Real People Real Talk
Relevant conversations that take you from Surviving to Thriving. Our goal is to encourage and empower you to answer God's call on your life and to be all that He has called you to be. This podcast is all about Faith, Relationships, and Mental Health. We keep it real, practical, & Christ-centered, tune in and be inspired! Host Paul Calcote New episodes every other week.
Real People Real Talk
Behind the Waterline: Healing Through Storytelling
Trauma often silences us in ways we don't realize until years later. For author Kionna Walker LeMalle, Hurricane Katrina not only destroyed her home but also erased her memories, including her 30th birthday. In this conversation about her debut novel Behind the Waterline, Kionna reflects on how writing the story became an unexpected path to healing.
The book’s protagonist—a grandmother struggling with her past—refused to tell her own story, forcing Kionna to shift the narrative to her grandson. This mirrored Kionna’s own battle with unaddressed trauma. As she relived the storm through her characters, Kionna regained lost memories, revealing that confronting pain is key to healing.
Kionna also explores intergenerational trauma, the dangers of silence, and the power of storytelling. Her novel allows readers to both reflect on their own experiences and connect with others' lives. Whether processing personal trauma or understanding generational impacts, Kionna’s message is clear: healing comes through confronting and remembering our pain. Pre-order Behind the Waterline at writerteacherfriend.com.
Free audio. Post production by Alphoniccom.
Speaker 2:Welcome and thanks for tuning in to Real People, real Talk Relevant conversations that take you from surviving to thriving. This is the podcast that goes there. My name is Paul Calcoat and I'm your host. Now let's talk. Hello, thriver, and welcome to Real People, real Talk, the podcast ministry that equips you to thrive spiritually, relationally and mentally. Thank you so much for tuning in.
Speaker 2:This episode is for those that may be weathering the storms of life right now. Or maybe you have experience or are experiencing trauma, or maybe you just need some encouragement. Keep listening. Today I have a guest that has an awesome story that is indeed worth sharing. Keanu Walker-Lamale is an executive writer by day, a fiction writer by night and occasional poet. She is married to Dr Avery Lamalle, the pastor of the church at Jersey Village, who is a dear friend of mine and anointed man of God. Kiana's imagination is fueled by her childhood in the inner city of New Orleans and more than 20 years of teaching in the public schools, and her great-grandmother's experience of a lifespan of 108 years and the endless adventures of motherhood and, most recently, grandmotherhood as well. Lamelle's published writing includes inspirational academic and literary work. Her debut novel, behind the Waterline, which is what we're discussing today is the winner of the Lee Smith Novel Prize. Welcome to the show Kiana.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. I'm so glad to be here with you today.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm super excited about this conversation. We're going to jump right in. Who is this book for Behind the Waterline? Talk to us.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, I'm going to answer it this way. You know, I'm a curriculum person. I've been in curriculum all of my adult life and there's a concept in curriculum called windows and mirrors, and when we're talking about that, we're talking about how you look out of a window to see others' lives that you may never actually connect with and you look into a mirror to see your own own. So this phrase started in about the late 80s to understand what's important in curriculum, but it's become a really big thing in the world of literacy and teaching kids and I think it's a really big part of how we read literature in general, right?
Speaker 1:So I say all of that to say we've got a lot of mirrors in this book and therefore a lot of room for windows as well. So we've got a young narrator, 14-year-old kid, who's feeling ostracized by his peers. He's lost his mom, His grandmother, is eccentric and is paranoid. So we've got these characters with these kinds of complexities. We've got a pastor who's in love with a woman who doesn't seem to love him back, An entire neighborhood of kids that are featured in the book that have lost everything in Hurricane Katrina. Of course we have, you know, there's teachers that are featured that have lost everything in the storm as well, storm as well. And then we have because it covers more than one time period we've got the grandmother's history and her struggles throughout the height of the civil rights movement right.
