was like, what? And she runs into my nursery. I'm fine. But for the next two to three weeks, she's checking on me a lot more. You know, she's going in the nursery a lot. And she went in like maybe two or three weeks later,

I was blue and my eyes had turned back and I'd stopped breathing and they rushed me to the hospital. And I don't remember that, but basically I died for a few minutes and came back. And then they say, you're never going to get that kind of meningitis again. That kind of spinal meningitis just doesn't happen. And of course they had to give me like a baby spinal tap, but you know, I can't even imagine what that was like. And then because this type of meningitis, it burns brain cells. I was teased by my older brother and my two older sisters my whole life. I think my nickname was Laura P for P-brain. They were just assumed that, because some people either get blind and have some mental handicaps after this happens to them. And then I got it

again when I was 11. And my dad was living in London at the time because he got to have a sabbatical to work with scientists there. And because my mom had four kids, you don't want to pull them all out of schools and that kind of thing. But because of that, I wasn't taken to the hospital and I was at home and it got to the point where it messes with your spinal cord big time, especially your cervical up at the very tip of your head. So if I turned my head one way, I would throw up, turn my head the other way, I'd throw up. If I blinked, I would throw up. And I just, I couldn't move. And so by the time we got to the hospital, it was a dangerous situation. And my dad was in London. All I

remember is that the kids in the emergency room, because they were in their twenties, these doctors, they could not get the spinal tap in the right place at the base of my spine. And I wasn't completely numb. And so I channeled out of my body. And at that point, that's when I was flatlining. And so I remember going into the other, in the waiting room and seeing my mom and she was hysterical and crying and feeling like it was her fault. And finally, when I'm coming through, my dad is there and you understand like to fly from London to North Carolina is a big deal. There's no direct flights. So it, I mean, we're talking hours later, but that's when I came back through and he's a very dominating force. You know, he's head of pediatrics and genetics, and he's worked on some cures to some genetic

disorders. Like you have to study him now if you're getting residency in pediatrics. And so, I mean, you know, to say those interns were intimidated is an understatement and he's yelling at them for doing it wrong. And he decides he's going to do it. Of course, he's a pediatrician. Does he know how to do it? I don't know. And he does it. And the pain was so excruciating that I, you know, they gave me

more morphine. And at this point, I remember traveling out of my body, but I don't think it was a near-death experience. I think it was part of the experience of so much pain. I do believe that, you know, we can sort of astrally come out of our body through heightened awareness of pain. And that's what I was doing. And I could see it all and my mom and the next room. And so I was never the same again, though, after that, I had to stay in the hospital for two weeks.

I was in a cancer ward because they didn't know where to put me. And it was a pediatric ward. And I would travel down and I would see these beautiful children and it really affected me and how sweet and kind the nurses were. I think it's what inspired my current novel because, you know, people think it's depressing, but nurses who work with the dying are the most uplifting. They're the most cheerful. They're the ones playing games with the children. I mean, you know, my, my son and I were so excited watching St. Jude just raise 3 million here in L.A.

I mean, talk about lightworkers. They're just filled with joy. And then the children are so filled with love. You know, the ones that know they have a short time period on this earth. So when I left the hospital, I was still really sick. I remember I threw up on the way home. I wasn't ready to be relieved, but they they let me go home. In that sixth grade year, I could barely be in school. And I just changed up everything. I started just going to church when my parents didn't go. I remember like going with Laura Lazarus, my neighbor to her synagogue.

I was like just exploring everything. I would see faces in my eyelids at night, vivid dreams. And so things changed a lot for me at that point. Yeah. When I believe I came out of my body was apparently when I was in a lot of pain. Now I was in a coma, so I don't specifically remember the pain, but my organs were shutting down. And I tell people all the time that I do believe we're protected that when your body cannot handle that much pain, your soul is like excused. It's like you can leave. Does it mean that you die? Sometimes you can just channel yourself out, like you said.

