Episode 48: Lauren Chava Rose
Lauren Chava Rose: Once I made the decision to leave my family, I spent the next six months really planning that out.
Jessica Fowler: Welcome back to What Your Therapist Is Reading. I'm your host, Jessica Fowler. On today's episode, we are speaking with Lauren Chava Rose about her book, The Heart Word, How I Lost It All and Found Myself. Lauren is a writer, poet, and psychotherapist with over a decade of experience in the field of trauma informed care. Her writing has been featured in The Elephant Journal, Body Politic, and Medium. In addition to her work as a writer, Lauren is the founder and lead creative at Jagged Path, where she provides therapeutic consultation to fellow writers. Lauren also works directly with survivors of trauma in her clinical practice, LCR Therapy. Although we do not necessarily discuss in detail on the podcast today, I will give a trigger warning as the book does explore Lauren's own trauma she's experienced.
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Welcome Lauren.
Lauren Chava Rose: Thank you. It's so nice to be here.
Jessica Fowler: I am excited to have you on and talk about this book, but as we kind of discussed earlier, I like to start the podcast with a question. Um, what is the memory of how reading has impacted you?
Lauren Chava Rose: Yeah, I love this question so much, and I'm just really looking forward to starting with this. Um, I really think that I've always been a really avid reader, and I'm sure a lot of people that end up writing a book have a kind of a similar story. But I really found myself in books when I was a kid, and books like Matilda, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe were really favorites of mine, uh, books I read multiple times as a kid, and I really think that It helped me feel like I belonged somewhere to especially read a book like Matilda and feel like I had a lot in common with her and see the relationships that she had with her teachers and maybe kind of a different relationship that she had at home. And I could relate to things like that. And so, it was really helpful for me as a kid that didn't necessarily feel like I belonged with my family to read books and see myself in characters.
Jessica Fowler: So, it's so interesting that you said that, cause as soon as you said Matilda, I was like, oh, that makes so much sense after reading this book. Like I can, I can understand that. And especially as a little girl experiencing those things and that dynamic. And we'll talk about, we'll let our listeners know what we're talking about in a second, but, I can totally see that.
Lauren Chava Rose: Yeah. And it's really interesting too. I was remembering, you know, the first time I read the lion, the witch and the wardrobe and just all of the Narnia books. And I walked into my closet kind of looking for like a button to push, to go into a portal. And there was like a part of my closet that could have had one of those. And I remember thinking, oh my gosh, I might be able to go to Narnia. And I just think that things like that are so special for kids to dream and use their imaginations and especially kids like me that grew up in trauma to be able to have an escape like that was a really positive memory of mine.
Jessica Fowler: Yeah. It's, it's a good way to help cope and understand. Absolutely. So, knowing that and our readers get our listeners getting a little insight to what we're about to talk about. What is your hope that how your book is going to impact the readers?
Lauren Chava Rose: Yeah. So,I really hope that anyone who picks up my book really finds themselves in this story. And I think that memoir is really special because you're reading someone else's truth, and I really think that that allows the reader to kind of immediately look for a deeper truth in themselves in a way that other genres maybe don't do from the output as much. And so, I really hope that, you know, this is a book for someone who is looking for a sense of belonging, maybe has never really felt like they belonged anywhere, whether it's their family, their community, their society. For all of those people that felt like outcasts in one way or another, I really hope that they feel like they can find themselves in this story.
Jessica Fowler: And so, share with our listeners a little bit about what happens.
Lauren Chava Rose: So, this book opens with me, estranging myself from my parents. And that kind of happens right at the very beginning of this story. And interestingly enough. Lauren, the main character thought that was the end of the story. Like it had been such a long process, which I get into in the book, in the, in the form of a lot of flashbacks, sort of showing the reader what led to that time and what led to the estrangement. But I really believed that was the end. And it was actually the beginning of what really ended up being a hero's journey of sorts of just uncovering and releasing so many things that were not me, intergenerational trauma, social conditioning, all these ways that I had seen myself that weren't actually at all who I am in my core. And so, this is really a book about discovering who I really am. And that really fascinating, grueling process of releasing all the things you were told to believe about yourself.
