In Utero Documentary: An Interview with the Filmmakers, Stephen Gyllenhaal and Kathleen Mann

WHY WE SHOULD CARE

Gabor Mat
Watch Dr. Maté discuss The Imprint in the film

“What we’re not recognizing is that people are parenting and conceiving and carrying and birthing children under increasingly stressed conditions. Increasingly, it takes two people now to provide a living in this culture to families. And they’re doing so in the context of less support because one of the ravages of industrialization and globalization is the destruction of the extended family, the tribe, the clan, the village, the neighborhood. Parents who are stressed have been shown not to be able to be as attuned with their infants and children as parents who are not stressed. Not their fault. Not because they do not love the child. Not because they’re not dedicated, devoted, committed. Simply because the stress effect impedes their ability to attune with their child…And that has an impact on brain development.” – Gabor Maté, MD, quote from In Utero

ABOUT THE INTERVIEW

CLICK ON THE GRAPHIC TO WATCH OR PURCHASE THE FILM NOW
CLICK ON THE GRAPHIC TO WATCH OR PURCHASE THE FILM NOW

In Utero documentary filmmakers, Kathleen and Stephen Gyllenhaal, discuss the film’s breakthrough year at film festivals resulting in its translation into ten languages and multiple awards, including the San Diego International Film Festival’s Breakthrough Documentary Award in October 2016.

The documentary is set to be released for on-demand viewing on October 11, 2016. In anticipation of the on-demand release, Kathleen and Stephen speak to some of the hardest questions they have faced from international audiences, including: Why is the film so dark? Should pregnant mother see it? Is it a pro-life film?

The filmmakers share the need to present the solid and multiple fields of science that all arrive at the same conclusion during the course of the film: womb ecology becomes world ecology.

Watch In Utero’s trailer at the bottom of this page.

ABOUT THE FILM

A cinematic rumination on life in the womb and its lasting impact on human development, human behavior, and the state of the world. Fetal origins experts, research scientists, psychologists, doctors and midwives, as well as examples from popular culture and mythology, collectively demonstrate how our experiences in utero shape our future.  In the year since its film premier at the Seattle International Film Festival, In Utero has been translated into ten languages and won multiple awards.  

View and download the In Utero Film and Resource Guide, created in collaboration with APPPAH and the filmmakers, here.

Visit the In Utero website to find more resources, including screenings, of the film at www.inuterofilm.com.

Read about birth psychology on Kindred, and use our PDF to share resources.

Discover more about birth psychology at the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health at www.birthpsychology.com.

LISTEN TO THE IN UTERO FILMMAKERS’ INTERVIEW


“How We Begin Is Who We Become”

In Utero Filmmakers On The Documentary’s Groundbreaking Science And Messages, Audio Interview Transcript

gyllenhaals-at-san-diego-with-award
Stephen and Kathleen Gylleenhaal at the San Diego International Film Festival accepting the Breakthrough Documentary Award in October 2016.

LISA REAGAN: Welcome to Kindred, an alternative media and non-profit initiative of Kindred World. This is Lisa Reagan, and today I am talking with the filmmakers of the documentary, In Utero, Stephen and Kathleen Gyllenhaal. In Utero premiered at the Seattle Film Festival in 2015 and over the past year has traveled to film festivals around the world. It has also been translated into ten languages and won multiple awards. Welcome, Kathleen and Stephen.

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: Hi.

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: Hi, how are you doing?

LISA REAGAN: I am so happy to have you both here. We did have a call last year and our readers can download or read that interview online, but you just were bringing the movie out and you weren’t sure how the audiences were going to react to it, so I look forward to hearing how the festivals and screenings went. But I would like to ask Kathleen if you would start us off with a little bit of an overview to bring anyone who doesn’t know what the film is about up to speed.