But thank you for sharing those stories. I worked at Children's Hospital as a para. And we had a classroom in Children's Hospital for kids that were too sick to go to public school. And I had a lot of children sitting hospital for kids that were too sick to go to public school. And I had a lot of children sitting in my lap dying. Truly, we I think we lost seven students and the two years that I was there. And at the time, I so wish that someone would have taught me how to protect myself, because I was just trucking through it. You know, I never really sat with the feelings around it. I mean, I saw these children in so much pain. I mean, we had one student who didn't have any connective

tissue. He was an open wound from head to toe and the amount of pain this child lived in, it really shook my faith, but these children have so much love and they have so much gratitude. But, you know, it's interesting that that's when I got really sick because I don't think I was protecting myself amongst another, you know, million things that I was doing at the time for lack of self-care. But you've got me really thinking about how like firemen, police officers, nurses, doctors, all these empaths. I wish there was a program where people could go in and teach them, you know what, before you start this job,

you need to adopt these protection practices and teach them about being an empath and maybe, you know, it would help them. I think that's such a great idea. And by the way, you mentioned, you know, and there's so many similarities. I can't wait. I want, I want to know what you think about the nurse in my book. Now I'm going to be, I wish you were one of my beta readers now I'm thinking, but anyway, so I started getting into yoga to deal with my stress because I was getting sick, you know, it's, and I think it was dis ease, not disease, right. And autoimmune runs in my family. And so you mentioned connective tissue and had low back issues, which there's a lot of symbolism with back issues as well. And healing circles, meaning like you need

support raising a baby. And my seven-year-old, I was just breaking down and my mom was also dying. So I didn't have any extra family support at the time. And yoga really helped me in aligning the chakras. And then I started these yoga for writers workshops and all of my retreats are yoga for writers, but really it's, you know, writing is like dipping into the compost of your youth is how one of my friends describes it. And, you know, you go into a lot of dark places in order to really write about things that will resonate with many people. I teach meditation for emergency room workers at a hospital here in LA as well. And I think anyone who is on the front lines of dipping into, you know, whether you're just trying

to heal old wounds or you're constantly seeing things that are painful, like you have to have a way to breathe through it. Like a lot of my friends that are journalists, they drink too much and they drink a lot of coffee and they eat bad food because they don't take time to breathe and sit down and eat. So they'll get that fast food and then their body starts breaking down and they're sitting a lot. So there's a lot of similarities between this sort of work. And it's like, you know, for the yoga for writers retreats or workshops, we'll do 20 minutes of breathing and sitting with things and maybe a little Kundalini of just trying to get it out of our head, right? Before we drop down and write. And when we center our energy, we can be a lot more creative. But when you're talking about police officers and firemen, and right now during COVID, I was talking to one of the administrators of a

local hospital in LA last week, because he came to my yoga class and he spent sleepless nights because he couldn't get enough gloves. And in LA COVID is spiking. And he was like, I can't sleep. I'm having panicky breathing. And I just told him to do one of those apps. Like, you know, Deepak Chopra has this 21 day meditation challenge. Cause when you can't cut off the monkey mind, plugging the music in and listening to an expert, Even if you fall asleep, finding a way to breathe through it. So you're not binge drinking or God forbid doing other things, right? Cause that's, that's what we do to cope. We'll try to be sensitive in any other way. It's just normal. I can't believe I'm going to say this. I almost feel like I might be struck by

lightning for saying it, but I think that maybe that might be a step that's missing out of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Maybe they need to add in the breath work, the meditation piece, because you're right. It's so important. Every AA meeting I've ever attended with you is all about smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee up in there. Just trying to survive. Well, and I've

seen that too. Here's something that's interesting. I did a couple of recovery yoga workshops with a friend of mine a couple of years ago and met this gentleman, Tommy Rosen, who wrote Recovery 2.0. He is an AA and Kundalini yoga teacher, he and his wife, and they wrote this book to incorporate breath work. And so he's here in LA and he spends a lot of time in India. And I met him at this Kundalini event. I mailed his book to a lot of people. Okay. Can you repeat his name again? Tommy Rosen and it's called Recovery 2.0. It is AA and it's not dissing the steps because they're so valuable, right? They're so amazing. It's just, can we incorporate some breath work?

Can we incorporate some sort of exercise so that you can get out of your monkey mind? Because thoughts do become things. Can we detach and make sure that we're self-aware, not self-obsessed? We're healing the wounds. We're not being victims. That's huge. That's important. Thank you for sharing that.