Speaker 1:So that's lots of room for lots of mirrors, but also lots of windows. So I don't think there's not a one answer for me. It's really a, it's a work of literary fiction. It's not necessarily YA, it's not plot driven, it's very much character driven. So it's really a book for anyone who loves a good story, but also who would benefit from looking into any of those mirrors, but who would benefit as well to looking in, you know, looking out of the window into some other lives that are unlike their own.
Speaker 2:I love that concept windows and mirrors. I try my best to be a bookworm from time to time. I haven't heard of that philosophy, that concept, and I like that. And you touched on it just a tad, but without giving it all away, of course, because we want our dear listeners to go and buy the book. But what is Behind the Waterline all about? Just tell us a little bit more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, it's really about one generation's efforts to hide the past and how that directly impacts and distorts the future. But it's also a story about how, you know, one generation fails to acknowledge the work of the generation before, right? So it's a cross-generational piece. Again, a reason why it's difficult to say that it's just YA or it's just women's fiction or it's just adult fiction, because it is an intergenerational story. And so we are experiencing, along with the characters, we're experiencing the trauma that the young character goes through because his grandmother is refusing to tell him her truth, right? So there is a danger in not passing on our stories. But there's also a failure of the younger generation to even think that the older generation has a story worth sharing. So it's really, you know, a book that's navigating that kind of intergenerational complexity.
Speaker 2:And Kiana. I'm curious to know like why did you make the decision to have the grandson voice instead of the grandmother's in the story, as it's told?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So here's the thing. Writer's secret, that wasn't my plan. Oh, ok, thing. Writer's secret, that wasn't my plan when I started writing this.
Speaker 1:Initially, I started writing it as a love story and it was the grandmother's story, but she was experiencing a lot of trauma. In the very first version of the book, the grandson was on his way off to college. He actually ends up being a lot younger in the final version and what happened was, you know, when we create characters as fiction writers, if we are writing with integrity, we can't make the characters do anything that they would not in fact do. Characters do anything that they would not in fact do. Okay, so because my character was struggling with her trauma and refusing to tell her story, I couldn't make her tell her story Right.
Speaker 1:So it was like being at war with the character I had created. I was trying to tell her story, but she kept going quiet on me, she wouldn't say anything. She would only say a little bit, then she would shut down. Quiet on me, she wouldn't say anything, she would only say a little bit, then she would shut down. And so it ended up being that initially, I tried to write it from two points of view.
Speaker 1:I tried to alternate between her point of view and the grandson's point of view, and he just became more and more vocal as she became more and more silent. So there was a point, probably at nearly a hundred pages in to the very first draft of the book that I reached the, that I had to kind of surrender that she's not going to tell this story. He's, he's the only narrator here, and so it meant going back and taking outs a lot and rewriting a lot at that point. But it was necessary because you know, to really be true to who the character was, I had to allow her to be silent. She wasn't ready to talk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love this so much. And, kiana, I want to take a quick, quick tangent. But one of the goals of real people would talk. I want to encourage people knowledge, you know, thrive spiritually, thrive mentally and thrive relationally, but I would encourage people to answer god's call on their lives and to walk in purpose. Purpose and, in your own words, like what inspired you to become like an author and a writer. What did the inspiration look like?
Speaker 1:You know what it's less inspiration, I think, and more compulsion. It's like, you know, I didn't have a choice. I would be. You know, I've always, I've always, I've always been a writer. I haven't always been a published writer, right? I don't remember a time in my life that I was not a writer. In fact, when Hurricane Katrina hit and you know I'm from New Orleans and you know Hurricane Katrina is part of this story in Behind the Waterline as well. The novel is framed around Hurricane Katrina I lost a closet full of writing because I was a, you know, I was what I would call a closet writer.
Speaker 1:I was writing all the time you can. You, you have to do what God has created you to do and called you to do. So I was always writing, but I wasn't surrendering to actually share that writing or go public with it. So I would write all the time and then I just had like binders of writing that you know, that was shelved. So I don't, you know, there isn't a singular moment when I realized, oh, I should be writing.
