Special re-release: In support of authors who have lost their homes in the tragic LA fires, we will be resharing their podcast episodes.

Laura Nicole Diamond joins to discuss her 2015 bestselling novel, SHELTER US, and how it changed her life. Laura tells Zibby about jumping from working as a civil rights lawyer to being a novelist, as well as what she did to hold herself to the commitment of writing it. Laura also shares how including a Guatemalan character in the novel led her family to foster a young Guatemalan refugee seeking asylum, what she learned from her experience volunteering with the houseless community in LA, and why she’s currently working on a memoir.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome. Laura, thanks so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Shelter Us. 

Laura: Thank you so much for having me. 

Zibby: It's my pleasure. Would you mind telling listeners what this beautiful novel is about? 

Laura: Sure. Well, in, in the big sense, I'd say it is about.

longing for meaning and connection. It is about survival and resilience and love and hope and all those things that, that, you know, sort of grabbed the human heart. And, and that's certainly what I think was trying to come out of me. And the story is about two women, Sarah and Josie. And Sarah, she is a Former lawyers, now she's a suburban stay at home mom, and she is grappling with the grief and, and looking for meaning in, in, in those ways that I described.

And Josie is a young homeless mother, sort of down on her luck, unexpectedly, and the two of them have An encounter, a fender bender in downtown Los Angeles and Sarah becomes fixated on this young mother and her toddler and the stories about their burgeoning relationship and, and how they challenge each other and help each other find some kind of healing, I think.

Zibby: Well, I feel like there was so much healing to be done for Sarah. I mean, the novel begins with her, with the loss of her infant daughter, which, which she wrote in such I mean, it was real, like, my whole mood changed when I read it, right? I mean, it's like, very immersive and poignant and you just like, ugh, the guilt that she feels because she finally got her two kids to go to sleep in their own room and then that her daughter doesn't make it through the night and then the grief counseling and, oh my gosh, and then her, all of her grief from losing her mother so young.

I mean, this is a lot. It's a lot on her shoulders. 

Laura: And I kind of wanted to front load it so that we know at the beginning what we're dealing with as she's moving, you know, trying to, trying to cope with being present for the, the two children that she has and for herself and for her husband and just how, how overwhelming it all feels.

And then this. This young woman comes in and just, it like pulls her out of herself in some way. You know, part of it is I thought I, I, when I started writing it, what I knew was I had these two women I wanted to write about. I did not know how they were going to meet. I, when I started writing it, Sarah had not suffered that loss.

Like that came up as I was writing because I was kind of trying to figure out what would make somebody. do this? Why is she so, you know, willing to go back, you know, search for this young woman she saw? What, what's causing this fixation? And, and what, it's kind of one of the questions that comes up. I think that's just in a bigger sense in the world, like what does make people sometimes act out of character or to, to breach their safe bubble, their comfort, their small world, to do something really, that seems extraordinary, but to her seemed so compelling. It was like the only thing she could do. So yeah, so it, it does, it does start with that, with that heaviness, but it was, I think what it came out of was just sort of this, this parenting fear.

I never had that particular loss. I was very lucky. I have, I have two sons and they definitely were a lot of the inspiration for Oliver and Izzy in the book and I stole some, some direct quotes from them. But, but that, that fear that, that sort of, that you don't get warned about when, before you become a parent, at least I didn't.

And I, I hope it's universal because it hit me, but I mean, I don't hope it's universal, but I, I believe it is this, once that, that switch is flipped and, and you're taking care of another life. You see danger everywhere, you know, and there's the, there's the whole maternal safety industrial complex that's selling you all the things to keep your toilet seat closed and your electric sockets plugged so that you are always aware that, you know, there's danger.

Everywhere and you've got to keep this, this precious thing safe. So that part of the story came out of those feelings as a mother that I think that I think all mothers feel, which is just, you know, oh, my God, I, my heart is now walking out in the world outside of me and I cannot control.

Zibby: It's complicated too because as a mother, you actually are in charge of making sure they are okay. I mean, it's not like, I feel like I am, but really I'm not, but for a while they are completely dependent on you and it is your job to make sure they're okay. And obviously things happen beyond your control, like this book and, you know, SIDS and all sorts of things that you can't control.

But. It's, it's like, you know, you do actually have to do it. You like you, that is the mantle you have to, and so how do you recover from that and how do you transition to like, oh no, they're okay by themselves. Because I dunno when that happens, I don't think, yeah, I was gonna say, it's not loosening up quite yet for me.

Laura: no, my, my boys are now 21 and 17 and that means they drive and you know, the 21-year-old lives in another. State and college and yeah, they're, they're different kind of coping mechanisms that most of the time we use to not think about the worst things, but that also kind of helps inform, you know, the joy and the appreciation for the day.