You went through some rough shit with your ex-husband. I mean, you were left with two children as a single mom when one was only eight months old and one was seven. Yeah. Talk about a soul survivor. And then you even write on your blog about dating and what it's like out there in the world. I read your blog about the oxytocin, the advice you had about dumb drinking when you first start dating. So is this kind of like a side thing that you've specialized in, unfortunately, because of the bullshit you were put through? So when I first started the blog, it was Navigating Vida. And now of course, I've transferred it to laurakrow.com because I'm publishing my novels. So I'm a parenting editor, right? Or I was, I don't know why it is, but it just is. It's the rare dad who puts in 50, 50,

right? It's a, whether you're a single mom or not, we get into this exhaustive pattern of being the caretakers and doing a lot more. I think, I think it's ways, single moms, they don't have the burden of expecting help. I'd see some of my married friends who expect help and are constantly disappointed. And that is, we don't have that anymore. Once we're in acceptance, we're on our own, but it's the person who's not in acceptance. Do you know what I mean? And they're in that merry-go-round of someone promising to be there and they're not promising to pick up the kids. And they're not promising to not introduce them to other people and they do you know promising to pay child support and they don't so there are different levels of single parenting and what I

can say is that I was looking for a space and a place to write about solutions not venting not bashing because when you vent and you bash, you get on this vibration of negativity, which reminds me of these, these Hallmark cards with this bitter old woman who's smoking cigarettes, holding a martini. And all she does is bash men. And like, I'm not that person. You know what I mean? Like I even knew back then before I was teaching yoga, like, but what was funny is that my blog being here in LA got some attention, you know, HuffPost, who I've written for, Dr. Drew had me on his show. And then he wanted me to be like a life changer. And I was managing this website. And, and then I got on the dating show for Queen Latifah. And it was just like, but what was happening is that I was portrayed as this like sweet victim. And then,

oh, and then I was asked to be on a reality TV show called The Biggest Compromise. It was based after The Biggest Loser, the same people. And my ex-husband and I were supposed to be dropped into a jungle with five other ex-couples. And those who could work out their shit, right? Oh my God. Yes. Those who could work out their shit would get full ride scholarships basically for both their children. And, and the more I said, no, it's just like a man. The more you say no, the more they chase you. And so the more that I said, no, like I didn't want to be like this Kardashian and my kids

one day watching it because I knew like, I'm a very petite person. So I'm this petite Southern sweet yoga teacher. And there would be some like Amazon woman, you know, like yelling at me. And I was just like, that is so not what I'm putting out in the world, but I could have made so much money. Right. Cause they kept offering me more, more money and a full-time nanny and all this stuff. And that was a time when my ex-husband and I had like the biggest laugh because he was

like, thank you so much for not wanting to do that. Holy crap. Like, you know, like they would just, they would drag all of our shit out into the forefront. And we're like, you know, so it's interesting, like that blog, Navigating Vida and the stuff that I was writing about, because again, being a journalist, I would interview people. So I interviewed a psychiatrist who has written bestselling books, like getting to IDU. That's the article that you read. And she had advice for me about dating. And she actually was our therapist, my ex-husband and I, she was our therapist. She

agreed to be our therapist. Isn't that funny? And so I was able to interview her because she was, was on a TV show for a long time too. And it was unraveling divorce. And anyway, she's so LA, right? Her advice was in the first three dates don't drink alcohol you need chemistry but assess real chemistry and then the other thing is is that really your intuition which i love because a lot of doctors she's an md psychiatrist or mgs don't really talk about the intuition but she was like women are always more connected to their intuition than men it's just because we're more right brain left brain because we multitask there's neuroplasticity that builds when you go left brain, right brain, left brain, right brain. And when you do things in a different way and men can get more rigid,

they don't multitask and they want to keep doing it their way. And as they get older, they get more set, which is interesting. So long and short of it, she was like, you can take advantage of that connection to your intuition. And you can assess even in the first two dates, whether he's genuinely a kind person, because you want a compassionate, kind partner in your life more than you want the six pack abs, you know, and the sexy eyes. Like at the end of the day, growing old with that, a selfish person isn't what you want. She's the one that told me to divorce my husband. She basically records every therapy session with a spouse. She cut it off. She looked at my ex husband and she was like, get the F out of my room. We were supposed to be working on it. We

