Honoring a Family's Journey with Abuse

This is part of our Braving Healing platform, which is all about telling the stories of survivors of childhood sexual abuse and experts who work in the field. Each month, we’re producing a short film in our “Survivor Journey” series where we tell the story of an individual. (This is not the same as “Braving Together” films which explore a single topic discussed by several people.)

Our goal was to pull from our interviews for our feature-length documentary because we had so much content that would never make it into the film, and we wanted to honor the participants by highlighting their stories. This was our first in this series. The goal was to produce a powerful story that is also gentle on the viewer. Here, that means taking an approach that is aware of trauma and how people’s stories can affect other survivors. Throughout our whole process, we are working to produce films that highlight the challenges and hope of survivors of CSA while also being gentle on the nervous systems of suvivors who are watching. 

This film was extremely well-received. It was our first film featuring survivors, and the response was powerful. Everything from direct messages on social media to comments on YouTube and shares.

We heard from many people that this film was empowering and also left the viewers feeling seen and validated in their own experiences.

The goal here is about producing meaningful content that helps amplify the voices and experiences of survivors. 

Telling other peoples’ stories is a deep honor. We draw out people’s experiences and then are tasked with sharing them in a way that honors their own stories as well as the experiences of potential viewers. Working on such complex trauma topics comes with a lot of responsibility, and we take great pride in how we produce stories and communicate with our participants.