I Could Still Let Her Comfort Me Then
PODCAST SHOW NOTES
Episode Title:
I Could Still Let Her Comfort Me Then: A Deleted Scene from the Cutting Room Floor
Episode Description:
It begins the way many childhood summers do — open roads, swimming holes, and the particular freedom of being ten years old enjoying a beautiful afternoon. Then one afternoon changes everything.
In this second installment of her deleted scenes series, acclaimed author and writing teacher Laura Davis shares another scene cut from her award-winning 2021 memoir, The Burning Light of Two Stars. What Laura witnesses that afternoon, and what happens in its aftermath, distills the entire emotional landscape of her memoir into a single, devastating closing line. As with the first deleted scene in this series, Laura also reflects on the craft decision behind the cut — and what writers can learn from letting go of the scenes they love most.
What Laura Covers in This Episode:
The second in Laura's series of deleted scenes from The Burning Light of Two Stars, shared while she's on vacation
A vivid portrait of a cross-country family road trip the summer Laura turned ten
How an ordinary summer afternoon can become the kind of memory that never leaves you
An unexpected moment that pulls Laura into something far beyond the edges of childhood
The aftermath — and what one small detail quietly reveals about a lifelong relationship
How a single closing line can carry decades of a relationship's weight
The craft lesson: how a scene can be exquisitely written, emotionally true, and still not belong in the final book
Why deleted scenes are not wasted writing
Episode Highlights:
A childhood summer that held everything. Laura conjures a lost American world: open roads, chain-smoking parents, an imaginary territorial line bisecting the back seat, swimming holes in every state. The ten-year-old Laura is fully alive on the page — curious, scrappy, and completely free.
An ordinary afternoon. After a week on the road, the family makes camp and the children run toward the water. It is exactly the kind of afternoon that summer is made for. Then something stops everything.
Laura is pulled into the center of it. A stranger takes charge. Laura is just old enough, just tall enough, to be included. What follows is one of the most quietly suspenseful passages in the scene — a moment in which a ten-year-old finds herself somewhere no child expects to be.
The moment she has to let go. There is a point at which Laura can no longer keep up. She has to step back. It is a small, heartbreaking detail — and it puts the reader directly inside her ten-year-old body.
What she sees next. Laura moves to a different vantage point and finds something she cannot look away from. She renders what she witnesses without flinching, and neither can the reader.
Her mother appears. In the moment after, Laura's mother is suddenly behind her. What she does and what she says is fierce, raw, and completely human. For one suspended moment, mother and daughter are exactly what each other needs.
The line that reframes everything. The scene closes with seven words that quietly detonate: I could still let her comfort me then. In that single sentence, Laura telegraphs everything the memoir is about — and everything that is yet to come.
The craft lesson: even perfect scenes get cut. This scene was sacrificed for the same reason as the father scene in the previous episode — the memoir's momentum required it. But as Laura shows, deleted scenes have their own life, and they illuminate what the finished book could only gesture toward.
About Host Laura Davis:
Laura Davis is an acclaimed author, writing teacher, and host of The Writer's Journey podcast. With more than 35 years of experience helping writers find and tell their most authentic stories, she is one of the most trusted and respected voices in the writing world today. Laura is the author of seven books, including her award-winning memoir The Burning Light of Two Stars (BookLife Prize Winner, 2021) and the landmark co-authored classic The Courage to Heal.
She teaches weekly writing classes on Zoom, leads international writing retreats including the Creative Camino pilgrimage and Flourishing as We Age, and hosts the Midweek Pause for Peace series. Laura's teaching is grounded in a belief that courageous, vulnerable storytelling has the power to heal both the writer and the reader.
Key Takeaways from This Episode:
Specificity is what makes memoir unforgettable. The sensory details that feel almost too small to include are often the ones that lodge in a reader's body and stay there. Writers should resist the urge to summarize and instead trust the particular, concrete image.
One sentence can carry decades. A closing line doesn't need to explain — it needs to land. The best memoir endings open outward rather than close down, leaving the reader holding something they didn't expect to be carrying.
Witnessing is its own kind of wound. Memoir can and should make room for the things we saw, not just the things that happened directly to us. What we carry as witnesses is as formative as what we experienced firsthand.
A mother's comfort is complicated terrain. The emotional power of this scene comes not just from what happens in the moment, but from the tense Laura uses to describe it. Past tense in memoir is never neutral — it always implies what came after.
Episode Call-to-Action:
If this episode moved you, Laura invites you to ask: What did you witness as a child that you've never written about? What scene sits just outside the frame of your own story, waiting to be told? Share your reflections in the comments below.
If you haven't yet read The Burning Light of Two Stars — the memoir these deleted scenes were written for — now is the time. Readers describe it as impossible to put down, a book that sends them straight into thinking about their own mothers, their own estrangements, their own unfinished reckonings. You can purchase the print edition and audiobook here: 👉 lauradavis.net/the-burning-light-of-two-stars [https://lauradavis.net/the-burning-light-of-two-stars/]
If you're a writer looking for the courage to write the scene that still lives in your body, Laura's weekly writing classes are where that work happens. Visit lauradavis.net [http://lauradavis.net] to learn more and join the community.
And if this episode resonated, please click the ❤️, leave a comment, or share it with someone who needs it. Every click helps new readers and listeners find The Writer's Journey.
Deleted Scenes in This Series:
The Summer I Dropped Acid with My Father: https://laurasaridavis.substack.com/p/5d90f2b6-2d68-4d9f-a120-cad131f6e3f2 [https://laurasaridavis.substack.com/p/5d90f2b6-2d68-4d9f-a120-cad131f6e3f2]
I Could Still Let Her Comfort Me Then: https://laurasaridavis.substack.com/p/d72ed72f-70c3-4489-8def-1cf5ad6d5a86 [https://laurasaridavis.substack.com/p/d72ed72f-70c3-4489-8def-1cf5ad6d5a86]
They Made Me Part of History: https://laurasaridavis.substack.com/p/de5c307d-9165-43e9-a7d2-50b7cf957362 [https://laurasaridavis.substack.com/p/de5c307d-9165-43e9-a7d2-50b7cf957362]
Connect with Laura Davis:
Substack: laurasaridavis.substack.com [http://laurasaridavis.substack.com] — essays, poems, nature photos, and writing craft
Website: lauradavis.net [http://lauradavis.net] — classes, retreats, books, and workshops
Weekly Classes: Online Zoom writing classes, ongoing enrollment
Writing Retreats: Including Flourishing as We Age and the Creative Camino Pilgrimage
Podcast Series: Midweek Pause for Peace — also available on Substack
The Writer's Journey with Laura Davis is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support her work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. You'll receive regular posts like these, as well as beautifully curated poems and nature photos, essays on life and the craft of writing, and more.
You can subscribe here: https://laurasaridavis.substack.com/ [https://laurasaridavis.substack.com/]
Learn about Laura's writing classes, books, workshops, and international retreats at: https://lauradavis.net/ [https://lauradavis.net/]
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit laurasaridavis.substack.com/subscribe [https://laurasaridavis.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]