signed a contract. She really believes in marriage and that like even infidelity can get you closer because oftentimes it opens up wounds that you guys can both talk about and respect each other more and come on that level. But when it's not happening and one person is just constantly, I was in a state of like post-traumatic stress, never knowing what was going to happen next. It ends up like a little bit of that is in the book that I'm currently writing called Jupiter's Weight there's a scene where a girl she's hiking and suddenly she disassociates and she doesn't know where she is because that happened to me at one point during that three month period of him going back and forth back and forth back and forth and I'm just insane and I'm not allowed to tell anyone so none of my family knows and I'm just falling apart and I just moved

from London and I just moved from London. And I just lost my job as a parenting editor. And my mom was dying. Heightened level of anxiety. Sometimes you can have temporary amnesia. That happened to Agatha Christie when her husband was cheating on her. Like, that's a whole other story. But that inspired my next novel.

And I was walking down the street with James E., my little one, in a papoose, you know, a Bjorn. And I just dropped my seven-year-old off for a play date. And then suddenly I didn't know where I was. Like I didn't recognize the street. I mean, this is just Manhattan beach. It's just cute little beach houses. And you walk to the little stores and appear, but I suddenly didn't know where I was. I got dizzy and I fell. And luckily I didn't fall on top of the baby. I fell to the side. It took like maybe 30 seconds before I came through and I got up and then I started researching amnesia and I found all these cases and there were a lot of them were women. And it triggered me, you know, it's almost like those soap operas where someone always

has amnesia, but when you have like heightened, heightened, heightened level of anxiety and you don't allow yourself to feel and you're caring for everyone else, it just can. That was when I started my blog. It put me on a path where suddenly, like when I was monitoring this like intranet for Dr. Drew's Life Changers show, it was all this male bashing. He's a bastard. He's a this, he's a that.

And look what he said to him. And then these women were, I noticed we're getting together and drinking a lot of wine. And when you drink a lot of wine, your little kids are going to hear what you're saying and they need to love their dads. No matter what happened between you, they need that love, especially boys. They need that love because they think their father is their mirror and they need to feel that this person has some goodness in them.

And rarely is someone that like evil sociopath in this world, we're all shades of gray. And, and that's something that my current book is about. What is love? Is love what you do to someone else? Can you still really love that person and yet you treated them wrong? Because the way we treat others is really about what we're carrying in ourselves, the pain we have within ourselves. If somebody hurts you, it's not that you're not worthy and it's not something you did. And in relationships, it's rarely about the sex not being good. You know, all these people that think, you know, something was happening there. It has to do with the pain of that other person. And so I've come to like completely forgive my

ex-husband. He went through a lot in his childhood. He had lost his father, who he was very close to. And he had this sense of how much time do I have left on this earth? And he was panicking and he was working in a very young company back when MySpace was something. Wanting to feel free and young and this fear of like, well, I'm going to die young too, like my dad. And I think that had a lot to do with it. And I think he loves his boys dearly. And so I've just let it go. And you know, if all of that did not happen, I don't think I would have been on my path to creative writing and yoga. Isn't that interesting? Because I was putting his career first and I wanted to earn money, the full-time

editing job. And then of course I had this perfectionist thing with my older son in London. I don't think that I would be on this path. Yeah. Not that I'm trying to dismiss what he did, but it's like, I'm very sensitive to saying all things happen for a reason. And there are no accidents, even though in my personal world, that's been my experience, because I do know people who have lost children and people who've had children die from cancer or, you know, someone they loved, you know, their partner die while they have children to take care of during COVID. So I'm very sensitive about saying certain things, but if we can find our strength in this and embrace the people that

we're supposed to be around that are going to help us through this period. What does this mean for me? And how can I grow from it? And how can I be a better human? How can I be a better mother? What do I have to say? What can I help others with? And what is my best path to say it creatively?