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: Sure, so In Utero is a feature length documentary that explores the origins of who we are and how we come to be who we are and it does that by looking, as you can imagine, the title suggests, at prenatal life. And we delve into a lot of research and we talk to a lot of scientists and psychologists and midwives and doctors and a bunch of people who all shed light on fetal origins, that is, what happens during our earliest time in the womb. The film really starts to talk about how the environment plays a huge part on how we are impacted at such an early early time in our development and that first environment, of course, is our mother’s womb. So everything that the mother is experiencing and going through emotionally and physically has an impact on us and that, you know, really brings us into some very interesting territory. I won’t go too deep into it because I’m sure we will talk more about it during this interview, but it starts to shed light on why the species is the way it is and why we are how we are in the 21st century. So the film begins to take on kind of a philosophical point of view as well as we look at the state of the world.

Why Is The Film So Dark?

LISA REAGAN: I love the film. I have been doing this Conscious Parenting Movement work for almost 19 years now and the film is a tremendous vehicle for the science that’s been around, as some of the presenters say in the film, for 50 years. But what you’ve done is you’ve brought coherence to all of these fields of science. There are more than one field presented in the film and you have made this amazing connection that is both profound and obvious between our origins in life and then as you say, the state of our planet right now. I would like to start there and ask about the darkness of the movie and the fact that it is presenting this problem and it is grounded in science, but it really can throw some viewers for a loop to hear this for the first time.

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: I’ll start and then, I’m sure Stephen will want to chime in as well. What I think is difficult for some people, but also very provocative for others, is that we’re saying womb is not this paradise. One of our experts in the film describes it that way. It is not the paradise that we’ve all been led to believe. It’s actually a very complicated environment that we start out in and we as a fetus are absorbing all of the stress and trauma that is going around the mother, you know, and the society around her, the culture around her. We actually come into this world with this sort of imprint that spans back generations. This is called transgenerational trauma. It is passed down to us. But of course, that’s hard for people to hear. But what we are trying to say is that once you can identify that this is what has been going on forever and no one has really identified and stated it, at least in my knowledge in a documentary film and once this becomes more generally acknowledged and accepted, then we can start to forge ahead with how we can stop this transmission of trauma from generation to generation and we can really start to turn things around and we can really start to heal and evolve as a species. So what I say to people who say this is kind of gloomy and dark, I say well, you have to acknowledge what’s wrong first before we can find the solution and so it’s actually a positive thing.

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: I think as we tried to figure out how to structure the film and cut the film, it was sort of like trying to help an audience understand and help ourselves even understand quantum physics or quantum theory. We have all lived in the Newtonian era where one plus one equals two, but what has really emerged over the last 50-60 years almost in tandem with the discoveries in this field has been the awareness of quantum physics, which is basically saying that everything effects everything else. So it is profoundly complex and almost as difficult to understand as when back everyone felt the world was flat because the world certainly looked flat and it all seemed to function flat, but it took a long time to understand that the world was round. This is the same kind of issue. It is a profoundly different way of looking at who we are because everyone I think believed, you know, it all started at birth. Now we understand it just takes a moment to sort of logically figure it out – well of course, the time that we were developing in utero is probably the most profound time and all of the things that effect that, for instance, genetics and this new field epigenetics, but if we just stay with the field of genetics for a moment, the genetics go back generation after generation after generation, so trauma from wars in the past have been proven scientifically on a molecular cellular level to have had an effect on the genetics of that generation and that continues down through this era now. So when we see people behaving badly now and when we see the state of the world now, we can begin to understand the causes of it. It is difficult news, but it is in a difficult place right now. It is in a dark place. That’s one of the reasons that this election is so troubling for so many people, but there is a cause. There is a way out. There is a way of resolving and I think underneath many people unconsciously, deeply feel hopeless. It is just hopeless, so just go on and live your life. This is really just saying, it is not hopeless at all. There really is a way through using science and through using psychology and through using all of the things that we now have at our disposal to make our lives not just survive, but that actually flourish.

