Embracing Love's Virtues with author Heather Lyn Davis

This is a video about Embracing Love's Virtues with author Heather Lyn Davis

Host Tanya Roundy interviews author Heather Lynn Davis, a mother of eight (six adopted), about her path from publishing a family oral-heritage story as an “accidental author” to writing children’s books that teach through stories, including Into Justin’s World about her adopted son with autism and four traumatic brain injuries and Jake the Ape Makes a Lot of Mistakes about learning through failure. Heather shares her experience living with the rare genetic disease DIRA and how, after being bedridden and considering stopping life-sustaining medication, she studied the “rabbit effect,” focused for a year on 1 Corinthians 13:4–7 virtues, and saw dramatic drops in inflammation markers along with improved energy and pain levels. This led to her adult book Embracing Love (Cedar Fort, March), and she emphasizes self-compassion, persistence, and God’s love.

00:00 Meet Heather Lynn Davis
00:30 Accidental Author Origin
03:05 Writing for Justin
04:06 Facing a Rare Disease
05:26 Virtues That Heal
09:09 Why Love Lowers Stress
12:05 Favorite Kids Books
14:51 Mistakes and Growth Mindset
19:43 Books That Shaped Her
22:43 Writing for Adults
25:05 Grace While Improving
29:44 Where to Find Her Books
32:05 Final Encouragement

In a world full of uncertainty, how does one cope with unbearable loss and pain? A Christmas tragedy finds Steve and Maria struggling to find hope. With the love and support of family and friends, will they find peace as they walk through the fire of Uncertainty?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Hello everyone, it's Roundy's Rant Sorrison V reviews, and I'm Tanya Roundy, your host. Today I am joined by an excellent woman and author, Heather Lynn Davis. Am I saying that correct? Yep. Okay, perfect. And she has just come out with a great new book, but she's had an incredible journey along the way. And I can't wait to share her story with you guys. So, Heather, will you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you have done and what you are doing?