Speaker 1:But I do think that part of what Hurricane Katrina did was it brought me to the point of I should be publishing, right, I should be getting my writing out there, that it has a bigger purpose than you know just writing. You know, for myself, for my own healing, for my own processes or just for my, you know, the sake of like getting the story out that's on my mind so that I can focus on something else, because sometimes it's like I can't. I can't move forward with something else until I pin what needs to be pinned. So you know, it's not, it's not a singular inspiration. I really would say it's more of a calling.
Speaker 2:I ask you that because, once again, I really want to encourage the listeners to answer God's call on their life. I'm reminded of a quote by Les Brownway. He said the graveyard is the richest place on earth, because it's there where you'll find the hopes and the dreams that were never fulfilled, books that were never written, songs that were never sung, inventions that was never shared and cures that were never discovered, all because someone was too afraid to take the first step, to keep the problem and you know, or determined to carry out the dream.
Speaker 1:I mean that's good, and you said that and I just thought, man, there's a landfill somewhere that has a bunch of my unpublished writing and you can't write the same thing twice. I mean I can't. I don't know, maybe there's someone who can, but it's like you know it. Just it's not the same thing twice the next time you try to write it. It's going to be something different.
Speaker 2:Exactly Because you're a different person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Sometimes, sometimes even when I'm in the moment of teaching, I'll say something and then someone in the class will say, hey, can you say that again?
Speaker 2:And I'm like what did I say?
Speaker 1:Can somebody else say what I just said? Like you know, I can't even necessarily repeat the same thing, you know, in two consecutive moments much less write the same thing after losing all of that writing.
Speaker 1:So, yes, that quote definitely speaks to me. And I was convicted because it was essentially, you know, an act of disobedience to not move my writing forward, to just kind of hoard it. Some of that was some fear. You have to learn how to. You have to to release your writing to the world. You also have to let it go. Um, and I'm a perfectionist, so I'll go work and rework and rework, and rework and rework things over and over again and like never get to the end of it. So that's part of it. Um, but that you know it, it really is like I was convicted that I was not, I was surrendering to the writing, but I wasn't surrendering to the sharing.
Speaker 2:That's good, and could you elaborate more on that, like, what are some practical tips to to cross that barrier from being a writer to being an author? You touched on this, talking about getting over over the fear and then, because when you release something, you invite criticism into it, you invite other people's opinions into it and everybody got an opinion. But once again, could you speak to moving from being a writer to an author?
Speaker 1:Part of getting your work out there is being willing to share it with others, right, and getting over the fear of rejection. So one of the things that helped me to get over the fear of rejection and actually pursue traditional publishing is that I learned when I was in the MFA program at Houston Christian that the rejection rate for um from publishers is about 90%. Nine zero Right, and so, um, I was always an, A student, so it's like you know, getting a couple of rejection letters is, you know, it's just that doesn't work, right.
Speaker 1:Right, you're not used to that, and a lot of people, if you were a good writer in school and I school, and right here, I want to pause and say that there are a lot of people who didn't necessarily do well with writing in school but are phenomenal authors and that's just because they leaned into their creativity. You know more than they leaned into. You know just surrendering to, you know boxes, right. But I had to reframe the way I saw rejection and my friend Nicole Williams helped with that, so she came up with this idea that you know, instead of going after one acceptance, you go after 90 rejections.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:Because that becomes the new A Right. If the rejection rate is 90 percent in publishing, then, taking the stance I'm going to go after 90 rejections to get my A. It gives it gives you the courage to put the work out there, right, and to begin to submit. Now I didn't have 90 rejections for Behind the Waterline, but because we reframed how, how we saw, you know, the entry into publishing. It opened up the door to just submit, submit, submit, submit, submit, submit, submit, right.
Speaker 1:And that's really what it takes, you know to, to cross over from being, you know, the closet writer that I was in the past to being a writer who's now pushing her work out there. You really have to just kind of reframe it and understand that there's going to be some rejection. Like, even though I got some requests for the opening chapters and requests for the full. Like, even though I got some requests for the opening chapters and requests for the full, not all of those landed, you know, with a contract, right, but they did help me to network and I've met some great people, you know, along the way, and even got some pieces that were solicited for, you know, for other works because they'd read this and, you know, maybe they were putting together an anthology and, you know, reached out and said hey, we'd really like you to write for this anthology, because you know we like your writing style. If I hadn't started to put my work out there, you know, then the doors wouldn't, you know, have begun to open up.