Like these things are the miracles. And when we step into the miracles, I think the universe takes 10 steps forward and helps us with all the synchronicities you know all the different people that come onto our path that we relate to and that help us or you know like you hear about these people like you know mothers against drunk driving right started because of an experience it was and you know you're in 12 steps so you might know Melody Beattie, who is like this famous, famous author, who is brilliant for people who are codependent and letting go, and she lost a son, and when she describes her experience of writing that book, she went into a basement and just wrote

for like two days straight, and she's helped many people, so I feel like we have choices to look at our hardships. We have to deal with it and grieve, but then what can we do? How do we move forward in a light way? And so, you know, I know it triggers you, but you're strong. And I sense that in you, you know, you're very strong and you're on this path and maybe you wouldn't be on this path. I don't know. Yeah.

There's a couple of things that stuck out to me that you talked about. And that is, you know, instead of sitting around and man bashing or bashing the situation and drinking wine and sitting around, I mean, all you're doing is giving it more power when you're doing that. Absolutely. I love how you mentioned just concentrating on the solution and not the problem. And I've said that a million times. And then that forgiveness piece, because I've been through something similar and it's very traumatic. People don't understand it.

It literally is like PTSD. And there's a lot of support out there. If anyone has ever been through something like that, I really liked a fair recovery. His name is Samuel. He has an amazing YouTube page and it's interesting. It's about him and his wife and what they went through in their marriage and they have infidelity retreats all around the world and they are amazing. Yeah. They're awesome. I went to one in Austin and it was just really helpful. So reaching out for support and I love what you said. It's not about you. It's nothing

you did wrong. It's not that you weren't putting out enough or not looking hot enough. And it's also you're not enough. Like I love the Soham meditation. I am. I do that often in my classes and in Shavasana. And I'll just say like a whisper from the universe, what comes in is what you already are. And I want you to bring it in and we go through it. I am enough. And I think it's so important because it can take years. Like I was telling a friend just the other day that I'm just now at a place where I feel like I can let someone in at a partnership level. And that's like, you know, 11 years later, you have these trigger responses of not trusting. And I think that attracts people who aren't trusting. So we have to be mindful of that. Right? Like, and so I'm just now at a space where it's like, oh, okay,

you know, I've let it go. And now I know I'm bringing in people who are kind and it's a relief. Yeah. It sounds like writing has been a gift to you your entire life. What is writing done for Laura's soul? Because it sounds like it's a huge part of your purpose. I'll tell you one other thing about me is that I did not talk to strangers, anyone outside of my immediate family until I was 11 years old. And after having that second meningitis scare. And I think it was just this insane shyness and bringing so much in and writing is my way of finding clarity.

And also it gives me this fun ability to interview people. And I have these experiences that I love. Like I have an article coming out next month about glamping and I know it sounds silly, but it was like, I want to go up to Big Sur and I want to hear the whales. And I want to glamp with my 19 year old because we're really close. You know, isn't that cool? Like a 19 year old wants to hang with his mom. And, you know, we drove up and we had this amazing glamping experience and I got to write

about it. And, and of course, when I'm there, the family does yoga and they have a garden, like, and I'm big in gardening, you know, and it's like you meet all these people that you can connect with. There's the fun side of writing and reporting where I get to interview amazing experts. And then my creative writing, I'm just now getting back into a rhythm because when you have, as you know, when you have littles, there is enough time in the day to squeeze out an hour of writing. But when you're really exhausted and your kid's not sleeping and you're, you're spending every weekend at a soccer tournament, you know, it's not, you know, so there's a reason why, like I was one of my friends like said to me, like, you should have had 10 books written by now. And I'm like, yeah, whatever. You're not, yeah. If you only know, like, yeah. So it's like, there's only so much that I can do with creative writing, but once I slip in, it is like dropping in. But I will tell you this, that it's all about the story for me.

And then the craft comes later. And so this is something that I work on. Like I'm doing another yoga and writer's retreat in Maui. Yay. But what I have learned is that people are so worried about what other people think. They're worried about pleasing. And I don't know about you, but something happened after like the rug was pulled out from under me and I landed on my ass and I'm taking care of two kids. And I lost a lot of friends because you know who your friends are when you're down. Right. And I just stopped giving a rat's ass about what people really thought of me.

I mean, I still care a little bit, but really it's more like with my yogis, am I helping them? Am I connecting with them? Like, it's just a different thing. And so there's freedom in that. Because if you're worried all the time about your book being perfect, well, I've got news for you. It's not going to be, or if you're worried about your journal or your blog, or you know what I mean? It's like, everybody makes spelling errors. Is that the story? No. Like I want to create characters that are so powerful. Anne Lamont said this in one of her books, bird by bird, who I adore her.