Should Pregnant Mothers See The Film?

the-conscious-baby-ad-10-16LISA REAGAN: In the film, Thomas Verny talks about genes being the blueprint for the house, and then you have Carrie Breton from Keck School of Medicine saying, yup you’ve got your blueprint, you’ve got your genes, but the cells of the sperm of the egg are kind of scrubbed out before they unite and then during embryogenesis there’s this other clearing. I think this piece is important because some people will only hear we are inheriting all of this transgenerational stuff and we have no control over it. The message right here at this juncture of the movie is actually the body and nature intelligence does a great deal to prepare the fetus for wholeness and wellness; however, the other presenters that now come forward and bring out the epigenetics part, which is the environment, the womb. Are we going to have good experiences? Are we going to have bad experiences? We are hoping for more good than bad, but the culture that we are currently in, as Gabor Maté talks about over and over again, continually hijacks our bodies and our neurobiology and this doesn’t begin after birth, it begins at conception. This is the piece that people find profound because we want to believe that babies come into the world as unconscious blank slates according to the Newtonian model, because God forbid everything that’s been done to them up to this point, they actually experienced consciously. So let me just ask, because the film is dark, do you think pregnant mothers should see the film?

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: Well, you know, I’ve gotten some feedback that goes both ways. So when we’ve taken the film and we’ve done our answered questions and done Q&As and talked to a lot of people afterwards. I really feel it is almost 50/50. Some women say, come up to me pregnant and just thrilled that this film is there. They understand that it is tough, but they are grateful to have this information and I myself, having been pregnant during the making of this film and being hyper aware that all of the stress studies and all of the stress that impacts the fetus in pregnant women and so I had to navigate through all of that and I do understand, I was angry, I was frustrated. How do I… the irony was not lost on me. How do I get rid of this stress so I can be a wonderful vessel for my child? But, you know, learning what I learned helped me find some ways to reduce that stress and so I think it really depends on the woman, the mother, herself. I think it is up to her to decide. We had a midwife not long ago at a screening say I would never show this to any woman that I was working with, any pregnant woman. I thought, well, okay, that’s your opinion, but I would ask her, you know, these are the things that this film is going to lay out. You can even go to our website and look at the information. Maybe that’s less confrontational, but that’s really up to her. I say that again, based on the feedback that I’ve gotten from women who seemed that they’ve want to know and I wanted to know everything that I could know. I also feel that people will be able… well, I’ll let Stephen jump in about this as well.

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: Well, hey, I think now our little boy who was in utero during the making of this very very stressful dark movie, he is now 2 years old and I would warn people a little bit that he’s got a will of his own. He is very very creative. He is a handful. He is a full three dimensional really really amazing human being, so I can’t help but feel that the truth, even though it’s dark, seems to have played well with him. I guess ultimately it is the choice of the mother and people have to be very very careful. We live in complicated times. I do believe that the truth sets you free and that’s what this is about. The other thing that I would say is all of these quantum issues, trans-generational trauma, the environment in utero, how does stress work, how do the hormones work, going between the mother into the placenta into the baby, all of these kinds of things, we have to be incredibly forgiving of ourselves. You know, one of the things that makes me slightly weary about some of the new age people that I know and while I’m more inclined towards hard science is that there seems to be a sense that everything should be kind of wonderful. I don’t think that we’re at that point in the species. You know, you have a 2-year-old, you have a 1-year-old, you raise a child. You’re pregnant. It’s difficult, this stuff. But we should be… I think the key is to be unjudgemental, to be forgiving, to be open… I think it’s… for women to feel that they can watch it, that’s fine. They’re figuring it out themselves for the women and men who feel that they can watch it. That’s fine as well. We’re working our way slowly towards a very very exciting future. It really is evolution. That’s really what we’re speaking about is evolution. We’re right in the middle of that process. So I think it’s up to the mother and father. I’ll speak to the fathers. The one other thing that I would add is that being aware of the need for choice. We’ve been working on a shorter version, a 45-50 minute version of the movie that is more directed towards pregnant women that leaves out some of the harder pieces of information and also brings in some issues that are supportive because we understood this. So maybe one way of coming out… we need a little bit of money to get that version finished… it’s always with documentaries you need to get funding and we’re doing the best we can. But if we can get that version up and running, then maybe that is the first stage, and then you’ll watch… then if you feel comfortable with it, you’ll watch the second version of it.