Speaker 2:Kiana, that's so good. Thank you so much for just being honest and transparent and sharing your story, just crossing over the fear, getting over the rejection and going from writer to author. And I just want to encourage the listeners. We took this Holy Spirit led tangent like don't bear the talent that God has given you and again I also spoke to this like walk in obedience. Don't allow fear or rejection to deter you from God's will for your life. And man delayed obedience is disobedience. So whatever God has been calling you to do, you need to do it. One thing that I've learned about rejection sometimes that's really God redirection. He's redirecting you from something that you may think is good, but he want to get you to what is best for your life. But that's enough of me preaching, kiana. I want to jump back into the book. Could you speak to the impact of trauma? I'm sure that many of my listeners may have experienced trauma, may be experiencing trauma right now in their lives. Could you speak to that?
Speaker 1:Sure, sure. So I mentioned that in the novel it really is the grandmother's story unfolding through the grandson right, and we talked a little bit about how it was necessary for him to narrate because she refused to speak right, which is often a symptom of trauma. The shutting down and refusing to tell one's story, kind of know into yourself, can be a symptom of trauma. Right, there is, there is research that shows that trauma does actually have an impact on the brain, right?
Speaker 1:It changes the brain's activity. There's a psychiatrist named Bruce D Perry yes, bruce D Perry that has been researching this for years and looking at, like, the neuroscience behind trauma and how it impacts the brain, right, and so he studied this a lot in children, but also, you know, in some adult cases with. You know things like PTSD, you know how is it that? You know, when someone hears firecrackers, they think that they're back. You know, on the lines of a war, right, and he talks about. You know what happens to the brain and how the part of the brain that processes time is. You know, like the feedback gets stuck there and like they can't get to the part of the brain that's processing time. And I know that that was the past. This is the now, right, so there are actual physical changes that happen to the brain. But then there's behavioral changes, right, I will say for me, you know I mentioned I didn't plan to write this book from the perspective of the grandson. I plan to write it from the perspective of the grandmother. I planned to write it from the perspective of the grandmother, but I also did not plan to write a Hurricane Katrina story. Okay, I was going to write a story that you know, was just set in the past, but I had been working on writing about Hurricane Katrina for at the time that I started writing this probably 15, 16 years I had been, you know, dabbling in Hurricane Katrina stories. And so when I committed to writing Behind the Water Lines and there was a point at which I was mapping out the grandmother's life, I was mapping out the grandson's life, I was mapping out just various characters and there's a point on a big spreadsheet person. So I created this big spreadsheet and then there was a column on that spreadsheet that was 2005. And every character had experienced Hurricane Katrina and I had experienced Hurricane Katrina and it could have been like just something happened in the novel and Hurricane Katrina became the frame for it. So Hurricane Katrina became the. This is what is happening, and the grandmother's past was this is what happened. And with the storm, everything that she had been trying to hide because of that silence that we can end up subjecting ourselves to, because of trauma, everything that she tried to hide began to be excavated with that storm. Right, but for me, I didn't realize. I did realize, but I didn't really realize. I think I had. I did realize, but I didn't really realize I think I had let me say it this way I think I had resolved that the problems that I had mentally post-Katrina were just permanent problems. And so let me give you a little more context. Post-katrina, I began to have a lot of problems with my memory, right, and I mean I'm talking things that don't make sense, right.
Speaker 1:The funniest I laugh about it now the funniest is like when I turned 31, I thought I was turning 30. And so I, you know I was lamenting like there was, so I wanted to, you know, to have so much done by the time I turned 30. And you know, I kept telling my mom I cannot believe I'm about to be 30. And you know, finally my mom goes why do you keep saying that? And I say because there's just so much I wanted to do by this point. And she said but baby, you're already 30. And I just if I was crying before- like.
