When prompted by a life coach to comfort the child inside of her, Kim Montleon, a young mother at the center of the documentary film, Wrestling Ghosts, says emphatically: “I can’t do that; I’m afraid I won’t come back!”
That’s the beginning of Montleon’s two-year struggle to dig deep into her own harrowing childhood trauma to find a way to heal so that she can nurture her young children. The documentary by filmmaker Ana Sofia Joanes was screened to more than 140 people on Saturday, September 29that the First United Church of Christ in Oakland, CA.
Wrestling Ghosts shows vividly -- step-by-step -- how Montleon struggles through each twist and turn through her transition. It moves from her inability to visit the muffled feelings of her childhood, to a pivotal moment when she learns about the CDC/Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study at a talk by Childhood Disrupted author Donna Jackson Nakazawa. It reveals her wrenching emotions as she pushes her way through the clouded passages of her past, to a place where you see her cuddling and kissing her young boys, gestures of affection that she was physically unable to exhibit when you meet her at the beginning of the film.
“I have no words. Words don’t reach where you went in me,” said one member of the audience to Montleon who was at the screening with her husband, the filmmaker, and some of the coaches who helped Montleon.
“I am so moved that you’re doing this work at your age,” said another person at the screening. “I’m going to be 70 in a month and in the last year as I stopped working my two or three high-pressure jobs, the feelings I dealt with in therapy had still not quite cleared and then, of course, the visuals of all the black people being killed, the #metoo movement — all of that just added on to it,” she said.
“And what I loved about the film,” she continued, “is that you’re modeling that childhood trauma that is deep, deep, deep, and I am so grateful.”
(The filmmaker, Ana Sofia Joanes was interviewed by Joyelle Brandt, author of Parenting with PTSD. Find the link on ACEs Connection, here.)
For more information about hosting a screening, click here.
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