NEW FILM: Lisa & Isell - a short documentary
My latest film is now available! Watch it here: Lisa & Isell: A story about adoption & the Ghost Kingdom.
Read about the experience from Lisa herself:
"I just wanna say I’m in love. I...in love with the radiant, insightful, brilliant Angela, and with Bryan’s sensitivity and professionalism.
I went to Florida to meet my recently found birth father, Isell. Meeting him was poetry and magic. Tenderness and joy. Laughter and pathos. This is the man who, for 55 years, has been thinking about me, looking for me, loving me, and imagining where and who I might be.
For years, I’ve been an enormous fan of the transracial adoptee advocate, mentor, consultant, and educator Angela Tucker. As luck would have it, we had our first face-to-face conversation shortly after I found Isell. She proposed that perhaps we ought to document it. She and her Emmy award-winning husband Bryan Tucker joined me in Florida, and we set out to make a documentary celebrating devoted Black fathers. Isell and my birth mother Shirley, who haven’t met since I was born, both graciously agreed to participate, and so we found ourselves on Siesta Key.
You know that feeling when your body and mind are working together in a way that seems to be effortless? Say you’re writing a story or a poem, composing a song, walking out in nature, cooking a meal, playing with your dog, whatever it is, and your monkey brain just goes quiet. The to-do list has been temporarily put aside; your worries, your fears, your ambitions have all disappeared. They are no more than dust motes in a beam of sunlight, and you just are.
That cliched expression to go with the flow, what does it mean? To me, it’s a feeling as if the universe is revealed in a glittering path that is laid out before me. It feels as if all is right in that instant. That my steps contain power and purpose, and whatever I’m doing is for the greater good.
There is a LOT more to this chapter that I'll be sharing soon enough but for now, I’m basking in what was an extraordinary experience. If love were visible during those two weeks, it manifested as the golden hour light that comes with sunset, and every moment was suffused in it. If love were nourishment, all those birds and beasts who came to us fed upon it. If we could hold love in our hands, there it was, a shining beam in every touch my parents gifted me.
Read more from Lisa about her experience HERE.