Speaker 1:I was really crying, right, my life because of that storm. I truly thought I was 29 years old. I had no memory of turning 30. I turned 30 the month before Hurricane Katrina, right. But there were other things. Like you know, I couldn't remember who didn't live through the storm and who lived through the storm, right, and it's the kind of thing you don't want to ask people like, hey, is your mom still alive? When you know you should know, right, because we, we talked about this like I should know whether or not you know their, their moms, are alive. I should know whether or not he lost his twin. I, I should know, right, and so I was.
Speaker 1:I would have like, and I called them white spaces, like just like blank spots in my memory that I just could not access, you know. And so at some point I went to a doctor and I asked the doctor yeah, I brought this up, I'm thinking, well, I have like early onset dementia, what is happening here? And he said, no, this is, you know, it's a sign of PTSD and you should have gotten counseling, you know, after Hurricane Katrina. And this was in about 2007, a couple of years after the storm and he said you know it's, it's not too late. You know you could start therapy now. Well, paul, I was young and dumb and I didn't, you know. I, um, you know my kids were young, you know I had four, four little people to take care of. I was at the height of my career as a professor and I thought you know who has time for that, you know. So I just came up with a bunch of tricks and mnemonic devices and things like that you know from my memory, like I, you know, couldn't teach a class without drawing a graphic of where people sat, and like when they switch seats on me, I'm like, oh my God, I don't know what this kid's name is, and it's because I was, you know, dealing with these memory issues.
Speaker 1:On the other side of, you know, hurricane Katrina, right, one of the effects of the trauma, interestingly enough, after I erode behind the waterline, I started to regain a lot of the memory capacity, not all of it, but I started to regain memory capacity that I had not had in years and it came through forcing myself to really relive that storm and to relive the trauma and the loss and the looking for people and the not, you know, having, you know, my stuff at my fingertips.
Speaker 1:All of it, like just bringing myself through that process of reliving it actually did heal my brain enough that I now, you know, I am remembering my students names, you know, for example, and this is the kind of thing you know I have told people before, but I think that they don't really think that it's like Avery knows it's that bad Right. But you know, I think often like people don't really think so because I had developed so many ways of coping with it and so many ways of disguising you know that issue. But the writing of the story actually did set me on a path toward healing in a way that I'm able to tangibly see because I'm remembering more now.
Speaker 2:Kiana, as you was answering, I was just really appreciative of just how transparent and real and raw you are with your story and I think we need more of that in Christianity. We need more of that in the church, more of that in media. You spoke to the impact of trauma and mental health, and those are some buzzwords that often you know, the Christian community seem. Some of us seem not to know how to handle it. We think two things can coexist. You can seek healing, of course, from the Lord, and the Lord also uses ways in the natural to bring about healing, and so, when it comes to mental health, there's a stigma around that. You mentioned the word counseling in some circles, like you bring up counseling, oh, they think you're crazy.
Speaker 2:No counseling doesn't mean you're crazy. Counseling means that you are bold enough, you are vulnerable enough, you're courageous enough to seek healing. And you said something about. You was at the height of your career and what I got from that is to encourage my dear listeners you should make time for healing.
Speaker 1:Definitely.
Speaker 2:Don't hide it. And I also just want to encourage my dear listener don't be afraid to get the help that you need, regardless of whatever stigma. The Lord, he is a wonderful counselor, he is the ultimate healer, but sometimes he heals through other coping mechanisms. He can heal through a miracle, because the God that we serve is the same yesterday, today and forever. But sometimes God wants to use counseling or to use therapy, and so I just want to encourage you, like, whatever you may be going through, it's OK not to be OK, but it's not OK not to get the help that you need.
Speaker 1:Right, right, I could not agree more.
Speaker 1:And if I could go back, you know, and have a conversation with my somewhere between 30 and 32 year old self, you know, get counseling, um, because I, I've spent a lot of years not being able to build memory, and I, you know, and I, I think it's, I think it was because, uh, I think it was part of you know, your brain tries to protect itself, right, and when you go through something like, uh, something like a Hurricane, katrina, you know, like the California wildfires that we saw recently, you know, when you go through those kinds of things and you suddenly have everything tangible ripped from you, you know, it's like the brain sort of protects itself by not building attachments.
