We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Laura Engel. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Laura below.
Laura, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
A miracle happened in my life in 2016.
In 1967 I was seventeen years old when I became pregnant. With no support from the baby’s father or my family, I was sent to a home for unwed mothers in New Orleans, where I lived and worked until the birth of my first-born son. I was pressured into surrendering my baby to a closed adoption right after his birth and told to never search for him.
For almost fifty years I secretly mourned the loss of that baby, and although I never forgot him, I couldn’t talk about that time. I had been warned over and over again not to. I was told to go home and forget he had ever happened. A young woman couldn’t do anything much worse in the 1960’s than to get pregnant without a ring on her finger. The social stigma of excruciating shame colored my life for years.
No matter how good my life was, with a wonderful marriage and three sons I raised, along with two bonus children-no matter how many successes I had in my career, I continued to feel the shame and heart break of leaving my secret son. Still, I was changed by what had happened. I became tougher, braver, and more determined to prove to myself and to others that I would make a good life for me and my loved ones despite the heavy burden I carried within myself.
When life was rocky and times were hard during the five decades that followed, I would push on. After all, I had already experienced one of life’s most tragic and shattering events, I had given up my child and could never know what happened to him, where he was, was he healthy, was he loved? If I had survived that, I could survive anything.
In 2016 my secret son discovered me through Ancestry DNA. All those years ago I had been a desperate pregnant teenage girl with no options. Now I was a grandmother almost seventy years old, but that girl inside of me had lived on and was overjoyed my son had found me. Meeting my 49-year-old son was a dream come true, a prayer finally answered, and something that changed me as much as leaving him had changed me decades before.
After our incredible and loving reunion, I changed again. Almost immediately I went from being afraid of speaking the truth about my experience and the trauma and shame of having a child and surrendering him for adoption to wanting to tell the world. I set out to do something I had never done. I wrote a memoir, “You’ll Forget This Ever Happened- secrets, shame, and adoption in the 1960s” which was published in 2022, when I was seventy-three years old. This memoir as difficult as it was to write went on to change my life again.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I was born and raised on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and moved to San Diego, California over 55 years ago. I live with my husband, Gene, and our beloved golden retriever, Layla Louise and am the proud mother of 5 adult children and 10 adored grandchildren.
In 2016, after retiring from a 35-year corporate career in Title Insurance Sales, I joined San Diego Writers Ink and San Diego Memoir Writers Association thinking now that I was retired, I might write a Family History type book for my children. Then after my son and I reunited in 2017 I began writing up a storm about the darkest secret of my life. I had thought I would take that story to my grave.
That writing resulted in me publishing in four anthologies and several magazines, as well as writing an award-winning memoir, “You’ll Forget This Ever Happened- secrets, shame, and adoption in the 1960’s.” Scenes from my memoir won places on the stage in San Diego’s Memoir Showcase. My book became a best seller on Amazon, and to my delight it won awards at the Internation Book Awards and National Indie Awards.
One of my biggest surprises was that my book was embraced by the adoptee community. I had not foreseen the large audience of adoptees who would read my book. I was soon asked to discuss my story as a guest for many national as well as international podcast interviews and national adoption and birth mother conferences and meetings. A huge thrill was being selected as one of San Diego’s Local Author of the Month.
The success of my book has been humbling but one of the most rewarding things about writing my truth has been readers reaching out to tell me how much my book has meant to them and helped them. I am honored it has increased readers’ knowledge of women’s lives in the 1960s and the Baby Scoop Era.
One of my favorite classes to teach is “It’s Not Too Late to Write Your Story.” I had a life-long dream to write a book, but never dreamed it would be about the most difficult time in my life or the darkest secret of my life.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
First off, I believe that our most difficult times. when we are lost, when we think life will never get easier, and we find ourselves at rock bottom, usually lead us toward a path that will become one of the highlights of our lives. I have lived this in my life.
Next, I watch for synchronicities in my everyday life. I tell writers or would be writers to make a timeline of your life. As you go through this exercise you will notice amazing details. For instance, if “this” had not happened, my life would not have had “this” happened. If you look for these small and what seems like insignificant moments that change the direction of your day, and often the direction of your life, you will began noticing how many there are.
Also, I am a firm believer in manifesting. I know that when I put pen to paper and write my intentions, no matter how trivial, they will happen. Maybe not for a while, maybe not the way I expect them to, but they will happen.
I have lived many years and have learned my attitude, my gratitude, and my optimism have gotten me through so many of life’s challenges and helped to make me a courageous and strong woman.
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
Oh I love books! I have been a lover of words all my life- spoken and written.
I have so many favorite books that have changed me over the years that it would be impossible to list them all.
In 2016 before I began to write my book, I read Julia Cameron’s books. The Artist’s Way and The Vein of Gold were excellent for a person like me who wondered what the next chapter of my life would be now that I had retired.
I know The Artist’s Way changed the direction of my life. In that book one of the assignments is to write 10 things you would do if there were absolutely no obstacles. I put pen to paper and wrote “Find Jamie” at the top of the list. Jamie was the crib name of the secret son who I had never spoke about or written about. I was surprised, but what happened was from that day forward I began to write about that son in my private journal and how I would give anything to find him. I wrote his name for months and slowly began to speak about him. Within 6 months my son found me!
It was miraculous!
I know by opening up myself to the universe and asking for what I most wanted, that wish was granted.
Books can change your life.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.lauralengel.com
- Instagram: @storytellerlaura
- Facebook: @lauralengelauthor and @lauralbaliusengel