And, and it's a very spiritual thing too too with her. Like what she was saying is like, you want to create a character that is so compelling, you would follow that person to the trash dump. You don't even really care. You love that person so much. You're like, ah, this is my new best friend, right? And then the story is so compelling. And so for me, that's, you just, I just do the brain dump. That would be if anyone anyone wants advice which I know you didn't ask that but for me the freedom comes when I just vomit and I just keep writing because first drafts are always shit they're just always shit and if I'm gonna worry about the tenses changing or the spelling like I cross over into paranormal I cross over into paranormal. I cross over into women's lit. I cross over into a little bit of mystery. I cross over a little bit into, I mean, we have sex scenes that are vivid. People can't categorize me. And if I worry about that, I won't keep writing. And so what I like to do on these retreats is give people permission to not be perfect and to write like they're talking to their best friend, how they would describe the story and then just keep getting it out. And then you go back and incrementally edit and you keep

editing and you keep editing and then you get the perfection going. And so doing that makes it fun. When I'm in the brain dump, I'm not in my head, but you know, now I'm in my head a little bit because we're, you know, promoting between thoughts of you right now. And so I've had to re-edit some chapters and it's currently being edited by an editing team at Simon & Schuster and they found a bunch of spelling errors. And then I sort of got in my head again. And then I come back to the breathing and that's where the meditation and breathing and yoga helps me just like, let it go. It helps me go on a journey. And then I try to let the characters carry me through, like let them speak to me. It can be fun and not always torturous.

Do you think, are these characters completely made up? Are they guides? Are they people presented through past life regressions or dreams? Or like, do you feel like they're ancestors or all the above? That's a good question. I love that question. Okay. So what's funny is that I had beta readers for Between Thoughts of You, and that was kind of fun. And what was interesting is that two of my beta readers, one was my sister and one was one of my best friends. They were convinced that Lulu was me. And what was funny, Lulu is my main character. Between Thoughts of You's main character is half Japanese, Hawaiian, half German. She's a hospice nurse. Her husband cheats on her with her best friend three months after their baby dies. And she has nothing to live for. And so she takes a job in Tuscany,

taking care of a millionaire who wants to die in his Tuscan villa. He's a New York millionaire. But anyway, so, you know, you go back and forth between their stories. What was funny is that I was just cracking up because I'm nothing like Lulu. Like, I would like to be her. She is so strong and really, like, confident, super confident. If someone talks to her, like Polly, the old man that she's taking care of, her patient's

son falls in love with her and he's a total New York clay boy. And she just sees right through him. I mean, she even thinks things like, you know, he's trying to play me or he'll ask her lots of questions because she was poor. She grew up on a farm in Hawaii with her great aunt, who was a who was a healer. And, you know, a lot of people didn't, couldn't even pay for the healing. They would drop off a chicken, you know, I mean, she'd never left the island before. And this, this like playboy millionaire from New York, he had traveled the world and done drugs and Ibiza. And, you know, he's asking her what she'd

done on her bucket list. She didn't have a bucket list. She took care of her great aunt, took care of her husband that she knew since she was three, like helping him with his career. She worked as a nurse. You know, she was like, he doesn't even know how to live for other people. Like she's just looking at him and through her smile, she doesn't say anything. She's like, I don't owe you anything. Do you know what I mean? I don't know if you've ever, it's like, I can slip up and still make excuses for myself. Like, you know, you're in program, like, like no is a full sentence. Like we have to set our boundaries and respect ourselves. She was born knowing that, which is interesting.

