Meet Lauren Lanoue

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lauren Lanoue.

Hi Lauren, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My career path has been mainly teaching. I was an elementary school teacher for several years before moving abroad where I was an English teacher. While we were living in Czech Republic, I became a stay-at-home mom for a year or so–got to love maternity leave in European countries.

We moved back to the U.S. in 2019, just before the pandemic, which is when I started giving private music lessons. I still teach music part-time now. However, in early 2021, I was ready for a change. I started doing some self-exploration, trying to figure out what I really wanted to be doing as a profession.

The first half of 2021, I thought I had it figured out. I spent a great deal of time and energy on a business idea that I was certain would pan out. It brought together some of the things I’d always loved–music and teaching, but in a fresh way. But the path of certainty started feeling less certain, and by the end of that same year, I was back at square-one trying to figure out my next right step.

I ended up changing direction completely and took a different, much-less-certain path. I decided to start calling myself a writer after having spent years denying my love for the art and craft of writing.

Because it felt like such a drastic change, I struggled to make sense of it. How did this connect with all the other pieces of me? But as Austin Kleon says in his book Steal Like an Artist, “What unifies all of your work is the fact that you made it.”

Changing careers didn’t mean I was abandoning all the other parts of myself like music and teaching, but it took me a bit to come to terms with the change. After all, I thought teaching was my “calling.”

But writing was (and is) what I wanted to be doing. I’m currently in the process of learning how to do this sacred work of listening to my inner self to figure out what it is I want, removed from all the expectations and “shoulds” of life, removed from what everyone else wants. It has relieved so much pressure and stress off my life to learn that it’s ok to go for what I want and it’s also ok to change and grow. And that includes what we want. That can change and grow, too.

So now, I love getting to say that I’m a writer in addition to being a teacher, and I’ve recently added podcast host to the list of hats I wear! My podcast is called As I Wander with Lauren Lanoue, and I’d love for you to give it a listen!

If you’d like to read more about my transformation from teacher to writer, I wrote a blog post about it a few months ago called “Buried Dreams and Maybe Dreams.” You can find it on my website if you’re interested in reading more.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
No, it definitely has not been a smooth road.

For one, there are financial struggles. Calling yourself a writer, or artist of any sort doesn’t mean you start making money right away. It takes time. There are a lot of up-front investments, and so I’m still teaching music as I work towards the goal of writing and speaking as my profession. I’ll be working on some creative ideas for income in the coming months. It is sometimes difficult to find ways to create streams of income that still align with your mission, vision, and values. For now, I’ve relied on my readers to provide support through “Buy Me a Coffee.”

Then, there’s platform building. That’s another difficult part of being a writer. Before getting traditionally published, publishers want you to have a “platform” so they can make sure they’ll have return on their investment. So while I work towards getting a publisher (or self-publishing even), I’ve been doing a deep-dive into learning about marketing strategies for newsletters and social media. I’ve become an expert in a lot of things I never thought I’d be an expert in. It’s not my favorite part of the job, but I’m learning to be ok with it.

What I’m trying to keep in mind is that every time I do this type of thing or learn something new, it’s like getting experience points on a video game. I’m always learning. Always growing. And I kind of love it even if it’s challenging.

This whole thing has been a huge learning curve! Actually, it’s not just one learning curve; it’s a whole mountain back-road full of curves. And a constant climb, most of the time.

Over the past year, I have had to learn so many things about both the art and business of writing. Writing is something that requires slow and steady growth if you want to be successful, and that suits me fine because I tend to keep a slow pace. But the steady part is more difficult. I’ve been focusing on that part this year: taking small, intentional steps. After teaching myself how to do it, I launched a website and blog back in April. Then, I started a newsletter from scratch, and recently, I launched a podcast called As I Wander with Lauren Lanoue.

The slow, steady intentional steps pay off, but I have to remember to celebrate the small victories. I’d say if you’re a creative looking to build something sustainable like me, keep taking those slow, steady and intentional steps, but don’t forget to stop and look back at how far you’ve come every once and a while!

The other struggle that may be the toughest is family and other relationships, but especially family. As a writer who writes about their life experiences and the lessons learned therein, it has required a lot of inner work (a.k.a. therapy) to be able to write honestly about my lived experiences, and it is still hard not to censor myself.

In order to be the kind of writer that I want to be, one who helps others feel less alone in their struggles, I have to be honest about my struggles.

In some of my writing, I talk about my upbringing and childhood experiences. While there were a lot of great parts of my upbringing, there are also a lot of deep wounds and trauma from which I am still healing, and telling these hard stories publicly has been difficult to navigate. It’s led to some hard conversations with my parents and other family members.