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Okay. Yeah, so I'm Heatherlyn Davis, and I published my first book in 2016. And at that time, I have eight children. Six of them were adopted, and seven of my children are within eight years of each other. So they're all really close in age and all very different personalities. And so, like no one person parenting style worked for all my kids, right? But one thing that did work was using stories to kind of try to teach things. And that worked for all of them because I wasn't picking on anybody. Nobody felt like they had to be defensive, and we could talk about things in a way that just left everybody feeling open. So I loved doing that. And there was a story that my grandpa told me in when I was nine years old. He was out helping me feed the chickens. And it was a story that has been part of our US heritage since our country was a country, but just part of our oral history. I can sleep when the wind blows, the boy that can sleep when the wind blows. And he told it to me. And so when I had my kids, I wanted to read it to them. And I realized that it's been told a bunch of times, like a couple of times in the general conference. In fact, the church actually now has a whole page, Can You Sleep When the Wind Blows, on their website. That was after my book. I'm just saying I'm not, I didn't like no pledge driving. But nobody had like written it as a book form. And so I did that. So I just wrote it down exactly the way my grandpa told me. And I published it, got a great illustrator, and and about a year later, everybody was talking. Can you sleep when the wind blows? And all this stuff. And when they Googled it, my book came up. And so all of a sudden I have this bestseller. And everybody's like, What's your next book? And I was like, I'm not an author. I just was preserving a story. So I'm an accidental author. That's how I became an author. It was completely an accident. But then, you know, in in 2020, I, you know, everybody's feeling all cooped up. And there were these great conference talks about how being creative is a part of being like God. And I thought, man, my my family is very creative. I come from a very musical family. And I've always said I don't have any talent show talents. And so I started like looking at different things and I realized I really like to write. And so I just started writing these children's books. And and that's just been it's been really good. I wrote a book into Justin's World based on some real things that happened with my son, who has four traumatic brain injuries. Six of my children are adopted, and he's one of them. He has four traumatic brain injuries and autism. And so he really sees the world very differently. And and so the story just kind of shows the sensory sensitivities and things that he experiences, but in a fun book that the kids like, and that's been really cool. I've I go and do a lot of readings in schools and stuff. And every time I go in and read that book, I'll always have a first or second grader raise their hand and say, I'm like Justin, because I'm autistic. And they're like excited. And I never use the word autistic in the book, but they can recognize themselves. And so that's really cool. And so I've had these really good experiences being a self-published children's author, and that's kind of who I was, and that was my whole identity, identity, and I loved it. And then in January of 2004, I have a very rare genetic disease called DIRA, deficiency of interleukin-1 receptor antagonists. Nobody's heard of it. It's I it's I think there's only a hundred of us in the world who have it, and you usually die before 18, and it's very aggressive. And I'm on this really strong medication for it. And so in 2024, I was to the point where I just I was in so much pain. I had no energy, just getting up and walking to the bathroom from the bed was more than I could do. I was bedridden. I it I was just miserable. And I actually got my family together and said, okay, I've decided that I'm gonna go to this little cabin in the woods, spend a weekend, try to see if there's anything the doctors don't know because we had exhausted everything. And if not, I'm gonna get my my affairs in order and stop taking the medication that's keeping me alive and just be done because I can't keep doing this. And I went to this little cabin in the woods, and I started lots of prayers and lots of study and just scouring the internet. And I came across, have you heard of the rabbit effect? Mm-hmm. Okay, so I came across that and started looking at how okay, so being loved really affects your physical health. And I found all these studies that have come after that and found, you know, like being loved has a huge effect on your physical health. And so at first I thought, okay, everybody just needs to start loving me a whole lot more. But then I was listening to this general conference talk by D. Tod Christofferson, and I realized, no, this is not about people loving me more. I need to start really intentionally loving more. And so I went to, you know, the probably the most famous scriptures on love, 1 Corinthians 13, 4 to 7. Love is patient, love is kind. And I there's 12 of those. I took one a month for a year and just really focused on intentionally, really trying to live that virtue, starting with patience, which I hated, wasn't patient, didn't want to be, but I went, you know, patience, then kindness, then gratitude, then meekness, and nothing had helped move my blood work. I had tried all the medications, every single homeopathic thing out there, all the diets, all the exercises, nothing had helped. I was at like 36 and sevens high. So I was like, you're gonna die high. And within four months of doing this, my inflammation markers dropped seven points, which was insane. And my doctors were blabbergasted. And so, okay, I kept doing it, and I had more energy, I wasn't getting sick as often. I was able to recover faster when I did get sick, my pain levels were lower, and so I started doing some research. Like, why is this working? Because it was just something I felt prompted to do. Right. And it turns out there's tons of studies, just so many scientific and medical studies that prove that each of these virtues actually really help us. They really do lower inflammation, they really do lower our cortisol levels, they really do improve your ability to heal. And so, anyway, after a year, my baseline levels are like any other person I'm coming in contact with. When I do flare, I'm instead of being up at 36, I'm up at 16, which is uncomfortable, but I'm not gonna die. Doable, yeah. Yeah, and I just I'm a completely different person. And you know, I still have my disease, I'm not like healed, but my life is so much different. And so, so I was talking to an editor from Cedar Fort, and she said, Okay, let's get a book on this. And so, even though I'd never written anything for adults, I started writing this book because if this can help someone like me with this aggressive disease who is so flawed, you can ask anyone who knows me, they'll tell you, I still am not patient a lot of the time. I still am struggling with all these things. If it can have this kind of benefit for me, it can help anybody. And just the working through this virtues, I felt such a closeness with the savior. I felt so much more connection with him. And so, anyway, so that's my book, Embracing Love just came out with uh Cedar Fort Publishing in March.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

