Coming out of my relationship with my ex-fiance, (I canceled the wedding when I realized that he triggered my core wounds of distrust) I was bitter, distrustful, and vengeful.
With a background in film, I was, at that time a commercials director and was writing a screenplay about a woman who was hired by housewives to test the fidelity of their husbands.
I knew I was pounding my pain into art, and I wanted to write something that wasn't a syrupy romance, I wanted it to be "real, gritty" an art-house film.
I think at the time, I called it a traumady - a tragic comedy.
(You can see how much work I had yet to do on myself then).
I had no idea how powerful my subconscious was and what I was about to do.
In order to write a film, I would envision scenes and play them over and over in my head, feeling the emotions of the characters, making the world as real as possible so that the dramatic arc would be real.
Lucky for me, I wanted my protagonist (who I identified with) to find love.
And this premise COMPELLED me to ask some very powerful questions.
How could a woman who found her own empowerment through proving the untrustworthiness of men ever trust one? To write the journey of this character, I would ask myself, what her emotional state was, and what did it look like.
I would first go to the root of her belief, translate this into behavior, and then figure out what would the opposite scenario look like.
For instance, my character obviously had a belief that being attractive to men could cause other women pain, thus she must have strained relationships with women.
How could that shift during the course of her healing? What would healthy female friendship look like? She must also have a belief that life and in particular men were cruel.
What would kindness look like to her? What would a man worth loving look like to her.
She also had a belief that men were only self serving and liars.
Well, then what would generosity and consideration of another look like to her? What gestures would make her trust again? Asking these questions, got me excited for her and the audience.
The love interest would have to be a nurturing soul, someone who cared about life.
How would we know this? Because we could see it through how he interacted with the environment and his passions.
In this case, it was the plants he nurtured back to health and which he'd bring to her sparse apartment.
He'd teach her how to have a green thumb, and expose her to nature in such a way as to help her regain faith and wonder in the natural world.
Thus the character I created was a landscape designer who also ran a butterfly atrium.
His patience, consistency, ability to not take things personally, his tenderness, strength, forthrightness all pointed to what she needed in order to heal, regain awe, reverence and trust in men, life, and love.
This was the good stuff, which I interspersed with a lot of drama to keep the plot interesting.
Problem was, my esoteric teacher at the time asked me if I wanted to continue experiencing the quality of "infidelity?" She could see that I was focusing on it (even though I had not told her the subject matter).
I said, "no.
" So she said, "then stop writing about it.
" Painful as it was to give up an art piece that I had been working on for many months, I decided to let the whole thing go and only focus on the good of the story.
So before I even completed a first draft of this script, I ended up meeting a man who was a landscape designer exactly the same way that the protagonist meets her guy.
We were in a relationship that was the first "healthy" relationship I had ever had, where he nurtured me back to trust, filled our apartment with plants, introduced me to the butterfly sanctuary in Santa Cruz and did exactly what my protagonist experienced, gave me trust in men and a reverence for life that I had never had (without all the drama).
Although he was not my beloved, he got me to a place where I could write a film about the Beloved Relationship which I manifested as well.
That one you'll have just have to see in the theaters!
With a background in film, I was, at that time a commercials director and was writing a screenplay about a woman who was hired by housewives to test the fidelity of their husbands.
I knew I was pounding my pain into art, and I wanted to write something that wasn't a syrupy romance, I wanted it to be "real, gritty" an art-house film.
I think at the time, I called it a traumady - a tragic comedy.
(You can see how much work I had yet to do on myself then).
I had no idea how powerful my subconscious was and what I was about to do.
In order to write a film, I would envision scenes and play them over and over in my head, feeling the emotions of the characters, making the world as real as possible so that the dramatic arc would be real.
Lucky for me, I wanted my protagonist (who I identified with) to find love.
And this premise COMPELLED me to ask some very powerful questions.
How could a woman who found her own empowerment through proving the untrustworthiness of men ever trust one? To write the journey of this character, I would ask myself, what her emotional state was, and what did it look like.
I would first go to the root of her belief, translate this into behavior, and then figure out what would the opposite scenario look like.
For instance, my character obviously had a belief that being attractive to men could cause other women pain, thus she must have strained relationships with women.
How could that shift during the course of her healing? What would healthy female friendship look like? She must also have a belief that life and in particular men were cruel.
What would kindness look like to her? What would a man worth loving look like to her.
She also had a belief that men were only self serving and liars.
Well, then what would generosity and consideration of another look like to her? What gestures would make her trust again? Asking these questions, got me excited for her and the audience.
The love interest would have to be a nurturing soul, someone who cared about life.
How would we know this? Because we could see it through how he interacted with the environment and his passions.
In this case, it was the plants he nurtured back to health and which he'd bring to her sparse apartment.
He'd teach her how to have a green thumb, and expose her to nature in such a way as to help her regain faith and wonder in the natural world.
Thus the character I created was a landscape designer who also ran a butterfly atrium.
His patience, consistency, ability to not take things personally, his tenderness, strength, forthrightness all pointed to what she needed in order to heal, regain awe, reverence and trust in men, life, and love.
This was the good stuff, which I interspersed with a lot of drama to keep the plot interesting.
Problem was, my esoteric teacher at the time asked me if I wanted to continue experiencing the quality of "infidelity?" She could see that I was focusing on it (even though I had not told her the subject matter).
I said, "no.
" So she said, "then stop writing about it.
" Painful as it was to give up an art piece that I had been working on for many months, I decided to let the whole thing go and only focus on the good of the story.
So before I even completed a first draft of this script, I ended up meeting a man who was a landscape designer exactly the same way that the protagonist meets her guy.
We were in a relationship that was the first "healthy" relationship I had ever had, where he nurtured me back to trust, filled our apartment with plants, introduced me to the butterfly sanctuary in Santa Cruz and did exactly what my protagonist experienced, gave me trust in men and a reverence for life that I had never had (without all the drama).
Although he was not my beloved, he got me to a place where I could write a film about the Beloved Relationship which I manifested as well.
That one you'll have just have to see in the theaters!