So when you talk about her, it sounds like she is a person. Like, it doesn't sound like someone that you were, you're not saying, like, I was trying to portray her as this. I mean, like, you are downright, like, no, she is like this. Like, I know her. And she does, she is like this. Like I know her and she does. Yeah. So yeah, I love her. It sounds like you've like channeled this character. I love her. Like, I just wish I could be her. And I wanted to create a really innocent person because I needed,

like you always have to have a sympathetic protagonist. You just do. Right. And I wanted someone that people would champion and want to keep reading because it's like, you know, you just, and so I wanted a really, really innocent person who went through infidelity because I felt like it just, it added more sense of compassion in the reader. And, you know, the Japanese culture and the Hawaiian culture, I mean, I'm enamored by both. Like, I think I was a geisha in another life, honestly. And I'm really enamored by both. And I just, I wanted someone who, you know, met her husband at three and they had been

best friends and high school sweethearts. And she married him. That was her first kiss, her first everything. And you only hear about that in previous generations. Like, my mom was like that. I have that. So, okay, you'll relate to Lulu. So, you know, Lulu's with Akane and she

thinks he's her everything. And she's finding out once she's in Tuscany, she has that distance and she's working every day with this old man. Like the old man stories triggers her own because he left a woman after World War II. He had promised to marry her. She was the daughter of a Japanese general. He was madly in love with her and he promised to marry her and then he never went back for her so wait which book is this Between Thoughts of You that's coming out in January so I'm gonna have to get that book I'll send it to you and so for me it was like you were asking if I was her or if I channel her I don't really know I wanted to create this innocent character. And the more I got into her character, the more she spoke to me. So Uriel's Mask is based on a real story. That's just what inspired it. My parents picked a farm in North Carolina to move

to. They were in Boston. My dad did some studying up at Cambridge for three years, and then they came back. They moved into this house that butted up on a former slave farm the day I was born, May 27th. And what's interesting, when my mom, we had to send, she got early onset Alzheimer's, so we had to put her into a facility. But the day we sold the house, or rather, I'm sorry, I have it wrong. The day the next family moved into the house was on my birthday, May 27th. When I was a reporter in the North Carolina mountains, I read about this, this woman who she was in her like late eighties, maybe early nineties. And she was the daughter of a freed slave. And she would sit by the river in Asheville, North Carolina, and she would feel

spirits come into her eyelids and she'd feel their pain more than anything. And so she would create masks that would represent them because she wanted them to be seen and to know that they weren't bad because it was mostly shame. These slaves felt shame for what, how people treated them. And what happened is that someone from the Whitney Museum of New York, a curator, went to Asheville and bought up all of this woman's masks. Some of the masks were sold at auction at Sethady's. The masks looked like slave artwork from Ghana that slaves were making. And how would she know that? So the way it was marketed in New York was this is the closest thing to slave art that we have in America. And so they sold a

top dollar and she was able to put all of her great grandchildren through college because they were stuck in poverty, you know? And so this is a true story then. So Oriol's Mask is a fictionalized version where that is the inspiration, but you know, the story happens many, many years later. There's so many different ways to tell a story, right? Like how do you tell a story? And so the story of Uriel's Mask is through Uriel, this girl who inherits one of these masks and she later sells it and it, and it creates her freedom because she needed freedom from a lot of trauma, childhood abuse, all this stuff. And, and the story gets into a lot of black and white drama in the South.

And, you know, and so it's, it's very little about the mask, but, you know, and, and this woman's story, but that's what created it all. And so there's so many different ways to tell a story and that's something that I love. But what's interesting is that I had this amazing agent. This was like four years ago. And then the book didn't sell because it's a big book and debut authors are told, Hey, if you want to sell to millennials, guess what? They don't read and they need it to be short. And this is too big. Who do you think you are? You're not Pat Conroy. Like your first book needs to be really small. And so had told me though write me a short book I want two main characters and I want each chapter to be like its own short story so you put it down you pick it back up put it down you put

you know it's easy and so that's where Between Thoughts of You came in and so I think Ariel's Mask is really like it's my heart heart. You know, like that book. Okay. I carried it with me. I carried that newspaper clipping from Asheville, North Carolina with me through all these moves to Maryland, to Maine, to London, to Atlanta, to New York. Like I knew I was going to do something with it. And so for me, it's like, I can't wait for it to find a home in the right publishing

house. And I can't wait for that. I'm excited for it. But Between Thoughts of You is all about love. What is love? I think everyone can relate to that, like the person that you can't get out of your head, no matter where you travel, wherever you go, there you are. And you're still thinking about that person. How do you get over grief? And Lulu's husband did love her. It wasn't even about her when he cheated on her. And it's like grappling with that is one of the hardest things we can ever grapple with on this planet.