LISA REAGAN: Right. So, when you say new age, what piece of it do you think is the new age part?

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: Well, I mean, I have grown up through the 60s and 70s and all of the new age kind of, I mean, it is something wonderful about the new age, we are speaking about, you know, you can even go so far as you know, the Age of Aquarius or whatever, which is sort of interesting, because I think as that’s been happening we’ve been moving in, as I say to quantum thinking. So I think it is essentially the new age speaks to a process of really evolution. I just think it’s maybe a little harder than we thought than we were younger and in some ways more interesting too.

Is This Film Pro-Life?

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LISA REAGAN: Okay, here’s another hard question about the film that people have right away and you all experienced this when you started to bring it out to film festival’s and that is, is there an ulterior motive here of a pro-life message? I know that’s not true because you address it in the film, but for the sake of our listeners who haven’t seen the film yet, how do you address that? How did you address that to audiences worldwide?

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: Well, we definitely had no agenda along those lines and, but we realized the minute you start talking about the fetus, especially when the development of the fetus and what the fetus is absorbing and we even say feeling in the sense of absorbing the stress and the other hormones and emotions from the mother. You know, you’re going to run up against this debate, of course. So we knew that we were walking into this. So we began asking all of our interview subjects to respond to that question of what do you feel about pro-life versus pro-choice in the context of your work? So there is a section in the middle of the film that addresses that. And all, for the most part, the majority just said this is just what we’re finding and we are not, we’re doing this outside of any kind of agenda, our research. Some of the interviews, some of the experts said, for now, we kind of need abortion because we haven’t figured out, you know, when you look at the unwanted child and all of the research out there that looks at the life of the unwanted child after birth is not a happy one. We haven’t figured out how to make all pregnancies wanted.

LISA REAGAN: Right.

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: We haven’t figured out a way as a society yet to really support pregnant mothers, support children, support life in such a way that we won’t have unwanted pregnancies anymore. So until that happens, abortion is a necessary thing.

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: Also, I think, this is an interesting film. When you make a film, you bring… Kathleen has brought herself to the film and her beliefs, and I have my own beliefs and supportive of that as well and you make a film and what can happen if a film really works and we have found this film really really worked is that it becomes something beyond even what your own beliefs are. One of the things we did very early, because we were very worried about this subject, we are very very pro-choice. We gave it to a couple of friends who are kind of experts in the field of media and one of them said something very interesting because he had some pro-life people look at it and pro-choice people look at it. He said what’s interesting is whatever you thought you were doing, the film seems to move beyond the existing paradigm, which is very conflict driven. It seems to move beyond these issues into sort of the next paradigm, which is not necessarily where we’re at, but the film seems to have moved that way. And frankly, to my surprise, and to our surprise, I think, so far, there’s been very very little conflict around this. People have not really confronted us about this issue very much. Now, as it goes into general release next week, we may start to get that. I think it’s a very interesting conversation to have and a conversation that I think we and certainly I welcome because I think just like in this election, we find ourselves in the old paradigm at war with each other. The next paradigm, the quantum paradigm, is going to really make everything be able to be included. Both sides have a point and both sides should be listening to each other because what really matters is not the right or the left, or pro-choice or pro-life, but what really matters is that fetus that’s developing there that’s the future. That future children and future generations, it’s the future of the species. That’s what I think the film really focuses on more than anything else.

LISA REAGAN: Well, I think you’re absolutely right. It does take you out of the cultural trap of pro-life and pro-choice, which is a cultural trap and because the movie is moving us towards empathy for humanity and empathy for ourselves as individuals, you end up in that place and now you are in a different paradigm. The cultural trap seems over simplified, unempathetic and unintelligent. So that is true. I would say anyone watching the film would come away with that. It is made very very clear.

So let me just say a couple of things about culture. Because I have found in my work over the years with parents, it’s hard to get people to see the context of their lives. It’s difficult to get them to look at transgenerational trauma or the culture that surrounds us daily, hijacking our neurobiology, but Gabor Maté is very good in the film and going to the core issue which is now we have two parents that have to work. We have no paid leave in the US. We have the highest maternal morbidity rate in the US. So it’s really important for adults who are considering bringing children into the world to understand there is context for this decision that you’re making. Can you say a little bit more about that? I know you just released the piece on imprint.