Speaker 1:Right, and if I can't build memory, I still can't really build attachments, you'd be surprised. You know what I could forget, you know what I have forgotten over the years, and so if I didn't intentionally work on remembering something, I wouldn't remember it, right, but I could have gotten therapy all the way back when the doctor, you know, mentioned it to me and suggested it, and I would have had years of building memory. And I will tell you, there are literally times when my kids will maybe, you know they'll start talking about something. It's not that I forget everything, but it's crazy, the things that I can't forget. You know they'll start talking about something, or they'll ask me a question about their childhood and I'm like yeah yeah, my brain dumped that one.
Speaker 1:Sorry, my brain just dumped it, you know. So I, you know, I would tell my, I would go back and tell myself, hey, go and, you know, and get the therapy. It's not a sign of of weakness. We, you know, we have to remember that we're human. There's only one god, right, we are human and we are finite and limited. And so so there's, you know, we only have so much capacity, right, and sometimes we just need help to um, to manage, you know, to, to deal with, like the, the hugeness of life, right, like the kids say, like sometimes life be lifing and it's, you know, it's just a lot in going through something like that where, literally, you lose everything, um, essentially overnight. I was also pregnant with Janae, you know, at the time. So we were, you know, we lost everything, found out, uh, we were homeless and then found out we were pregnant, all within a matter of, you know, a roller coaster like absolutely insane.
Speaker 1:It's absolutely you know a roller coaster Like absolutely insane. It's absolutely, you know, insane time. But I would definitely. You know I could go back and we can't Right, but I would have gotten the counseling for sure.
Speaker 2:Kian, I want to take it a step further and answering this like what steps can we take towards healing? I want you to think about the person that may have been impacted by trauma, maybe having a tough time emotionally and mentally. What steps can we take towards healing? What does that look like?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so. So, first of all, I think it looks vocal, right. So one of the things that I, you know, I said this you know this character, my novel that's dealing with her trauma. She's you know, she's doing it by ignoring it, right, and by remaining silent. But I think that the first step is to actually be vocal, you know, to actually allow yourself to say out loud this happened to me, right, and this hurts. This happened to me and now I'm having this issue. This happened and you know, and now I'm experiencing this consequence Like to actually allow yourself to put it out there, right, to speak about it, out there, right, to speak about it, to tell our stories. I think that is so important, right, for me. I've found so much healing in writing, but there's so much healing in speaking and in sharing and in telling our stories.
Speaker 1:We mentioned seeking counseling. When we need counseling, seeking therapy, we need therapy, right, the Bible advises us in favor of wise counsel, right, um, yes, we have the Holy Spirit living inside us and, yes, God speaks to us and, yes, I can attest that God has sustained me, um, through that storm and after that storm, sustained me through that storm and after that storm, but this body is still a physical body that is experiencing physical reactions to trauma, right, and God has given us medical care. God has given us mental health care. God has given us, you know, the study of the brain, right, the ability to determine that, yes, actually trauma does have an actual physical impact on our bodies and you know, and on our minds. So, seeking counseling, seeking therapy and I do believe that you know that's not a singular thing, right? I think when we're seeking therapy, there's other things we have to do as well. We have to practice other aspects of healthcare. We certainly need to be in prayer and in communication with God. We certainly need to be in relationship with others that you know, that are in line with God, right, so that we're getting wise counsel. We need to also take care of ourselves. We need to rest. You know, sometimes trauma leads to a lack of rest insomnia, not sleeping, increased anxiety, right, you're anxious, your blood pressure is raised, you're experiencing generalized anxiety and that sort of thing. Right, these are physical symptoms, but they're very real.