That's so awesome. It's incredible that we know all these things scientifically. They have, like I say, all these articles on what has been preached since the beginning of time to just love, right? And that God is love and all these things and so many things, but that's not the first prescription I give you. Wouldn't that be nice if you walked into the doctor's office and like, well, I prescribe this first Corinthians verse. Uh, let's do love as patient for a month and see how that goes.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Exactly. Well, this nothing to be fair. If my doctor would have said you need to be more patient, I would have been mad because it is a bottle up here when you're dealing with stuff. I'm trying, but they told me forever you've got to avoid stress at all costs, but they never could tell me how. Like, I've got eight kids, one of my sons is profoundly disabled. I have health problems, we live in a very chaotic world. How do you avoid stress? But that's what this did for me was gave me an ability to lower my stress, and it's huge. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

Oh, and so and we've seen these stories, you know, but they're not promoted enough. And so I'm so really glad that you've written this book on it because I think we definitely need more of that. I mean, everyone's so stressed out, everyone's so much more unhealthy lately. But you see, you know, prayer helps people heal faster. I mean, anyone who's more spiritually minded tends to have better recovery rates and all these things. And but that's not where our medical or even we go. Sometimes we're so reliant on the world's answers, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

These mortal bodies when we're spiritual and that's yeah, and I tried so many super expensive and potentially dangerous things that didn't help. I mean, the cool thing about the Lord's way, it's free, there are no negative side effects. Worst case, this is what I told my family because they thought I was crazy when I first started this. Is in the worst case scenario, I end up being a better person and closer to the savior. Like that there's no exactly.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

So it was like that. What's the negative sound downside of any of this?

SPEAKER_00 11:20

There is none. And there are so many things that we all try that have huge potential negative downsides, and we're willing to do that, but it's something really simple, like okay, really try to be more humble, really try to find meekness. That's a lot harder to do than do this crazy diet that you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

It reminds me of uh Moses and Aaron with the serpents, and that is like it was so easy just to look to the source, but they couldn't do something that simple. It's like has to be harder than that. It has to be how could this possibly work when all it takes is that faith. Yeah. And they could see people being handled around them and they still wouldn't do it. Yeah, exactly. Oh my heavens. It's so crazy. The those things I want to go back a little bit, Eric, to your children's books. Okay. I as a mother of six, and as someone who had my was the oldest of nine, and we had like, like you said, every divergent personality from autism to the severe ADHD to the whole gambit in our family. I found my mom did a lot of the same thing. She was telling us stories, she was teaching us. We mean the scriptures were a ton of things, and everyone got if one person had to be on the uh the chart, we all had to do the chart so that we were yeah, we were all and and it worked, right? For all of us to be together on that and stuff like this. Is there one of your books that you wrote? Because you I love some of your titles and stuff. Is there one that stood out to you or that you were like, I have to write this one because it was the thing that helped me the most or helped my kids, or that is there one or two that stand out to you of those children's books?

SPEAKER_00 13:14

So so there's two. Uh the first one is the one that I felt like I had to write, but then I almost didn't write. And that was my story about my son Justin. And I I was so close to not writing that so many times because I wanted to show how hard this sensory was for him, but I didn't want him to look grumpy, I didn't want him to look mean, but I wanted to show that it was tough for him. I wanted to have it go truly from his point of view. But my son has an IQ below 35. He, you know, and so I wanted it not to have very many words because he doesn't use rain reading words, but I wanted to still be fun. Like there were all these things I needed it to be. But then once it was done, I thought, okay, is this just gonna be like an inside joke? Like, is this something that only people who know and love my son will understand? Like, is it even worse? And so then I almost didn't publish it, but then when I did, it's been so cool how many people have been like, I see myself in that. And so that's been really cool. But the coolest part, like, I've had some really cool experiences. I was nominated for the commitment to community award for making my state a more welcoming place for people with disabilities. But the coolest part about the whole scene with that book is my son sleeps with it. It's like his security blanket.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Oh my heaven!