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: Stephen, do you want…?

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: Well, I think maybe what you’re speaking to is how does a woman who has a career, who has worked hard to get to the place or even now she may now be getting equal pay to a man, which is outrageous, but she has got a very good job. She is very effective, and now she wants to have a child, and all of the research is saying it is very critical that she around that child, bonding with that child from the time of conception onwards. How do you balance that? First of all, I don’t think it’s easy. I think, as with all of the things we are bringing up, it’s not easy. I don’t think you would talk with anyone who is a parent who says it is easy. The only people who imagine it is easy are the people who haven’t had children. But it doesn’t make it even remotely impossible. I’ve been involved with raising other children. I have two grown children who are very successful and their mother worked all of the time and I am seeing Kathleen working very hard as Luke is growing up and it’s been very clear to me that they have benefited from having a mother that has a full engaged productive life outside of raising the children, that it supports the raising of children. Now, the other piece that I would mention and I think that it is very critical is the father. That, you know, there is a change that has been happening very slowly and controversially. The father does not just go off and work all of the time. That, you know, that he’s also participating in that, supporting this process, and by the way, by the fact that two parents are parenting with two different ideas often has been proven scientifically to be vastly superior for a child from the very start that there can sometimes be more than one point of view. In our situation, of course, I’m always right, and Kathleen isn’t, but aside from that, you know, it’s kind of…

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: In your world, Stephen, in your world…

LISA REAGAN: Well, let’s take that a little… let’s take that even further and that’s back to what you were saying earlier, what you touched on, is where we are culturally right now. It seems the film is pointing to we have a population of babies. You know, it’s the Mr. Smith that’s in the Matrix up there that’s in a protectionist stand. So when you look at what is happening culturally now and after watching the movie, you see the protectionism is coming from basically a disrupted or undeveloped neurobiology it seems. Is that where you were going earlier?

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: I think that it is both neurobiology and psychology. The thing is, there are so many issues and so many different points of view about what is a human being, but certainly from a neurobiological point of view, yeah, there seems to be what is the neurobiological effect of trauma in utero or even trans-generational trauma on the fetus? What happens with that? Does this developing organism then split off from that trauma and then try and protect having to deal with that trauma? I mean, these are very complicated, almost quantum-like issues, which the film in a way we can talk about them here, but it is almost better to see the film and then talk about it afterwards.

Watch The Matrix Now
Watch The Matrix Now

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: I was just going to say like it took months and months and months, you know, a year and a half to edit the film, and that section on the imprint which we used The Matrix, the popular blockbuster sci-fi movie, one of our experts really reinterpreted and analyzed the film in terms of being plugged into not The Matrix, but an imprint which is passed down from generations. It tooks months and months even just to edit that sequence because it was so complicated and you said earlier Lisa we brought, there were all of these different fields that we sort of tied together and I just wanted to revisit that. I explained that with the exceptions of just a couple of people that we interviewed that knew one or the other interview subjects, these people were working all in isolation from each other in their own fields or sub-fields and they all arrived at this same general idea about the imprint. So one of the most challenging and exciting things about making this film was being able to tie that all together and in a way bring all of that together, in other words, bring all of these people together in the context of this film and build this community around, whoa, everyone discovered this at the same time from totally different angles. So that was really exciting. So back to what Stephen was saying, rent the film tomorrow, Tuesday October 11 when it comes out and watch this, because it’s really an amazing discovery that has not been unified anywhere else I think. It’s hard to describe it in simple language. But cinematically, I think we are able to capture it.

