Today we’d like to introduce you to Laura Smith Biswas.
Hi Laura, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My story has been a journey of loss, grief and trauma that led me to the work I do with others and ultimately a heart cracked wide open to love. I was immediately impacted as a small girl by sexual trauma that has had long-term repercussions. In my teen years my father, whom I really adored, died from a brain tumor over a painful 9 month process of decline before our eyes. This grief was compounded by the death of not just one but two of my brothers who died in their early 20’s. The first, occurred when the roommate of my brother, Spencer, called and said he hadn’t come home after going hiking. It turned into an agonizing search in the Rocky Mountains deep into the night. He was found dead from a fatal fall off a cliff. I was devastated. Later, my baby brother, Drew, moved in with me and my family while doing his grad school applications. A couple months into his stay, he went out for a run and died blocks from my house from sudden heart failure. I had been led by my daughter at that moment to go down the street and we came upon him. I tried desperately to resuscitate him to no avail. It seemed that my life was filled with grief, so I plodded along burying it in my daily activities. I was fortunate to be able to attend Yale to complete my MBA and start a career and family, but still I carried this heaviness with me daily and as a young mother, discovered I had thyroid cancer. I felt it was a physical impact that stemmed from my trauma, alerting me for the need to heal.
I could wait no longer, and dove into my healing journey. I was exposed to meditation, breathwork, somatic experiencing, and shamanism, among other modalities, and I started on the road to emotional and physical recovery. I completed a master’s degree in Spiritual Psychology which added to a metamorphosis that led me to leave a rigid religion, biotech career and eventually even my 25 year marriage.
If I had known in advance, it might have scared me to know all that change was ahead. Yet it allowed me to fully recreate my life in a way that matched my needs and desires authentically, one step at a time. Each of these challenges pointed out to me how valuable it was to be true to myself and to live a life anchored in my own desires and not based on anyone else’s expectations.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
One of the more complex changes that I had to address to create the life I wanted, was to navigate divorce. I wanted to divorce in as loving way as possible and cultivate a way to still be a family. It was a very difficult choice since I had three children and I knew my decision required everyone to go through their own healing and transition.
However, I held a deep belief that it was possible, and I worked with each person in my family to share this and explore how we could meet each other in that context. Gradually, the shift began to occur and to everyone’s credit, we navigated it relatively peacefully. My former husband and I were able to divorce without any legal struggle and continue to work together (in a company we had co-founded) and create a different family life. While a process like this is inherently messy, life often calls us to recreate parts of our lives, and we often don’t often know what it is possible. Our ability to identify our needs and listen to our guidance within, is central to help us experience what may seem impossible.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about The Love Mandala?
In my work at The Love Mandala, I create books, courses and workshops that educate others in the skills of creating intimacy, connection and love. While our culture focuses on the experience of falling in love, in the longer term, it is our ability to learn to create love in a variety of situations and relationships that helps us establish a life filled with love. It is a tangible skillset we can learn.
It requires knowing ourselves well, learning to communicate our needs and establishing loving patterns of interaction that work. Some of us have never seen healthy relationships or only know how to self-sacrifice for love which leaves us often in a place of loss and pain.
In my bestselling book, The Cosmology of Love: 70+ Ways to Experience Greater Love, I offer a process to help readers understand their specific needs and desires. We each truly have a unique expression in how we want to be met in love. Once we have a clear grasp of that, the exploration of sharing those needs and how they interplay with the needs of those around us comes next.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
In my work, I help others deepen in their ability to give and receive more love. I find my ability to bring a combination of curiosity and presence to this work is most essential. In some ways, it is the ability to listen between the words for what is needing attention that’s been unattended until now. Often it’s the parts of us that we don’t like or resist looking at that point us to a powerful awareness or change. We are certainly not directly taught the language of love or how to navigate the daily interplay between our needs and the needs of those around us.
It can be helpful to discuss our specific experiences in relationships, as they reflect how love is or isn’t showing up for us. This allows us to discover small changes and shifts in our inner state of being that can alter our outward experience of love.
Whether it is our relationship with ourselves, family, children or a lover, there is so much to explore to create greater intimacy and satisfaction in life. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is the importance of human connection.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.TheLoveMandala.com
- Instagram: The_Love_Mandala
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thelovemandala
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChLEp6esVZYWe54Zu1O-Pjw
- Other: https://www.waysoflovingquiz.com/
Image Credits:
Emily Elizabeth Photography @eelizabeth_photos