Speaker 1:You know, I've had all of, you know, all of those things professional care when, um, certainly when we're aware that we cannot get it under control on our own right, like in my case, like I could not get that memory capacity back on my own. I needed to go through, you know, something more intrusive. To do that, I could put band-aids on it, which is what I've done over the years. Just, you know, learning different little mnemonics and ways to sort of trick people when thinking that I actually remember what I don't. You know in fact remember, right.
Speaker 1:But I think another thing is, you know, to look to our past as well as to look to the past of others. So, really, you know, because when we go through something traumatic, sometimes we fail to remember when we went through and overcame something traumatic before, right, and so the looking back at the past and what we overcome and Katrina has been a gift to me in that way, because it was such a huge crisis that every crisis after that crisis has been more manageable because of that experience I've always been able to look back at that crisis and know that the same God who got me through that is going to get me through this, right. But maybe you're going through something and it's like this is, you know, the biggest crisis of your life. Now, sometimes that's perspective. We have forgotten, you know, some of the bigger crises. Sometimes that's perspective, but sometimes maybe it is Certainly. When we lost everything in Katrina, that was the biggest thing that I had been through. It is probably one of the biggest things I've been through, you know, in my entire life.
Speaker 1:Right, but maybe at that point when we are going through something that is bigger than anything else we've ever been through and we feel like we can't go back to another moment in our past and find anything that gives us the courage to go on in that moment, that's when we need to be sitting at the feet of the elders, that's when we need to, we need to hear their stories and we need to know how they made it over, how did they survive, how did they go through that and really allow the older generation to pour into us and tell us their stories? Right, I think that is a huge part of our healing, a huge part of our building the capacity to thrive in this life is sitting at the feet of the elders and listening to them impart their wisdom and their experiences.
Speaker 2:You hit on something that's so good. I'm reading through the Bible in a year and I'm currently in the life of Moses, and he says something about remembering the past, and I wish you remember God's faithfulness, because if we look back and see that if God delivered me, then he can deliver me now, because he's the same God yesterday, today and forever, and depending on what situation that the people of god was delivered from. Moses would instruct him like set up these 12 stones that reference the 12 tribes of israel.
Speaker 2:So that way, when your kids or their kids kids encounter something, they can look back at these songs and say you remember that time when god parted the red sea? Remember that time when god gave us water from a rock? All of them to say just to basically amen, what Kiana has already said. Sometimes, what we're going through right now, we need to look back and say, well, if God kept me, then if God delivered, then if God healed, then he can heal right now.
Speaker 1:Right, right, right. And if not me, if God kept my grandma, then if God kept my grandpa, then, if God kept my mama, then if God kept my grandpa, then if God kept my mama then if God kept my daddy, then right, if God kept right.
Speaker 1:So it's like not even just us right, and that's why it's so important and why it's just it's so traumatic. And this, this novel, was so important for me, and this, this novel, was so important for me, like I really wanted to do this intergenerational thing, because I think there's so much power in remembering not only how God God did it for us, yeah but it's so important to be aware of what God did for them, right. And so you know, like no matter what's happening in our individual lives, in our country, in our schools, like, looking back at the past and seeing what we have overcome before should give us all hope and confidence that all is well. God is sovereign, he has this, too, under control, and it's up to us to be obedient. Right, be obedient. And when we survive trauma, right, remember to gather that stone and add it to our arsenal of remembrance so that the next time we go through something, we're able to look back and know that this too, is going to pass. Come on now, and not only is this, too, going to pass, but we're going to come out of it stronger. We're going to come out of it better we're going to come out of it. If we go through it the right way, we're going to come out of it closer to God and in a more intimate relationship with Him, as well as with other believers.
Speaker 1:So I just I cannot emphasize enough and it's so funny because I actually had, I actually had Joshua 4 on my mind, right when, you know, god told him gather up, you know, the 12 stones, right, and he didn't say, gather up the 12 stones you know, just to like keep them, you know, to yourself. And you know, and those stones, they weren't. I haven't we moved recently and I don't have. I used to have a little, you know, rock on. Were not these little rocks that you could hold in your hand, right, because they had to like lift them up and put them on their shoulder and it was like a big burden, it was like really, really heavy representation of what they had been through but, more importantly, what they had overcome right.