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: As an example, the fetus is not an intellectual construct. The fetus has feeling and an intellect as it is developing, as we as adults do. Film really primarily works best as emotional experience, as audiences having an emotional experience. There is an intellectual aspect to it. So there is a section in the film about the, with the Little Mermaid, the animated film the Little Mermaid and there’s a moment when this sort of monstrous mother-like figure rises out of the water and there’s the little mermaid and her prince I remember always feeling this is an emotional way, unconsciously sort of with an audience watching it to talk about the seeming force of the mother for a fetus. So it’s a way of not intellectualizing, but allowing someone to experience. I mean, you probably remember that section of the movie. It’s, it’s, one of the issues is you get the emotional experience of this rising powerful almost destructive mother. So that allows that feeling to go to the audience. The next part of it is to go, you may even feel that about your mother, but then you got to put in the very very important piece of trans-generational trauma because it is not the mother’s fault that this imprint happens that the fetus is imprinted with the mother’s negative material, problematic material. It is about the mother being, not even wanting to do it, but carrying the genetic structure of past trauma. But even as I try to describe it, I get frustrated, so you need to see the film, experience the film to begin to understand what is profoundly complicated when you first think about it, but it is really simple when you realize, oh the world is not flat, the world is round. It explains everything. It just takes a while to make that leap and the film is attempting to do that.

LISA REAGAN: I do think it does it beautifully. I love the pieces that you’ve incorporated in there. They’re very visceral. They can move the viewer easily into the places you want them to go, including with the alien movie that is literally visceral. Watching Sigourney Weaver give birth, as you said earlier, in this unwanted child segment. I should pause here and say to the reader, while the movie is complex and deep, it is also broken into sections that makes it easily digestible. You understand what’s coming next. Now they’re going to talk about the imprint. Now we’re going to go beyond the blueprint. Now we’re going to have the tales from the womb. So you can more easily go okay, alright, this is what we’re doing, which is how I had to watch it because I watched it a couple of times now and that’s great.

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: Thank you.

Will There Be An In Utero 2?

apppah-mondy-live-lecture-graphic-8-16LISA REAGAN: So let me ask you what you’re doing now? I know you’re writing for the Huffington Post and you have a couple of projects in mind for how to keep the momentum of the movie now that it is coming out on demand viewing, as you said. What is it that you’re going to do? Where are you going to take us next?

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: Well, I wouldn’t say it is so much now the momentum of the movie. It’s more the momentum of this movement, of this, which includes, you, your organization, people in Amsterdam, South America, Russia, Netherlands, all over the place. How do we get this new knowledge out into the world to protect this incoming generation and the generations to come and also to help people who are in pain and many people are, figure out why they are in pain. Because so much of it has to do with what happened in utero. So with that in mind even more than this movie, we are as you said, talking about In Utero 2. We are talking about cutting a shorter version of In Utero 1 to make it more palatable for those women who feel uncomfortable about facing that much material and we are also developing a reality TV show called Making Modern Babies which is going to take some of the experts we met around the world and have them work with four pregnant women as they go through the process. So all of those things are strategies. And then I think we are going to be moving towards those political groups that are involved with, you know, family leave in the United States and trying to have this country duplicate what’s going on in other countries and I think with the other countries have them expand it as well. Those groups would be doing that and we want to sort of be supportive of all of that. So those are sort of where we’re going.

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: I think one of the things we’ve learned and it has just been fascinating and wonderful, as we’ve been screening the film festivals and special events throughout the year leading up to our digital release, we’ve met more and more groups around the world who have actually kind of taken the film and then helped us promote it because they believe so much in it and these are groups that deal with not only, you know, midwives and doulas, you know and the pregnancy and birthing communities, but we have found more and more people dealing with adult trauma, so that is what Stephen was bringing up. Because the film really is mainly about trauma as it effects everybody, no matter what age and what interests us now coming back to this point of you have to bring up the problem first before you can bring up the solution is the natural sequel to this film would be a film that focuses on how do we treat this? How do we begin to reverse this? Because of our travels with the film, we’ve met some wonderful groups that have introduced us to more therapies that do go back to in utero memories, so unconscious memories that are still in the body before the fetus had a verbal intellectual context, it had preconscious memories and these treatments and these therapies go back to that time. And once that memory is unlocked and examined, the idea is then we can move beyond it. So the more we get to know these groups, the more the sequel naturally starts to form. So we obviously can’t do much until we get funding for that and everything, but that’s where we’re headed.

