Conversations with Lauren Barrett

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

Hi Lauren, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I was born in New Jersey and grew up in Wheeling, a small city in West Virginia. I always knew I wanted to be a teacher and would make my younger brother and the neighbors play school with me. Also a lover of writing, I had notebooks and journals full of my thoughts and stories.

In the 6th grade, a family with a Deaf mom moved into our area. The mom’s two sons went to my school. Our city didn’t have a large Deaf population, so my mom decided to enroll in sign language classes to learn how to communicate with this woman. I tagged along.

My younger brain was able to absorb the language better than my mom (Sorry Mom!), and I ended up striking up a friendship with this woman, and we would end up communicating in sign language after church a lot. I fell in love with ASL and continued taking classes all throughout grade school and high school. Meanwhile, my interest in writing was piqued even more after taking a Creative Writing class in high school.

I ended up combining my love for teaching and ASL and decided to major in Deaf Education at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP), one of the few colleges semi nearby that had Deaf Education as a major. I ran cross country and track there as well. I graduated from IUP with a degree in Deaf/Elementary Education in 2011.

Afterward, I moved with two childhood friends to Raleigh where I got a job at Athens Drive Magnet High School as a teacher of the Deaf (ToD). A year later I started coaching cross country. I’ve been there ever since, and I’m coming up on my 12th year as a teacher and 11th year as a coach. In 2016, I graduated from East Carolina University with a Master’s in Reading Education.

In 2015, I got married to my husband James and in 2019 we had our first child, Henry. The same year that I had my son, I decided to restore my love for writing and start a blog called LaurenBarrettWrites. Writing about being a mother was therapeutic. What started out as a private hobby soon turned into my passion project which soon turned into a side hustle and business.
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Why? I love being a mom! But there was a time when I was pregnant with my son, and I was terrified of bringing life into this world and then being told to keep him alive and raise him.
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There’s so much information out there! I basically read it all. Some of it was a God-sent, some of it helped, some of it was taking it or leaving it, some of it was overwhelming, and some of it was just plain false.
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I started my blog because it combines three of my passions – being a mom, teaching, and writing. I’ve been able to read the research and take what I’ve learned from being a teacher and a mom and turn it into blogs that are easy to understand, empathic, and actionable for parents. My blogs focus on positive parenting discipline, sign language, kids’ activities, tantrums, eating, transitions, parenting, mom life, productivity, and my own experiences as a mom. My blogs grow as my son grows.

In 2020, I published my first book, The Add One-A-Day 30-Day Challenge. The book focuses on 30 lifestyle and productivity challenges that help you become the best version of yourself.

In 2021, I wrote my first children’s book, Henry’s Hiccups. In this inclusive children’s book, ​Henry loves school until he encounters a problem. He can’t get rid of his hiccups. He tries a number of ways to get rid of them, but no matter what he does, his hiccups keep getting in the way of correctly answering the teacher’s questions. That is until he discovers a new way of answering questions without speaking – sign language.

This year, I wrote a parenting guide called Now What? Mindful Checklists for Life’s Hard Parenting Moments. This PDF guide consists of 10 modules that break down 70+ strategies and allows you to pick from these strategies and find what works for you and your family. The idea is to write down every strategy that works on a checklist and keep it in a place where you can easily access it. When you are going through a hard parenting moment (tantrum, the kid won’t eat, etc), you can reference your checklist to help you feel calm and confident.

Currently, we are looking to expand our family, live in the moment with those carefree mindlessness days, and maybe do a bit more traveling to National Parks and MLB stadiums.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Some obstacles I encountered along the way are my own self-growth and education on how to be an anti-racist.

Being a wife to a Black man and a mom to a Black son, I had to educate myself on how I see their color instead of being colorblind which was often the way we were taught growing up. Talking and writing about racism was something that used to be uncomfortable and challenging for me, but now I recognize that it was a privilege that I didn’t always have to talk about and notice race. And staying silent was harmful to the two of the people I loved the most.

Another obstacle/challenge has been my health and navigating being able to do all of my passions/jobs (mom, wife, coach, teacher, writer), but also allowing myself to slow down, take breaks, and stay relatively unbusy. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, Hashimoto’s, in 2015 and a month ago was also diagnosed with Fibromyalgia.

These chronic illnesses are often referred to as silent sufferers because oftentimes the person who has them doesn’t look sick, but I have to manage the constant flare-ups, the adjustments of medications, the ability to really, really control stress, and the aches/pains that come with the diseases. I’ve had to learn to advocate for myself in healthcare because each of these diseases took years and multiple doctors to diagnose and get the right treatment.

Also, in 2019, 6 months after having my son, I found out that my brain aneurysm would need to be operated on. After the successful surgery, we had to wait 2 years to be allowed to start trying again for another child. Now, we are suffering from secondary infertility and haven’t been able to get pregnant for over a year now.

Writing about all these struggles has been therapeutic for me because 1.) It gets out my feelings and 2.) It lets other people who are going through the same things know that they are not alone.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
For my blogging work, I write blogs for my own website LaurenBarrettWrites.com, Mostly I blog about parenting strategies. The blogs I am most proud of in that realm are my blogs on Green Light Strategies, What to Do During a Tantrum, How to Raise Resilient Kids, How to Use Sign Language to Calm Kids, and How to Raise Kids to See Color. I also write about traveling and being a teacher/coach. I have guest blogged on other sites like Scary Mommy, PopSugar, a Fine Parent, Pregnant Chicken, and Chalkbeat.

But I would have to say what I am most proud of is writing a children’s book and a parenting guide. Growing up my teachers and college professionals repeatedly told me that I should write a book, and I finally made that happen. Henry’s Hiccups also has lesson plans for teachers and a read/sign-aloud. My parenting guide took about a year to make and is what I put the most time and energy into.

I describe myself as a multi-passionate mom who loves to write about a variety of topics and experiences related to my life.

If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
Even though I was/am somewhat of an introvert, I never lacked confidence and often put myself out there even if it ended up embarrassing me (When I was the dancing unicorn in the school play – I couldn’t dance and I couldn’t act haha).

I was involved in a lot of sports and activities, mainly basketball, softball, and dance before discovering that I loved running the most in high school. I also probably joined every single club in high school but my favorite was always tutoring kids. I loved my summer jobs, but especially loved when I was a day camp counselor and worked with preschoolers.

People often described me as creative. I spearheaded our neighborhood’s carnival and lemonade stands every year. I organized Friendship Day for my friends in high school and college. These events consisted of scavenger hunts, Amazing Race-style challenges, badminton tournaments, trivia over our years of friendship, and mixed CDs.

I loved being around family and all my different groups of friends. And my faith was/still is very important to me.

Pricing:

• $50 – Now What? Mindful Checklists for Life’s Hard Parenting Moments (A parenting pdf guide)
• $25 Lauren Barrett Writes Insider’s Scoop Membership (Weekly emails with parenting advice)
• $11.95 Henry’s Hiccups

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.laurenbarrettwrites.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurenbarrettwrites/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LaurenBarrettWrites
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/WritesBarrett
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx9U1zeFe6DmIe4Avw1Qxsg
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/laurenbarrettwrites/_saved/