I write some stuff they don’t agree with me about; they’re probably never going to agree with me on certain topics, but I still see the benefit in having the hard conversations. One hard conversation can sometimes lead to more hard conversations, and perhaps that is what can lead to positive change–when two people who disagree keep having the hard conversations, as long as they’re really listening to one another.

I’ve changed so very much over the last several years. I think for the better. And much of that change came about thanks to friends who were willing to have these hard conversations with me even though we disagreed with one another, and I’m forever grateful to them that they stayed with me and chose to have the conversations.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a writer, teacher, and podcast host (As I Wander with Lauren Lanoue). With everything I do, my goal is always to cultivate a safe space where we can learn together how to find a home or make it wherever we are on our own unique journeys.

I enjoy writing about my own lived experiences from my travels and time living abroad to the smaller adventures of everyday life. I write about these experiences and what they’ve taught me about the art of belonging the practice of self-compassion, and the process of growth.

I tell these stories for those who don’t quite know where they belong at the moment: my fellow sojourners, the outsiders, misfits, and outcasts.

My whole life, I’ve felt a bit weird and misunderstood. I never felt like I fit in anywhere. And then, I lived abroad for several years. Even though I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything, that just made things more confusing, honestly. Knowing where I belong has been quite a journey, and it has evolved and changed, over time, along with me.

One of these changes happened recently when my husband and I decided to step away from what has always been our spiritual home–church. I grew up in a Christian church and was born into a pastor’s family. Church was somewhere I always thought I could belong. But we’ve changed and grown quite a bit over the last several years, and our faith has grown and changed right along with us. These changes led us to make this decision to step away from the church building.

When you walk away from something like that, something that was such a huge part of your life for so long, you can end up feeling completely lost and alone. Something I hear from others who have also walked away from their spiritual homes like this is that they miss the community part of it. And I would agree. That is probably the most difficult part of leaving a religious community.

Or any community, really.

So the question becomes what do we do now?

There are millions of others just like me who now find themselves in this wide-open middle place. I like to call it the “messy middle.” Some call it the wilderness. It’s that place where we’re stuck between what was and what will be. It’s uncertain. It feels desolate, and it can be overwhelming to know what the right next step is and where we belong now. The loneliness of it can leave us feeling hopeless. My writing intends to give a little hope and community for these people who are learning to navigate this middle place.

While my writing and my podcast tend to resonate with people who have left their spiritual homes, it is really for anyone who has lost or had to leave what they’ve always known as home whether that’s because they moved to a new city or country, lost a relationship or community of some sort, walked away from a job they used to love, etc.

Whatever the case may be, my goal is to cultivate a safe space for people as we ask hard questions about ourselves and what we’ve always believed, as we learn and grow, and as we learn to make home right here wherever we are on our own unique journeys.

If you are interested in reading my writing, you can find it on my website. I’ve got a blog there and you can also sign up for my free monthly newsletter while you’re there to get even more of my writing. You can also find me on Instagram for a bit more content. I’m also on TikTok and Facebook. Also, as I’ve already mentioned, I have a podcast called As I Wander with Lauren Lanoue that you can find on nearly all podcast streaming apps.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
I have had all of the above and I’m so thankful too all of them! I’m probably going to leave someone out, but here are a few.

My husband, Robbie, for one, has carried the financial burden for our family so that I could invest time and energy into building my writing career. He’s taken extra time with our kiddo so I would have time to write. He’s invested in me. He is so wise and patient, and he’s given me a million ideas over the years for my writing. He’s my best friend, biggest supporter, and sometimes, my editor.

My family has been awesome, too. Despite our conflicts about some of the stuff I’ve written, they have been super supportive. They’ve taken my kiddo and watched her a while so I could get some extra writing done, and my dad helped me record the music for my podcast at his studio.

My friend and creative colleague, Tina Honerkamp, gave me the book “The Artist’s Way” which brought about my realization that I wanted to be a writer. It helped me remember that I had wanted to do this since I was 7 years old. She’s a mentor of mine and also what I call a creative colleague. We meet every couple of weeks to talk about our creative pursuits as she is an artist as well. If you’re an artist of any sort, I invite you to find yourself a creative colleague! Art and writing can be a lonely venture, and that suits us most of the time, but also, it’s been great to get out of our own heads and have another human to talk to about work beside our family members.

I also have a lot of thanks to give to Hope*Writers and my writing friends that I’ve met. Hope*Writers is a writing community that has helped me make a huge amount of progress with their teachings and other resources. I’ve also made a lot of writer friends there who I connect with almost daily.

And I can’t forget my readers and listeners! After all, they are why I do what I do! My friends that comment and share my work with others are to be given some credit as well.

To all of these people and all the people I didn’t mention, thank you!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.LaurenLanoue.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurenlanoue/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100082888627002 

Image Credits
Before the Foundations Photography