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Loves it, and when he's having a panic attack, if you read him that book, it helps to bring him down.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

And so that's just been like the sweetest. If that was all that happened, like that's like that right there, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

He has that from you, that that love and his so that's been really cool.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

But then the other one that that I just felt kind of really inspired to write was Jake the Ape makes a lot of mistakes. I was gonna listen out to me. I was like, oh my goodness, so do I. Well, and that just especially I think with all of our social media and everything, a lot of my kids, well, and even me, we don't want anyone to know that we ever make mistakes. We want our lives to look totally Pinterest perfect all the time. And if we make a mistake, it's something we want to hide. We want to never do that thing again. But you know, if you do that, you just can't grow. Making mistakes is how we grow, that's how we learn new things. And so I was thinking about this. I was actually going through the church's resilience course, and um, and I just kept thinking about it, and that's where the story just kind of came to me, and I started writing it. And so, so that one means a lot to me because I I think that uh we're just we're too hard on ourselves, you know. When I see my little grandkids when they're learning to walk and they fall down, nobody says, I can't believe you just fell down. You know, but we're like, okay, get back up, you can do it, you can do it. But we kind of lose that as we get older. And we do the okay, you just tried this new thing and you fell down, don't do that again. And so I that's one I've got some quotes from that book in my office that I have right looking in front of me so that I can when I'm having a bad day and I'm trying something new and I'm making a mistake, I can remember, okay, mistakes are not failures. That's how we learn.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

Yeah, I see that all the time with my students and even with myself, uh perfectionism problem right here. Because I do, I want to be perfect the first time doing it, but how can you be perfect the first time doing something you've never done before? Yeah, it's not possible. It's you have to learn and you have to make those mistakes to get to whatever perfect means or mastery. I mean, there's always something to learn, there's always some way to grow. And my students give up so money time, they're just like, oh, I didn't do it right the first time, so I'm not gonna try anymore. Right. Is their very first reaction to things, and I'm like, dude, you're never gonna go anywhere with that.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Yeah, because that's the decision, and I'm trying to figure out where in our process of life it happens because these kids are so eager to try things, and then somewhere along the way, it's just squashed or something, and I don't know when that happens or why, but it's I think it's we we as a society tend to reward outcome instead of effort, and so there's so much reward on outcome that if the outcome isn't immediately good, the effort goes away. And and you know, you look like the major sports people, most of those guys aren't just incredibly athletically gifted, they are hard workers, but we don't tend to talk about that part of their success enough. I think if we did that would really help kids, but yeah, I have we have the whole gamut from profoundly disabled to profoundly gifted in our family, you know, five adopted children, and every single one of them, we have this. Oh, you should do this. I I tried it for a day. I'm not very good at it, I'm not gonna do that. And we don't, there's not enough of the okay, I tried it, I wasn't great at it. I'm gonna keep working and see if I can get good at that.

SPEAKER_01 18:46

And I tell my students that it to my because I direct theater as well. I'm like, guys, I would rather have someone who works hard than someone and trying all the time and doing their best that's not all this, versus someone who has got all this natural whatever talent, but doesn't work at all or doesn't put in the effort. I'm like, I'm gonna put this person because I want the person who's gonna work hard and is wanting to try and grow. And we had uh this last year a young man who we did a growth award for him at the end of the year, a black and everything special for him because over the last two years he struggled. He almost quit several times, but he came back and he kept coming back and he kept trying. And we saw so much over those two these last two years. I'm like, dude, he worked his butt off and he comes back. And to me, that was like so valuable to to reward and to do, and only everyone only I could clone that within there, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:43

Yeah, it's a muscle, right? We gotta just work on it.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

Yeah, truth. So I'm curious that so you've written these books, you've done what did you read growing up, or what do you read now that's it that inspires you as uh as an individual, what you like to read and what you do?

