Interview about THE UNFIXING with the Director, Nicole Betancourt
What is the connection between your health and the climate crisis?
THE UNFIXING looks at the human body as part of the earth. The most dominant systems in medicine and industry were not created with a reverence for the interconnection of life. Don’t polluted water and air impact our health?
Trying to separate, define, and fix all of these little parts of me didn't really help me heal as much as understanding how interconnected I am with the earth. Facing chronic illness, like facing the climate crisis, involves ongoing loss and an uncertain future. With the climate crisis and with chronic illness, the losses can feel like they are piling up with no end in sight. This is different from losing a loved one where we are expected to grieve the loss. Climate grief and grief over our lost abilities are not acknowledged by our dominant culture, there is no place for them. How do we heal without first acknowledging what we are losing?
In the film I learn to surrender, grieve, and ultimately heal partly through my relationship with nature. Healing our bodies means healing our relationship with each other and the earth. We gain this perspective in the film with the guidance of the wise women I meet on my journey. THE UNFIXING is a story of motherhood in widening circles, the stories of daughters, mothers, and mother earth.
Why this film now?
So many young people are anxious and in despair, and why wouldn't they be? They are growing up with looming pandemics and climate disasters. As my child Blue says at the age of 12, “I don't really have hope that the world's going to turn around.” I want to turn that fear of an uncertain future into interest in a potentially transformed future. If we don’t believe things can change, who will?
We are living in a time of transition, a liminal world. I hope that this film offers another way to face the sickness in our bodies and the world, a path of allowing, listening, receiving - all things I thought were passive. Now I know they are active, courageous, and acts of rebellion.
How is the film helpful for people with ME/CFS or other chronic conditions like Long Covid and Lyme?
When I was sickest and when my daughter Pilar was sickest, the voice in my head and the response from doctors made me question my own reality. I thought, if doctors don't see something wrong with me, am I not sick? Am I just weak or crazy? This happens a lot to women when visiting doctors. When medical professionals don't understand our condition, we are often seen as hysterical, over-sensitive, or hypochondriacs. This lack of validation is extremely stressful. THE UNFIXING shows the disconnect between what I was experiencing and what doctors were saying. When I was finally diagnosed with ME/CFS it was liberating, but it was also challenging. There is no cure for ME/CFS, yet I had to believe I could get better in order to heal myself. So my message to those who are sick like me is that your symptoms are real, you have been suffering, but you can get better.
At times the film has a surreal quality to it. Where did that come from?
Because I couldn't just take a pill and be cured - there is no pill to cure ME/CFS - it forced me on a metaphysical journey that helped me heal.
Popular experiences with ayahuasca and psilocybin are now recognized as healing modalities for all kinds of ailments and traumas. For me it was a little different. I wasn’t taking hallucinogens. My illness suspended me between sleep and wakefulness for hours a day and I started having visions and lucid dreams. I would see things and have these visions - like feeling the voice of nature. And that made me want to know more. If I couldn’t figure out how to craft a scene, I would ask myself about it while falling asleep. Then I would dream about that scene and wake up with the answer. In essence, much of the THE UNFIXING was created in my dreams.
What change do you want THE UNFIXING to inspire?
It is my hope that this film can be useful as a tool to help heal our relationship with nature and our bodies. Our personal narratives and our individual relationships with nature are fundamental for making concrete changes to the complex systems wreaking havoc on our health and our world. My vision is that when people hear our stories they will feel more comfortable talking about their own stories, allowing people to grieve and ultimately dream together.
But how do you see this film making a difference in the real world?
How can we learn from ancient wisdom and from nature herself? More and more people are asking this question including the study of biomimicry, systems theory, different modalities to heal trauma, neuroplasticity, integrated medicine, and the sharing of indigenous wisdom. It is about finding a way to live in right-relationship (Buddhist term) with life. As Adrienne Maree Brown says in the film, if, like starlings, we pay attention to the relationship with the group of birds around us, “We will find ourselves flocking together.” And from this internal and external alignment, solutions will emerge that we can't even imagine from where we are standing now. This is the system theory concept of emergence.
Systems theorists often use an iceberg metaphor. On the top of the iceberg you see some of the outcomes of our civilization - for example the climate crisis and pollution. The ice below the water represents the man-made systems that create those results. At the very bottom of the iceberg is our mindset, our beliefs. Changing beliefs changes the systems, the behaviors, and ultimately the outcomes. It could be defined as spiritual, cultural, or psychological change - the stories we tell to each other and even to ourselves are fundamental to making a shift in the world.
Stories change our chemistry and the wiring of our brains. But our stories about nature aren't just changing us, they are changing the landscape. Cultural and political change starts with how we change the narrative. THE UNFIXING is my contribution to that narrative.