Like this day is a gift because we do not know what's going to happen. So I'm going to hug you. Despite your tantruming at me or whatever it might be. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. So, Laura, how did you get into writing? Tell me your life story. Where did you grow up? Like, where, how did we get here? Yeah. The brief version.

The brief version, 

Laura: yeah. I, I never envisioned being a novelist or a professional writer. I was almost always for, you know, since, since my childhood, a journal keeper, a diary keeper. And I remember my first Hello Kitty diary that my mom got me. It was, you know, the fact that it was Hello Kitty was the main draw, but then writing in it just, you know, it carried me through, you know, through high school and trauma and all the bad poems about the, you know, heartbreak.

And, you know, even I went to law school because I was really interested in being, like, a public rights public interest, civil rights lawyer. And it carried me through that too. Keeping a journal kept my humanity going while I was reading about contracts and torts. And, you know, it allowed me to keep in touch with that.

I don't know, just to, to observe. In fact, there was a scene in Shelter Us that came from just a small moment that I remember writing about it. I was in Berkeley and I was walking on the sidewalk and behind this old couple that was holding hands as they went down the curb ever so tenderly and gently to make sure you know they they made it.

And I wrote about that in my journal. And I think writing a journal, it's like doing scales in a way. It keeps you noticing things. It keeps you alive to details. I, when my first son was about two and a half, I was practicing law, had gone part time and even that was not working for me. So I decided. I decided after a lot of, took a long time to let go of it, but I decided, you know what?

I'm going to, I'm going to press pause on this law stuff. I just want to be home with him. I'm so surprised by this. I didn't expect that, but I want to be home. And the moment I made that decision, it was like, I have more time to write. And It was still just journal and that became sort of personal narrative and I took a class right before my second son was born and at when he was napping.

Finally, I, I self published an anthology about, you know, motherhood and, and one day when I was writing one of those sort of, you know, personal story, I started making things up and It was, I remember it was like about a day at the beach or some moment we'd had, but I started writing about this woman in the third person and she started doing things that I hadn't done.

And for a little while I followed that and soon enough I decided, you know what, I'm writing a novel because I want to explore some of these things that I have not been through. You know, my life's kind of dull. And, and I want to be able to, you know, to say some other things and explore this grief and explore this connection with these two characters.

And, and, and I announced to everybody that I knew I'm writing a novel so that I would hold myself to it and not stop because I knew I'd be too embarrassed if I, if I never finished it. And it took a long time. My announcement of the year of the novel. It was 2008 and it was published in 2015. 

Zibby: So that's not bad.

Laura: No, it is what it is. You know, you just, you keep going until, until you're, until it's ready and I felt that it was ready. So that was, that was, that was my, that's my story. That's my writing journey. 

Zibby: And what, and then how did you get involved? So you also do the Palisades Book Club or for the library.

What other. 

Laura: Right. I live in a town in Los Angeles called Pacific Palisades and it is where I grew up. I did not expect to end up here. I always tell people, I did leave. I did not just stay put for, for the whole time. 

Zibby: That's how I feel about New York. I'm like, I did escape for a while, but you know, here I am.

Laura: Right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you want to make sure you've seen the world a little bit. Yeah. So to my surprise, I ended up living back in my hometown, which is a wonderful place. It has its. You know, it has its ups and downs, its pros and cons, which I'm writing about in a memoir now. No way. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Wait, tell me about the memoir.

Laura: This is very, this is weird. Life is very strange. And I, I, so the memoir is almost a case of life imitating art because after I wrote this book where Sarah, who is, she's her, her mother is Guatemalan. Her father is. Jewish. Her grandmother came from Guatemala, uh, you know, as an 18 year old pregnant, and she's the grandmother character I love.

Anyway, so, and then Sarah spends all this emotional energy trying to decide how to help this young woman who needs a place to live and what should she do? Should she bring her in her home? No, that's crazy. That would never work. All of that after it was contracted to be published, but before it came out, I got an email from my mother that was forwarded like twice. Fom a friend of a friend. And it said the initial writer was an immigration lawyer for a pro bono, like nonprofit in Los Angeles. And she said, I have a client, a teenage girl from Guatemala. She is, you know, this wonderful person. She's, she's seeking asylum because, and she had to leave home. Her parents sent her to the United States because of horrible things that happened to her back in Guatemala, and what she really needs is a place to live. And I'm just, I've never done this before, the email said, but she's, you know, she's special. And we're just wondering if maybe there's someone out there who has time in their life now to foster her for a year or so. And I was reading this email thinking, 

Zibby: That's crazy.

Laura: What? 

Zibby: Crazy. 

