On Healing Out Loud, Reclaiming Joy,
and Daring to Speak Truth
Laura Stearns is no stranger to transformation. An accomplished actor, director, advocate, and author, she has spent decades making her mark both onstage and off. Having begun her career in professional theater at just thirteen, Laura has worked across nearly every department in theater production. She received the 2024 Desert Theatre League Award for Best Direction of The Woman in the Mirror and performed standout roles in Perfect Arrangement and Falsettos. She is also a gifted designer, having created puppets for Avenue Q at Revolution Stage Company.
But beyond her creative contributions, Laura is a fierce advocate for safe spaces in the arts. She is a co-founder of the Minnesota Theater Accountability Coalition and co-author of the Minnesota Theater Standards for Safety and Accountability. Her powerful memoir Shattered exposed the abuse at the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis, and her testimony helped eliminate the criminal statute of limitations for rape victims in Minnesota.
Her latest book, Daring to Heal: Growing Beyond Trauma Through Awareness, Acceptance, and Action, is a deeply personal and practical guide for survivors and those who walk alongside them.
In this conversation with Stage and Cinema, Laura reflects on healing not just as recovery, but as reclamation—of voice, joy, and self. With clarity and courage, she explores how art, truth-telling, and action converge in the lifelong journey of healing.
Laura, the title Daring to Heal carries both softness and strength.
What does “daring” mean to you in the context of healing from trauma?
It takes courage to venture into the unknown. Trauma can go unaddressed for decades, especially if the harm happened in childhood. Leaning into the discovery process can be scary. Change happens when we set our fear aside and do the uncomfortable thing anyway. For me, that’s the definition of courage. I want people to know that the journey they are taking to heal trauma is extraordinary.
You structure the book around three pillars: awareness, acceptance, and action. Can you share how each of these showed up in your healing journey?
Awareness is key to understanding. If you aren’t allowing yourself to look at the reality of something, how can you possibly accept that reality? And how can you be in action if you don’t accept the reality of something as true? When my kids were young, my [now ex-] husband gently informed me that I “went away” for days at a time, that I was emotionally unavailable to him and our children, and that my eyes would go vacant, like I just wasn’t there. I had no clue what he was talking about. I was like “I’m right here!” He said, “No, you’re not.” I decided to trust his observation and try to see it for myself. Of course, he was right. Over time and with a skilled therapist, I started to see and accept how I had been affected by childhood trauma, but it took something outside myself to find that awareness. Once I had that, I could start doing the work of figuring out what was going on with me and do something about it.
The book’s tone feels both compassionate and actionable—how did you strike that balance when writing about such a personal and painful experience?
I always have the readers in mind when I write about these things. They are my guides, as well as my intuition. I think, “What would I need right now if I were reading about these things for the first time? What if I were a man reading this, or a person of color?” I’m a deep thinker, but I’m also someone who wants something to do. I don’t like sitting still if I know there is an action to take. Because I know that’s not how everyone processes, I try to gently but firmly encourage the reader to be in motion. Change doesn’t happen by knowing and accepting a thing. Fear often stops us from being in action. I try to be a concrete example for the reader, showing the bumps along the way and my journey of overcoming things that felt insurmountable. If I can do it, maybe they will see that they can too.
You mention that “trauma” is a buzzword that’s often misunderstood. What’s the biggest misconception you hope to clear up?
I’ve seen it happen with many things that come to the consciousness of the general population. There’s an ah-ha moment when something is revealed, followed by a pushback. I’m thinking about the #MeToo movement in particular. There was this grand reckoning, followed by constant questioning of the validity of the reality of the female experience. When the word “trauma” started becoming more commonly used, I was happy people were talking about it because it is such a huge issue; so many people are suffering from it. Then I started seeing the eye rolls when the word would come up, like they’re thinking trauma’s not such a big deal—it’s as inconsequential as a hangnail, which you should either ignore or rip off with your teeth and spit it out. This reaction comes from a lack of understanding. The reality is that millions of people suffer from unaddressed trauma. I experienced PTSD symptoms for decades and didn’t know that’s what was going on. It took someone who was trained to recognize it to finally get me the help I needed. Also, I think people equate trauma with weakness, and they don’t want to appear weak or indulge weakness in others. Somehow, compassion for others has become a bad thing.
