Scars Of Our Mothers’ Dreams academic debut at Cityvisions Showcase, June 2nd 2017

I felt like a first time mother pridefully and eagerly  ready to reveal my newborn to my family and the world, as I walked through the doors of the  Auditorium on Broadway for the Cityvisions Showcase.    This journey was conceptualized  approximately four years prior from my desire to produce a documentary that told my personal experiences and the complexities of parental migration from Grenada and its impact on the lives of their children left behind.

The previous two years while enrolled in the MFA program at the City College of New York while balancing a full time job,   I was so busy working through the process of producing Scars of Our Mothers’ Dreams, that I had little or no time to fully digest and appreciate  what I was developing.  I was consumed with “getting it right” and every time I received  feedback from my fellow filmmakers and advisors, anxiety took over.  There were days I felt defeated, stressed, emotionally and physically sick and wanted to just quit, especially after getting robbed of our media and hardware during production on the last day of shoot.   Upon my return to New York and throughout post-production,  I isolated myself and hid the film from my family and friends, unsettled about hearing their feedback about the film.

Surrounded by my family and friends,  I sat in the auditorium holding on to my mother’s hands to support her, since it was the first time she was seeing the film, but honestly I needed her  warmth to calm my raging nerves as the opening image of Scars Of Our Mothers’ Dreams appeared on screen.    For the entire 11 minutes I held my breath, trying to scan the faces of each person in the darkness but could not see anything, instead all I heard was my mother faintly sobbing;  then suddenly, an outburst of applauses and cheers greeted me and my mother approvingly and lovingly squeezed my hands.  I exhaled and introduced to the world Scars Of Our Mothers’ Dreams.