Project
PAper
Birds

Educating the public on recovered & Somatic memorieS

Memory tends to be thought of as something straight forward and linear, like a camcorder capturing life as it happens. But the process of how our brain goes about encoding each experience we encounter is a web still being unwound. In the case of traumatic memory, this only rings more true. Trauma, unlike non-traumatic memory, is stored in fragments. In place of a traditional narrative consisting of a beginning, middle, and end, the brain latches onto different sensory input—sights, sounds, smells—associated with the event. It’s this fact that sits at the core of a notion growing increasingly more embraced, first by the psychiatric field and now by the general public: The body remembers trauma. This is why it’s not uncommon for survivors of trauma to lose full or partial memory of the incident. In fact, amnesia—sometimes in this context referred to as “psychogenic” or “dissociative” amnesia—is a trait seen often in those with PTSD.

However, sometimes these memories are retained and lie hidden for years, even decades at a time. They remain obscured in the limbic system until brought forth by something—a trigger, a reminder of the trauma—during a time when it’s finally “safe” to begin to unpack the past.

Processing trauma is never easy, but trying to do so retroactively adds an additional layer of complexity. Paper Birds is a documentary about the relationship between trauma and memory, more specifically, the phenomenon of recovered memories. The film follows my own experiences living through this ordeal and navigating delayed onset of PTSD during the fall of 2020. In addition to focusing on recovered memories, we explore several other big issues including sexual trauma, religious trauma and men’s mental health. Despite the heavy subject matter at hand, the goal is to produce an uplifting and informative resource for survivors of trauma. Given the lack of coverage of this particular facet of trauma in the mainstream media and the stigma historically tied to recovered memories, a project like this is long overdue. It’s possible to live with fragmented puzzle pieces and heal in the absence of answers, and it’s our mission to make others out there believe that, too.