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: I would also add one last personal note in all of this. You know, we’ve both, but I’ll talk and speak about me, I’ve taken advantage of some of the therapies that we’ve encountered and you kind of work your way through this material and I think where I am right now in my life, I could have never have imagined 10 years ago having the energy to do everything we just discussed with you plus also still very much working in the Hollywood community. I do TVs. I have a movie that’s coming out. Kathleen and I are going to be doing a movie together, a narrative film as well, plus we’re raising a toddler, and it looks like we’re actually going to get another dog, which I think is nuts, but we’re going to do it anyway. So what we’ve encountered in this as well is a slowly releasing ourselves from our own trauma in utero, facing it, the bleak bleak elements of it, and I can speak about my own life in various times, it’s been very difficult, but now finding the energy to not just have a happy life because I do, but also a productive life. That’s, you know, a very important piece in all of this. It’s not just an intellectual exercise by any stretch of the imagination. It’s living real three dimensional life on planet earth at this moment, as troubling as it is, it’s a very hopeful time to be alive.

LISA REAGAN: I do really appreciate you bring that piece up. In our pre-call, I warned Stephen and Kathleen that my job as an activist is to tell the story and to try to help everyone move towards the New Story, as we call it on Kindred, which is a different paradigm. None of us are there. We are all in the space between stories. But the hope of healing and what it really offers when we shrug off the old story and the old skin and the old narrative is real. I wrote about this last month when Joseph Chilton Pearce died. If it hadn’t been for my encounter with his work when I was a young mother, I was very hopeless about where am I and how am I supposed to navigate this realm, that I couldn’t anticipate and I did try to prepare. I waited until I was 33 to have a child. But then once I was there, I needed somebody to give me the blueprint, the foundational piece of this is the cultural piece, this is the biological imperative, and here’s what possible. Here’s where we are capable of going as human beings if we have the support that we need and especially in utero. I appreciate so much both of you. I appreciate you coming on and sharing where you’ve been and where the movie is going next and you said, not the movie, the movement. So, is there anything else that you’d like to share with our listeners before we go?

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: Well, I’ll just want to reiterate that after a year of showing the film around the world, as you said, it is coming out online on iTunes, Vimeo, Vudu, GooglePlay… I am forgetting a couple. Xbox. On October 11. So you can rent it or purchase it there and you know, we have a very active Facebook presence, In Utero film, and also on Instagram and Twitter, so you know, the website as well, inuterofilm.com is a great place to go to see where all of this information kind of converges. But the online social community on Facebook is a very dynamic place where people are coming and talking and sharing their stories. So we’re going to be focusing a lot on that as well as we move forward. So we hope that people can visit those sites.

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: Be truthful and honest and express what they feel they’ve learned and they believe and whether it’s in agreement or not, that’s the conversation that we all need to have right now. Huffington Post, by the way, is the other place to look for us.

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: Yeah, we’ve been now a couple of months now been blogging every 1 or 2 weeks and going further into details about the science behind in utero and also kind of extrapolating where some of that information, you know, can take us when we look at politics or, you know, when we look at society. So, it’s an interesting forum as well to explore all of the stuff that In Utero brings up.

LISA REAGAN: And you can go to inuterofilm.com. Is that right?

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: That’s right. Or the Facebook.com/inuterofilm

LISA REAGAN: Well, thank you all so much and I look forward to having house parties. I should mention that we do have a film discussion and study guide coming out through Kindredmedia.org and APPPAH and APPPAH is at birthpsychology.com because we want to help groups who want to delve deeply into the film to not only do so with some cheat sheets available for them, but to have resources and that will continue to add to the movement as it goes forward and we identify there are a lot of them out there now. We don’t want to leave people hanging, so we want you to see what’s available and then we look forward to following the Gyllenhaal’s as well in their posts and the movie bits that are coming forward. It’s very nice. So thank you both again.

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: Thank you Lisa. It’s been a pleasure.

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: Thanks a lot.

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