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This is a film about releasing trauma and learning how to be in your own skin again. Betty opening her heart is an emotional adventure. She needs a breakthrough moment to feel, deeply, what's inside again -- to begin to churn the pieces of her past and let go of pain -- and she finds connection, conversation, and illumination when a doctor convinces her to read her patient file.

The inspiration for this film is layered. I lost my grandmother to suicide. It took quite a while for me to find acceptance. And her story is just part of the story.

I wanted to make a film that encapsulates a kind of felt truth, rather than the actual truth. Through the process of collaboration, we arrived at this style of storytelling by taking something very personal and essentially shaping it to get more personal by just following this one character's inner thread. So, it ends up being a story about fleshing out the character of this woman rather than trying to set up a scenario that brings about clear answers. Betty begins a process of freeing herself when she opens her mind and her heart, and that is when she can see herself part of the world again. That's when she can open herself up to the person next to her.

The environment of a mental hospital, a padded cell, can be seen as a symbol of a deeper way of exploring how we create chambers for our emotional experiences. At the core, Betty is a fighter, and I needed to make a story about a woman who makes it through. Fortunately, there was a beautiful group of people who wanted to get that kind of story made; and for some, they had their own personal journeys to share. It's not rare, this experience of having a family member diagnosed with a mental illness. What's hard is communicating about it.