Shadow Stories
Movies are great art dates for me. Nothing stimulates my creativity and yearning to express and tell and share and show like seeing a movie. It’s especially intense when I’ve seen a movie alone, and almost always an indie film. The double layers of independence push me toward my voice like Charlie Bucket devouring the chocolate 🍫 bar on his birthday.
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Tonight I saw Wild Rose, written by Nicole Taylor. It was as much familiar formula as it was fabulous storytelling. The single-mom burden that was hoisted on the main character and her mother was as accurate as it was evil. I’m firm in my belief that my own seeping mother wound is what hooked me like a farmed trout as the story wound its way to redemption.
Did the story work because so many of us have a far off dream? Or is the lure seeing and being seen or the intergenerational trauma and mother wounds we all share on some level? As a now middle-aged mother of a daughter, I’m confronting my work and wellness while helping my daughter navigate her own burgeoning emotions. For me, it’s a why thing- finding my voice, telling my story to make some sort of sense of my layers. Growing up in a home where love was an assumption, not an action, and stories were badges of honor and explanations — all accepted as the way it was — judgments, resentments or whining were poor choices made out of weakness.
Seeing a glimmer of my own path on the screen is like finding an elusive puzzle piece — it had to be seen because I am still developing the language for the emotions I never felt I could survive actually feeling. But the sensory deprivation of a dark theatre and a movie about someone else requires no translation and allows me to absorb and then abandon a limited amount at a low frequency. At least that’s what I think happens. My Dad used to say he liked the movies for leaving his brain at the door. I’m finding that works for me because my process requires more heart. But not too much, I’ve got things to do.
