In her debut YA romance, I Wish You Would, Eva Des Lauriers brings insight from her firsthand experience serving teenagers as a clinical social worker. Here, she reflects on the importance of honoring young people’s emotional complexity and advocating for their mental health, both in therapy and on the page.
I became aware of my own anxiety for the first time when I was 17. My parents had just divorced, I was struggling to make sense of my white-presenting mixed-Latine identity in a predominantly white school, and I was expected to know what I wanted to do with my life when I couldn’t have been less sure. I was so overwhelmed and often couldn’t find the words to express myself except in the pages of the notebooks I filled. I felt so alone.
Though I sought therapy at the time, it was a bit of a disaster. My therapist talked instead of listened. She pushed instead of waited. It became clear to me that she didn’t take me seriously. Instead, she became yet another adult who at once treated me like a child but expected me to have the emotional skillset of an adult. Because I was young, she didn’t seem to believe that the very real struggles I was experiencing could (and would) have a lifelong impact on my mental health.
In my years as a clinical social worker, I was determined to do the opposite for my teen and adolescent clients—to be an adult who didn’t dismiss them, but instead advocated for their mental health needs, who held the space for their complex challenges and unique sorrows, and who let them know they were never alone.
Now, as a YA author, I aim to offer that same space in my stories. While at its heart my debut novel, I Wish You Would, is an emotional friends-to-lovers romance about best friends Ethan and Natalia, it is also about the secrets we keep not only from each other, but from ourselves.
The teens I worked with were constantly struggling with shifts in their social lives, family lives, and their own senses of self. They were often overwhelmed by romantic and sexual relationships, by all the firsts. But they were afraid to be honest, to be vulnerable, to stand out, to be left out. So, like I did when I was 17, they kept so much of what they were feeling locked away like a secret—the same way Ethan and Natalia do in I Wish You Would. And they’re not the only ones.
Because it is often difficult, even as adults, to face what we’re afraid of, I implemented one of my favorite therapeutic tools from my days as a social worker in I Wish You Would. At the Senior Sunrise overnight event on the beach, the entire senior class writes their fears, wishes, and secrets down in the form of anonymous letters to themselves, answering the question what they would do if they were braver.
This ritual provides an opportunity for each character to be brutally honest and truly vulnerable, particularly because the letters are supposed to be private. However, that’s not the case when seven of the confessional letters get out after Natalia panics and attempts to retrieve her own confession for fear of it being too honest about her feelings for Ethan. Over the course of the 24-hour event, these letters wreak havoc among friends and enemies alike as it becomes clear that every character has their own secret or unexpected struggle. And the letters bring Natalia and Ethan back together again through their honesty.
It was important to me that the confessions reflect the complexities many teens face. I wanted to depict the layers of what they go through at this really delicate and exciting time in their lives, so that even if readers don’t agree with every character, or quite understand them, they hopefully relate to and empathize with them. By treating teen characters seriously, we in turn treat teen readers seriously.
Writing I Wish You Would felt like giving voice to so many of my clients over the years—and to the 17-year-old in me who still fills endless pages with words.
I Wish You Would by Eva Des Lauriers. Holt, $19.99 May 21 ISBN 978-1-250-91055-4