Jessica Fowler: Yeah. Doing something. Right. Like I see that when you say you started, right, you hear I have a strange from my family and then that's like kind of the end, but it's really the healing journey that happened and all that you kind of discovered about yourself and you know, the, how you said the intergenerational trauma that was happening and what you did about how to heal from that. I will say, I want to say just because it's a mental health podcast to give a trigger warning because abuse is discussed. Um.
Lauren Chava Rose: Yeah.
Jessica Fowler: In the book. So, I want to give that warning, but I told you when we were kind of chatting, um, the one thing that I really liked about this was giving a different perspective to what healing can look like. And so you talk about going to your therapist and what that is like in the healing through that, but also more of traditional ways within your culture, uh, that you, you know, engaged in to heal. And I really appreciated that about this book. So, it doesn't always have to be going to a therapist, although I will always support people going to therapy, but there's other healing rituals and things that you can do. I was wondering if you could share a little bit about that.
Lauren Chava Rose: Yeah, that's really one of the cruxes of this book that I really hope people come away, understanding that healing is multifaceted. There are lots of different kinds of healers out there. And in this book, I visit two shamans, an energy healer. And I go through a really beautiful ritual in Judaism called a Mikveh in addition to working with my therapist, which sort of feels like a through line through the book. And I really feel like all of those practitioners played a role. And I end up referring to them as my team of crones, because they were all around the same age, sort of all older women. And for somebody like me, that was really special because I also had a very special relationship with my grandmother. And so I think there was an energy of thinking about them, like my team of healers, and understanding where I was going to go, you know, for energy work and how that was going to play off what I was talking about in therapy and how the Mikveh ritual was ultimately something incredibly transformational where I ended up getting my middle name out of that. And I think that all of these things came together to help me find myself.
Jessica Fowler: They all seem to fit so well together, even if there was. Not resistance, but people sort of pointing it out to you and then realizing how they all fit together so nicely.
Lauren Chava Rose: Yeah, I really think that ended up feeling kind of seamless. And I would talk about one form of healing with the other practitioners too. And so that was really special too, that I would talk about the shamanic work in therapy, and I would talk about therapy with the energy healers that I saw and everybody really played off each other beautifully and came together with their own skillset to help me in my journey.
Jessica Fowler: What would you say, I guess, what has it been like for you to open up and share, this is a memoir, about your experiences, a lot that has happened, and being a therapist?
Lauren Chava Rose: Yeah, I think it was actually something I was really terrified about for a long time. And it was, I think, one of the biggest points of resistance to writing the book. And this book though, was just knocking on my door for so long and it was so necessary. And I could feel my soul just yearning to tell this story. Maybe for reasons I wasn't even sure of yet, but I just sort of felt like people needed it. And people needed me to be brave enough to do it, even if it was a little bit, you know, out there to tell your story as a therapist, but the reception has been so powerful. I have had clients of my own read this book and then we incorporate that into our work. I have had people come to therapy because they have found this book, and they have really needed somebody that understands some of the topics that I talk about in the book. And so, I think it's really helped me see that there is a place for therapists to write a memoir. And I do think, I hope that this opens up the door for more people in the field to do that. Because this blank slate idea is really outdated. It's really problematic in lots of ways and I think we're moving away from it in a large sense.
Jessica Fowler: Yeah, I agree. I definitely think we're moving away from it. Um, and it, it is good. It's a good reminder. And for others out there that, you know, therapists are human too, and we have experiences and many times we've had experiences that brought us to the field. You know, that's not everyone, but many times and to just be human and be able to share our own stories.
Lauren Chava Rose: Yeah, absolutely. Because I want people to understand that. Yeah. I've walked the walk and this is a story ultimately about how I saved my own life in lots of different ways. And I do think that it is really important for people to see that healers have probably walked through fire to get there and I am no different.
Jessica Fowler: That was beautifully said.