SPEAKER_00 20:03

So my dad was very intelligent and I love to think deeply. And when I was a kid, so like seven to nine, he actually taught high school at the prison in the maximum security prison. And he really took that so seriously. So he was teaching them Greek myths and the classics, and so he'd come home and instead of telling me fairy tales, he would tell me the Greek and Roman myths. He would tell me, you know, he'd read me Tale of Two Cities and you know, just the classics. And so I that I'd love. I have obviously a real love of the classics. So and then I love Dr. Seuss. I know it's so silly, but he was the first children's author that I ever read. And I was probably a teenager when I read him, and I remember thinking, man, he's got this ability to talk about these really complex topics in a way that doesn't just feel like kids can understand, but like they want to read it again and again. What a gift! It's so, so amazing. And so I always really respected that. And so he's had a lot of influence. I am not going to say that my books are Dr. Seuss-esque at all, but he definitely had a lot of influence on me.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

That is incredible. And I still love the Dr. Seuss too. It's right. He takes these complex issues and is able to talk about them in a way that anyone and everyone can understand the roots of it and a solution, usually, too. Yes, exactly. And again, it's usually a simple solution that none of us can think is possible. But the eyes of a child, that but sometimes becoming like a little child is also thinking how easy the solution can be. I guess.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

Yeah, but it's not, it's definitely not easy. People think writing children's books is so easy because it's, you know, 500 to 800 pages. I mean, I mean not pages, words. Yeah. But man, it's it is hard to take a complex topic, get it down to that much, have character development, have the setting, have your background characters that aren't just flat, have all the different things. And then if you add rhyming, it's a tough thing.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

To distill that into it. I mean, I'm always talking about concision, and it's like, but to really be so concise, you can do it all of that in that short amount of time. Yeah, it's incredibly difficult. Yeah. Yeah. Poetry and children's writing. Yeah. The bare minimum of words and stuff that way. So, how was it different then to write this adult book where you could use more words? Could and we're talking about another complex subject, but in a different to a different audience in a different way. What was how was that change for you in trying to write that?

SPEAKER_00 23:08

So at first it was really intimidating. I just I had a real, you know, who wants to listen to me thing, you know. I don't have there's nothing special about me. I don't have any special callings, I don't have any special responsibilities. Like, who wants to listen to me? And then I was praying about it and had this really strong impression. No, I'm looking at this wrong. It's not what makes me special. It's if it works for me, it can work for anybody. Because I'm nobody in particular and it works for me, then that means it can work for everybody. And so, so that kind of changed that around. But I felt a lot of responsibility because I love these books, these nonfiction inspirational books, and I read them and they're so awesome. And just thinking, okay, my book is gonna sit next to those was pretty intimidating. But as I've done it, I've gotten better, and it's been fun. Now that it's written, it's been fun, but yeah, the writing process was I'd say mostly uh intimidating. Oh, my dog wants to say hi. Hello, puppy. Oh my goodness, you're beautiful. Oh she's my little palmski. Oh yeah, so that that was pretty intimidating, and then um for the audio book, and they said, you know, because your book is in first person, it should probably be you that does the audio, and that was a whole other thing, right? Oh my goodness, yeah, yeah. So so yeah, the process was definitely it was a lot more scary, and yeah, yeah, a lot more scary than writing a children's book. I'm writing a second one now, and that feels a little less scary because I've already done it once.

SPEAKER_01 25:06

Because you've done it once now, and yeah, yeah, that's awesome. I'm so excited for you on those things. What message or theme stands out to you the most that you'd like to share with us that you think we all need to hear the most today?

SPEAKER_00 25:25

I think that I was talking to my husband about some of these virtues, and he was just kind of joking that that you know I wasn't being very patient, and I said, I know, I'm working on it. I thought I'd really try to be patient, I'd be perfectly patient, but that's not what happens. But I'm getting better and I'm working on it. And he says, you know, that's really interesting because I kind of tend to think that if I work on something and I'm not getting better, then I should just stop trying. But what I think happens when you're really trying to do something good, I think the spirit opens our eyes to see where we're not necessarily doing that thing. You know, if we're trying to be patient, where we're being impatient, not so we can feel badly about ourselves, but so we can learn, so we can see, so we can adjust our behavior, so we can understand where we might have to try a little bit harder, so we can grow. I think we tend to be too hard on ourselves. Again, that goes back to that, you know, perfectionist maybe, but so I wish, I hope everybody, if I could say one thing, it would be if you're trying to do something, really trying to do a good thing, and you just feel like you keep making the same mistakes, you keep not getting it right. That's not that you're failing. That means that your eyes are being opened enough that you're recognizing where you need to grow in that thing, and that's part of the growth process.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