Speaker 1:And he tells them, when your children ask their fathers in times to come, what do these stones mean? Tell them right, tell them that this is a sign of when God, you know, dried up the Jordan, right, and so we have to be able to do that right. Go back and tell our stories to the younger generation. But the younger generation also needs to come to the older generation and say tell me your story, because right now I feel like I'm not going to make it through this. I'm about to break. Okay, there's no way I'm going to be able. Let's face it. We saw that in is it Elisha, who you know? When he went to go wrestle under the broom bush and he's his. His prayer to God was like just take me out, I want to die right now, right.
Speaker 2:Poor Elijah he was, he was going through it.
Speaker 1:He was, but we've got to be able to be that raw and that transparent.
Speaker 2:This guy can handle it.
Speaker 1:Yes, like I. He was like just just just take, just take me, just take me. I can't, I don't even, I don't even want to try to take another step, and sometimes we feel that way. Right, but God, if we can't get back to our own past and know that we're going to be OK, we can get back to the past of an elder and know that, if they are OK, we are going to be just fine. We just have to go through the process.
Speaker 2:Amen, and with the way that you speak words, that should encourage my dear listeners to make sure you go pick up a writing, pick up a book Behind the Waterline. I just want to recap some of the keys, man, because God's been faithful in this episode. As we've, of course, talked about the novel Behind the Waterline, I want to encourage you to grab your copy. We also talked about walking in obedience and answering God's call, and then I love how she put it like God wants to use your story. So don't let the devil shut you up because God wants to use your story.
Speaker 2:We even hit on mental health and how some coping mechanisms and how God would use healing. We need to stay connected to him in the word, in prayer, then, on a natural, practical side, get your rest, and also the importance of community and counseling. And then even talked about how important it is to count and recount the blessings and the faithfulness that God has done in our lives. So many good nuggets I encourage you to grab onto. And, speaking of grabbing, make sure you grab your copy of Behind the Waterline by, of course, kiana Walker-Lameo, by Blake Publishing Company. That's the company that is putting it out on March 25th. All right, but it's available right now for pre-order wherever books are sold. Now, kiana, tell the people how can they connect with you.
Speaker 1:The quickest way to find everything is to go to my website, which is actually wwwwriterteacherfriendcom. Yeah, so I decided we're not going to deal with the people misspelling LaMelle all the time. It is wwwwriterteacherfriendcom. You can also find there how to connect with my writing group. I have a writing group called Writer Teacher Friend. We are going to gear up during critique sessions, again weekly sometimes, soon. Sometimes we do writing sprints where we get together and we'll write for like four hours at a time, like straight, with no interruption, just to kind of, you know, push ourselves over that hurdle.
Speaker 1:I'm going to be adding little writing mini lessons this year, little craft lessons before you know we go into critique sessions or before we go into sprint sessions. So there's a link there. There's a for writers tab and so there's a link to that writers group. There there's a link to buy Behind the Waterline. I'm going to be adding some other links there to other works soon as well and I'll be adding a book club guide soon, a teacher's guide soon. So that's the best. That's sort of the one stock shop, www. Wwwwriterteacherfriendcom.
Speaker 2:Love it, love it and, kiana, thank you so much for telling your story, writing your story, vocalizing your story and then publishing your story, and also congratulations on the book launch. Y'all be sure to check the show notes for the link so you can order your copy today. So, kiana, once again, thank you so much for joining the show.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. It was great chatting your copy today.
Speaker 2:So, kiana, once again thank you so much for joining the show. Thank you so much. It was great chatting with you today. Now allow me just to close this episode out with God's word. Psalms 107, verses 28 through 31 says Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble and he delivered them from their distress. He made the storm be still and the waves of the sea were hushed. Then they were glad that the waters were quiet and he brought them to their desired haven. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love or his wondrous works to the children of man. Amen to the word of God. Please know that I'm praying for you and I'm rooting for you. Thank you so much for tuning in today and until next time go be all that God has called you to be.
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