Lauren Chava Rose: Thank you.
Jessica Fowler: Who would you say should be reading your book or who's this book for?
Lauren Chava Rose: You know, I really think this book is for anybody who is walking around right now and feeling a little lost. And there's a lot of ways to feel lost right now. There's a lot going on in the backdrop of our society that is just sort of crumbling in one respect or another. And that is actually something that I go through is the crumbling of the world that I knew and the process of shedding all the things that aren't me in order to figure out who I really am. And so, I really do think this book is really for anybody who is kind of standing on the precipice of that change, feeling like something's not quite right, maybe they're not exactly sure how to change anything, maybe there's just too much doubt about how much would have to change. This is really a book that offers a blueprint of sorts of just sort of like, just start, start anywhere, start peeling back the things that aren't working and it will lead you to yourself.
Jessica Fowler: Well, and you do that in the book, right? Cause you do, you kind of go back and forth with the timelines, like starting with the estrangement, but the different things that have gone on and even talking about, right? So you sort of knew that this is kind of what you had to do, but it wasn't until one specific thing happened. That you've realized like you really had to do it. And I loved that process because I think that's what we all go through, right? That we, when we want to make a big change or we know that we need to, cause something's unhealthy for us, it's never right that we automatically know we sit in that struggle for a long time. And you sat in that struggle for a really long time.
Lauren Chava Rose: Yeah, I wanted people to see that because I think that happens all the time. And I do think there can be a misconception of. Somebody hears, oh, I, I got out and that's what they see. And if they're really stuck, that's not helpful. And so, I do feel like I wanted everyone to see, yes, I got out, but it. Was a whole decade of struggle plus a lot longer than that, but a real decade of really going back and forth over. Can I make this work? Do I really need to leave? Is there a way to not leave? And just over and over and over again, realizing kind of little by little that there was not a way to stay. And I think that really is change work. You see that in therapy all the time, people sort of mulling over the contemplative, the pre contemplative stages of change, I wanted to show those stages in the book so that people really understood what it takes to actually walk away.
Jessica Fowler: Yeah. We often see the after math and how, you know, what it looks like after, and people don't understand always the struggle of what got them there. Right? All the work that went into it. And that's what you kind of share or what you do share about in the book is the struggle and how you got there. Right. And I love how at the end you sort of say like, it should end right here. But it's not going to end right here. You continue on writing and I'll let the readers read that and why that is and everything. But I loved that little part.
Lauren Chava Rose: Yeah, the line about how I fought with my editor over the ending of the book, which is a true story that really happened.
Jessica Fowler: It was seemed like a great place to end. I was like, oh, okay.
Lauren Chava Rose: Yep. Well, it was so funny too, when I turned in that chapter to my editor and she literally said, okay, so we're just really writing that we had this fight and that's how that's starting. And I just was like, yeah, that's what happened.
Jessica Fowler: It was a nice little insight to the process.
Lauren Chava Rose: Mm hmm. Well, and I still feel like there may be, there are kind of. Two endings to this book, the ending that maybe I wanted and then the way it continues on and how it actually ends, because I also felt like that was important for the last two chapters of the book really are written to the reader in a very different way than the whole book is. And so, that did feel really important to me to do, to make sure that I spoke directly to someone that had just witnessed this whole story, gotten all the way through all of the different things that happened. And I really wanted them to feel like they were sitting in my living room with me, talking about it.
Jessica Fowler: Just hearing your story. Is there any other takeaways you would like your readers to walk away with?
Lauren Chava Rose: I, you know, I think I say this in the book that if you put this book down and you just move on, that's not how that should go. That what I really hope that happens is that people finish this book and take a moment with themselves and really think about the way that it is showing up for them and impacting them because this is ultimately a book about moving through all these stages of change. And I think one of the things that a lot of us do is there can be a real fight between kind of the ego mind and the heart, which I talk a lot about in this book of the mind is always going to fight for you to stay. And your heart might know you're meant for more. And so, when we move along our day really fast and we sort of go from one thing to the next, we don't give our heart space to talk to us. And I think that this book can potentially really speak to someone's heart, which is the whole point of it. And I really want people to finish this book and sit with their own hearts. And just hear what your heart has to say to you.