That book is compelling and I, and I do love it, but it's smaller and it's bite-sized and easier to read. Whereas Ariel's Mass took me a long time. It took me a long time. I think, I mean, honestly, I can say I've been working on it for 20 years, but it's the story that is so compelling. I got goosies when I was reading about this old lady who was asked by journalists. It was the Winston-Salem Journal did a cover article for their entertainment section about her mask. And when this guy was asking her, you know, and he was so type A and disconnected and he's like, well, what do you mean? It was just interesting. Like he was asking her how she created the mask. And she was just like, honey, you just feel it. You either feel it or you don't. Like she knew he wouldn't understand. But what she had wrote about was

just seeing different, different visions behind her eyelids. And, and like a face would come in, she would take a deep breath and lean into this tree. She was sitting beside by the river and then a face would go away and then the feelings overwhelmed her. And she said it was always shame and longing and sometimes anger. And, you know, when you think about all these women, there's a space that the French Broad River in Asheville, where a lot of the slaves wash their clothes back then. And I went to the museum, I went to Asheville to really look at pictures and you would see these bamboo baskets, not bamboo, but just wicker or some sort of baskets that were rectangular and long that would go down their spine

and they would carry the laundry down there and they'd do the linens. And where I was raised was on a former tobacco farm and it still had slave quarters and a big tobacco barn that I used to go in and play in when I was little. And I would sit, you know, by pine trees, like during the horse trails. And I would imagine what it was like 100, 200 years ago. When I was reading about her leaning against the tree, it's beautiful. It says she moved her spine until it felt a soft place to settle the right side of her neck and arm throbbed. I can't wait to read the whole thing. Honestly, I think it's beautiful. I'm waiting to find a home for it because it's the story is so close to me, you know? Yeah, I understand. It sounds like it's your baby. It's one of your babies. It's one of my babies. I can't wait to read that book. I'm so excited. I will send you. Yes. Well, thank you

for sharing your story. And on Sense of Soul soul we do this thing called break that shit down it's called btsd and now it's time for break that shit down something that's been on my heart for years when we're fearful we shut down we don't look people in the eyes we don't. We don't look people in the eyes. We don't smile. We don't open our heart space. You know, if I'm afraid of what you think of me, I'm not really going to be me. If I'm afraid that I'll fail, I won't try. If I'm afraid I'm going to get sick, I usually do. I usually manifest what I'm afraid of. It's like one of my grandmothers used to say, don't go looking for trouble. Whatever I can do to get out of fear is going to get me closer to a healthy vibration of love because I am going to have my moments of being in fear. Right. That's just normal. And whatever I can do to be more solution oriented.

So whether that's cutting off the news, that doesn't mean I don't care about COVID numbers, but maybe I can't mentally handle that right now. Being more present because the now is all I have, right? That's, and that's going to get me out of my past and that's going to get me out of my future. And for me, it's all about fear. If you've ever been lost and you're trying to find your way and you're getting exhausted, like if you're hiking and you've lost your way and you're trying to find your way and you're getting exhausted, like if you're hiking and you've lost your way and you're trying to find your way, it starts building like a snowball, like this fear and this anxiety. And the minute you give up, that's usually at the point where you're almost

finding the answer, right? It's resistance. You know, fear is like a form of resistance. We're all supposed to break through that, whatever that means, however that works for you. For me, it's breath work, it's yoga, it's meditation and writing and whatever works for you or anyone that's listening. If you're super afraid of something, maybe just stop and pause and ask why without judgment, you know, and push through. But that's, that's me breaking my shit down today. Great job. Love it. Well, it has been such a pleasure. So Laura, can you also tell our listeners where they can find your book? It'll be on Amazon and Barnes and Noble called Between Thoughts of You. Laura K. Rowe is my pen name.

And so you can go to my website as well, laurakrowe.com because you can order directly from me too. Thanks so much for being with us, Laura. You're lovely. You are too. Both of you. I loved this. I feel like we're supposed to be friends. Yeah. Thank you so much.

Thanks for being with us today. We hope you will come back next week. If you like what you hear, don't forget to rate, like, and subscribe. Thank you. We rise to lift you up. Thanks for listening.