Laura: And I, I showed it to my husband, like without saying a word, because I just wanted him to have the, you know, uh, a reaction devoid of my influence. And we ended up, you know, we were not looking to do that. We were not looking to be foster parents to a traumatized teenager from Guatemala, but I could not get this idea out of my head that what if I were born on in that country and not here? And what if I was that mom and I had to send my son across the world? All I could think about was god, maybe just please let there be some mother over there who will find him and say i've got him like I could see the silhouette of a woman like And so we couldn't delete it We just couldn't like forward it and delete it, but we were, we didn't know what to do.

So we replied to the, an original attorney sending it. Maybe, maybe we can help. And two months later, Maria moved into our house. Oh my gosh. And yeah, so she, you know, it was one of those things, like I learned about the power of maybe, you know, you take one step and. You take another and then there you are and so, so the memoir really explores her journey and our journey with her as a family and it explores some of, you know, some of the same themes and frankly, as the novel with survival and resilience and, and love.

And, you know, it just, I was, I wanted to write about her because I'm just such. She ended up living with us for five and a half years until she was ready to, you know, spread her wings . She has not been able to go back to Guatemala to see them and they are not able to come here. So for her, it's been almost eight years.

Since she's in a, she got asylum, she became a legal permanent resident, which is a green card holder, and she is now eligible to become a citizen, and she is just waiting in line. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. 

Laura: Yeah. So once she's a citizen, she will be able to safely go back with and return. That's the risk is to say, you know, if you go back to the country that you say was not safe for you, then that could jeopardize your status.

So she's got, you know, a lot of longing there too, but she, you know, she changed all of our lives. In fact, I went back to law, part time doing asylum law, which I'd never done before. And, you know, it's, it's amazing what she, you know, what she brought to us. So there you go. Now you don't have to read the book.

But you should because it's really great. Yeah. You know, I wanted to do, I wanted to both with Shelter Us and with, with this memoir, I think this instinct, this inclination you have, like when you know somebody so special and they're portrayed in media as numbers or statistics, you feel like maybe storytelling is a way to humanize that, that statistic.

Zibby: It is. Yes. I mean, I, I feel like people just, that's how we process information is through story, not through data and numbers and percentages and all of that. 

Laura: Right. Let me tell you about this person I know. And, and that's where Josie came from too. Also the, um, the character in Shelter Us, who is the homeless mother.

I had been volunteering with a, a homelessness organization here in LA that uh, focused exclusively on homeless families. And so, and, and by that, that ultimately that really ended up meaning young mothers and children, girls who'd grown up in foster care, didn't have the support network so that once they were out, they didn't, you know, have a couch to land on if things didn't go well, you know, if they didn't get that first job right after high school or couldn't figure it out.

But this, um, by the time I met them, they were moving, they were already formerly homeless. They were. They were moving into apartments. They, they were having job training and counseling with this organization. And so we spent time just, you know, getting to know them and helping them move in. And they, you know, one of the young women, especially, you know, I was 10 years older than her, but we had kids the same age and we were talking about like, what do you do when you're 14 month old, you know, throws the sippy cup on the floor and like, yeah, that's really hard.

And I just thought. These women are so resilient, so resourceful, and they're not really the story of homelessness. And I, I think people should know about, you know, this is another, another side of homelessness to people, just people. 

Zibby: Yeah, it's true. There was this really powerful memoir that I read by a man who had formerly been homeless in Canada.

It's like the number one bestseller in Canada or something. Well, anyway, in our interview, and now I'm It'll come to me. My brain is working so slowly today. This is terrible. Brandon, maybe. Anyway, he said that the number one thing with homeless people is you should always ask them their names because they feel so invisible.

And it's just a reminder to them that they are human and they are seen. And right after I did this, this is not that long ago, maybe two, three, four months, I think. Anyway, when I, I was giving money to a homeless person on my way, you know, in New York, as one does, just like, Stopping. Anyway, so I gave it to this man on the street and then I stopped and I was like, what's your name?

And he told me his name and he like looked me in the eye and I was like, okay. And he was like, thanks. Anyway, I was just like, okay, how did that make you feel? It made me feel great. I mean, I felt terrible for him, you know, and I'm like, okay, bye. Now I'm going to go out to dinner. You know, it's terrible. But.

You know,. 

Laura: There's a connection that you're acknowledging his humanity. 

Zibby: Yeah. Yeah. And it's so easy to just keep walking. 

Laura: Yeah. And, and, you know, nobody's perfect. Nobody knows exactly what to do. And that's sort of, you know, Sarah's always wondering, what should I do? It's the right thing. And she has moments where she, you know, passes homeless people and feels, you know, so it's complicated.

And yeah, I think that's, that's important too, to sort of, to, to acknowledge that there's. These are, these are big, messy human issues and it's okay to not be perfect and to just try and, you know, try again. 