Jessica Fowler: That makes a lot of sense to me. Well, in general, but, um, I understand that in general, but within the book too, and you, I think you have a line in there. This is the first, I forget how you say it, but basically this is the first time I'm actually listening to my heart and following through.
Lauren Chava Rose: Mm hmm.
Jessica Fowler: What my heart needs, not what my brain tells us. And you're right. Our brain is going to tell us to stay or make excuses or try to understand it.
Lauren Chava Rose: Yeah. I really think when I woke up on Mother's Day and estranged myself, I knew that was my heart saying it's now. And my brain was literally like, how could that possibly be the right day? And how could that possibly be what you're doing? And I think that it was really powerful to just go and lead with a different part of myself. Then I'd ever really heard before and ever really done. And I don't think I realized until I started doing more heart led decision making just how much of my life I had maybe settled for because it was familiar because it was easy because it wouldn't blow my life up in all kinds of ways, the heart doesn't really care how inconvenient something is. It wants the best for you. And if you're not where you're supposed to be, it's going to move you. And I think that kind of internal fight between the mind and the heart, I see a lot of clients struggle with. And I really wanted to write this book so that there would be an example of that, that someone could have.
Jessica Fowler: Yeah, I think it's something we all can struggle with, right? We want something, but we know we're supposed to do this, or there's a reason why we can't do it. Not to say that those aren't valid things, but there, it's true that sometimes people want something, um, and they listen to their heart, right? There can be more room for it. And making that change, even if it's hard.
Lauren Chava Rose: And I want people to know, too, that it's not like I just went gung ho and I just didn't do anything with logic after that point. I do think that in order to satisfy my system internally, I had to combine, kind of, my mind and my heart. And so I, once I made the decision to leave my family, I spent the next six months really planning that out and really trying to figure out what do I need to prepare? How do I get my birth certificate from city hall? How do I work with a financial planner to make sure I'm going to be okay? Let me prepare all my friends to become my family and really making sure that there was going to be a net waiting for me. And so, I do think it has to be both. The mind is saying important things to us that we don't want to bypass. And, we also maybe need to be listening to a deeper part as well.
Jessica Fowler: Yeah, you do. You talk about that a lot in the book, which I also appreciated too, that how you did break. This wasn't impulsive decision. And that's not what we're talking about when we say, listen to our heart. Um, this isn't an impulse where we do something. You know, there's consequences. This has consequences, but they were like you just said, where you thought a lot about them and planned for them. And one of the things that I thought was very beautiful in the book is that family that you created, you had a lot of support. Um, and it was very intentional and it was just beautiful that you had people there for you to help you through such a difficult time.
Lauren Chava Rose: Yeah, I'm really glad that you pointed that out because I really don't think that I could have done this without that support that I knew I was going to have. And it was so important that all of the people that were waiting for me, all of the healers, all of the friends were really in my corner, wanting me to do this, understanding it was necessary and ready to show up as family. And I feel so lucky that they're in my life in such a big way because I, I wasn't born into that.
Jessica Fowler: It was different. Well, thank you so much for coming on today. Where is the best place that our listeners can connect with you?
Lauren Chava Rose: Yeah. So, if somebody wants to Follow me on Instagram. My author Instagram is @LaurenChavaRose. They can also look at my website, which is laurenchavarose.com and that has my story a little bit more about the book. There's links to get the book on that site and also on Instagram and the book is available on Amazon.
Jessica Fowler: Wonderful. Thank you so much.
Lauren Chava Rose: Thank you.
Jessica Fowler: Thank you for listening to this week's episode of What Your Therapist is Reading. Make sure you head on over to the website or social media to find out about the latest giveaway. The information provided in this program is for educational and informational purposes only. And although I'm a social worker licensed in the state of New York, this program is not intended to provide mental health treatment and does not constitute a patient therapist relationship.