It's the savior's way, right? Yeah, we do, and we learn, we grow, we repent, we do it, repeat.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

Repeat, yeah, yeah. And he's willing to be right there with us and to help us. And he's not disappointed. Oh, Heather said she was gonna be patient, and it's been two weeks, and here she is still being impatient. That is not how that works. I really believe that he's so happy that we're trying to be more like him and so, so willing to be right there and hold our hand and help us.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

I think that is such an important message. I I've often felt like, oh man, I scripture study really good for a while, then I stop, and then it's like, oh man, I was gonna, and you do, you get into that, like, well, how can he keep keep forgiving me so many times? And he's just so happy we're trying.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

Yeah, exactly. Well, and you think about with your kids, right? If they're trying to get better at cleaning their room and they do well for a couple days and then they forget, do we want them to give up and forget, or do we want them to keep trying? Of course. Let's try it again, let's just start over. But yeah, you're good. Keep trying. If they do it and they don't get their room all the way clean, but they're working on it harder. Are we gonna say, Okay, you should stop? No, of course not.

SPEAKER_01 28:27

So, yeah, we give so much grace to everyone else that way, and then we forget to give it to ourselves. And yeah, gotta remember, he's giving it to us. We should probably do it to ourselves as well. Yes, love goes to ourselves as well. We'll do that, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:46

Yeah, and I think that was what made the biggest difference in my health was I was so mean to myself, so negative to myself. I think the most healing thing was learning to show those virtues of charity inwardly. That was so healing.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

I think our bodies feel that when we're negative and stuff, I think our bodies can sense it. Oh, they do, they do.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

There's there's nine pages of research studies in my book to show that we do, it has a huge impact.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

And just simply changing, well, not simply, but changing and working on that. So that that, yeah, it's gotta definitely have an impact on our it may not cure us, like you said, but it's going to heal. Yeah. So incredible. Gotta remember that. I needed to hear this. Thank you. Everyone's sometimes I get on these and I'm like, if the one person I'm like, I'm healing it, right? I'm hearing it, I'm feeling it. This is for me today, it looks like. And I hope someone else is well too. But yeah. So where can we find your stuff, your works, where can we follow you on this journey, especially coming up on the next books that are coming out? Where can we be on your on your wagon with you?

SPEAKER_00 30:08

So I'm on socials, Heather's Helpful Stories. And then you can buy my children's books, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Walmart.com, Target, you know, anywhere you would buy books. My children, I'm my children, my adult book, Embracing Love, is available at Deseret Book. It's available, obviously, Amazon and Barnes and Noble, just wherever you can find good books. If you're local in Idaho, my books are at the Idaho History Museum and the Idaho State Capitol building. And Embracing Love is at Bowl of Heaven. So go get a yummy bowl and a good book. Yeah. Lunch and a book. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

Very cool. Well, any last words? Anything we didn't cover that you really just like you have to say or want to reiterate?

SPEAKER_00 31:03

This you're doing better than you think you are. You're so, so loved. And we need to remember that you know, God loves us, the savior loves us, they know us and love us individually. And they're not surprised when we make mistakes. They're ready to help us stand back up.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

So true. And I love that. Thank you so much for joining me, Heather. Everyone, go follow Heather, get her new book, or get her children's books for your family, or both, and support her and other local authors. And thank you so much for being with us. And we'll see you guys next time on Roundy's Reds Race Energy. Thank you again, Heather, so much.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

Thank you.