Zibby: I feel like even in Brentwood, there's all those, there's like a homeless encampment now that's set up by some descending, you know, that whole area, you know, park or something.

Laura: The tragedy is that is right outside the veterans administration building and those are veterans. 

Zibby: Oh, is that what's going on? Okay. 

Laura: Yes, and yeah, that's terrible. Don't get us started on talking about homelessness in LA. We will not have enough time 

Zibby: We'll take this up another time. 

Laura: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll solve that.

We'll solve that in the next hour It is it is a really intractable problem the you know, when we when I was writing Shelter us I had Sarah see, meet Josie downtown in there weren't really people in Pacific Palisades at that time who were homeless on the street that you would see, um, and that's changed now.

If I wrote it now, I would have Sarah walk down the block and have a conversation with Ruby in front of the library or, you know, but they're, they're one of the great things in this. I have to tell it in here. There's a, the Pacific Palisades task force on homelessness, which I've not really been a part of.

They're just. Tremendous volunteers and, and they've piloted and modeled a project where they've rather than trying to like, let's clear everybody off. Let's get them on a bus. They raised money to hire outreach workers from a Santa Monica agency. To engage people and find out, you know, what do you need, except more than 70 people have been housed.

Zibby: Oh, good. 

Laura: Yeah, it's, it's really fantastic. It's very compassionate. And I think that, you know, people come to it for different reasons. Some people are a little bit. Coming from the, you know, I don't want to see this and I want my kids to see this. Others are coming from, you know, this is a human tragedy.

Let's, you know, let's be, you know, the uber compassionate, but everybody's, but, but the end. So, you know, the, the end goal is the same, you know? Yeah. 

Zibby: What advice would you give to an aspiring author? 

Laura: Well, I give myself this advice all the time and it is. Things take the time they take and it is, you know, I started talking, Oh my, I felt like my novel is taking so long and now I feel like with my, my memoir, oh, you know, it's taking so long, like compared to what, you know, it's so easy.

That's another bit of advice might be. You know, try not to compare yourself to other people. I, I do it all the time. Like, how does that person write a novel a year? Right. You know, you just have to accept that your pace is your pace. And I have this Mary Oliver poem that, which is where that came from, you know, that it's, it's taped to my wall.

And, you know, just, it's, I think it's called, don't worry. Things take the time they take, don't worry. And it's a very brief poem, but it goes on to just be like, you know. Cut yourself a break. Yep. Yeah. So that, that would be my advice. Just, if you're a writer, you're a writer. You always come back to it, you're a writer.

That was actually advice my, my, my friend gave me. He's a, I, I think, I still think of her, she's a real writer. You know, I published a novel, but. You, the imposter syndrome is strong, but she, we were talking about, like, what do you think makes, makes you a writer? And she said, you know, I think even if you didn't write for a long time, it's just some, if you, you feel compelled to come back to it, you know, even if you're still that person just writing in the journal, because it satisfies your soul or fills you in some way.

It's how you engage with the world and process your emotions and, and, and maybe put it right back out to the world, whether that's on, you know, a large stage or not at all, you're a writer, if that's how you, that's how you engage with, with, with your spirit and, and others. 

Zibby: I love that. I learned that you can't, things take the time they take.

And I was. Pumping in a, like, trailer bathroom at a wedding for my twins, who are now almost 15. And I was in there and everybody was pounding on the door, like, at this wedding. And I was like, I can't rush 10 minutes. I have to do 10 minutes or I'm not gonna be able to survive. And there was, like, there's no amount of stress.

I couldn't speed up the time. There's like nothing. And I came to this whole new place of acceptance. Like, okay, time, it is what it is. 

Laura: Like, I'm so glad you did. Because I can just. I can just as easily picture the opposite being like, I'm trying, you know, and then it all slowed down and stuff. 

Zibby: Well, I did say at first that was me.

And then that's when I came to this. Yeah. I was like, no, I, there's nothing I can do anyway. First of many. 

Laura: I think that with parenting, especially of the young ones, when you're, when it's so intense and writing have a lot in common and, and, and one of those things is that lesson of just, you're just in the moment when you're doing it, you know, there, it may procrastinate a lot to get to the page, but once you're on it, boy, time can just fall away. And, and, you know, the same with following a toddler around to make sure they don't, you know, fall in a, in a abyss or something, you know, you're just there. And those are some pretty powerful moments and love them both. 

Zibby: Yes. Laura, thank you. This was so nice. And thank you for the immersion in your book and the feelings that evoked in me and the sense of place and all of it. You're a really good writer. It was really a joy to read. So,.. 

Laura: Well, thank you so much. I really enjoyed talking to you and, um, thank you for having me. 

Zibby: No problem. All right. Hope to see you soon. Bye bye. 

Laura: Bye.