In the trailer for Magic and Monsters, we get a glimpse of the toll secrecy and silence take—not just on individuals, but whole communities. How do you see your story resonating beyond the theater world?
These are great questions, Jason! What happened at the Children’s Theatre Company (CTC) in Minneapolis, which is what that documentary is about, is not all that unique. Complicit communities fail victims and perpetuate the problem. Good examples are what’s happened in the Catholic Church, Jerry Sandusky at Penn State, and Olympic coach Larry Nassar. These men were serial abusers, and the people around them enabled these abusers with their silence and propensity to believe the abuser, not the victim. Willful ignorance isn’t unique to the arts, it happens everywhere. CTC is a case study, an extreme example of what can happen when a community looks away. We need to learn from it so we don’t repeat it.
What did peace and acceptance actually look like for you—and how long did it take to believe those things were possible?
What it looks like for me is self-compassion, embracing my humanity and allowing myself to be perfectly imperfect. It’s taken a long time. And I’m still on this journey! A big part of it was allowing myself to believe that I deserved to have something like self-compassion. I talk about this in the book, but one of my False Core Beliefs is that I’m not deserving of anything good. “I don’t deserve [fill in the blank].” It was a huge obstacle to my happiness. Examining that element of my belief system was critical to understanding how to counteract it. The bad news is that my False Core Beliefs didn’t just go away because I figured out what they were. They’re part of my neural network. The good news is that I have tools to counteract the thinking when it rears its ugly head. That’s what I share in the book: my process of dismantling negative thinking.
How can people show up better—for survivors, for each other, and for themselves?
For adult survivors, if someone tells you they suffer from trauma, don’t brush it off or ignore it; exercise empathy. They likely aren’t telling you about it so you can fix it; they just need to be seen. Thank them for trusting you with that hidden part of themselves. For children who are experiencing trauma, BELIEVE THEM if they tell you. Well, that goes for all survivors, but especially kids. They can’t advocate for themselves; we need to do it for them. To show up for yourself, don’t downgrade your trauma experiences based on what happened to someone else—what happened to me isn’t as bad as so-and-so—or dismiss what you feel for fear of what others might think. This is your life, and you deserve all that is good for the taking. Healing is possible. Exercise self-compassion. Treat yourself with the same kindness you would show a friend.
What was the most unexpectedly joyful part of writing this book?
The memoir was powerful and cathartic to write. I learned a lot about myself through the process. But that book was really about what happened and exposing things that were buried for so long, for me personally, and what happened at the Children’s Theatre, and it was really hard. It was a bold statement. The new book feels more like an answer to an important question, and there is excitement in it for me. And it’s resonating with people in a profound way. I’ve had people tell me they are finding themselves in the pages, and that is incredibly gratifying.
If someone reads Daring to Heal and realizes they’ve been carrying unspoken trauma—what would you want their first step to be?
Find a therapist who specializes in Trauma. This can be challenging, depending on how their insurance works. I have worked with therapists over the years who didn’t understand the unique qualities of trauma survivors, especially Complex Trauma and CPTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), which is what I have, and it was not helpful. It can actually be more damaging to go to someone who doesn’t have trauma training. And even if they do have the training, it might not be a good fit personality-wise. Don’t settle. Find someone you trust. Some keywords to use when searching for potential therapists could be trauma and PTSD, child abuse, and domestic abuse. Types of therapy that can be very useful to trauma survivors are Adlerian, Art or Music Therapy, Play Therapy, EMDR, Somatic, Internal Family Systems, Narrative, and Trauma-Focused.
What’s next for you?
I’ve lost track of how many people have said, “You need to write a play about what happened to you. Do a one-woman show!” It was really the last thing in the world I wanted to do. But I’ve recently found some inspiration for how I could tell the story that wouldn’t feel self-indulgent. As with my books, there needs to be something beyond just saying what happened for the sake of saying it. There needs to be a larger purpose, or it falls flat for me. If I’m going to do a play about my life, I want the audience to walk away feeling empowered.
