***A note about our film…

It’s important to me that people (especially parents) understand we made this documentary in the early part of our journey and that our intention at the time, was not to teach parenting, it was to make people aware of the profound emotional and neurological impact trauma has on a child and the extremes some adoptive families were living, trying to help their child build a healthy life.

Like many families, we were just becoming aware of the special needs and lasting impact trauma has on a child and family unit.

We were in extreme crisis, we felt alone and isolated and to be honest, at that point in our parenting experience, we’d have likely stood on one foot while eating popsicles and flapping our arms like chickens, if someone told us it would help our child and stabilize our family.

After all, nothing in the realm of “normal” parenting had worked to accomplish that so far.

We shared our journey to help our own family members and other families, on this alternate parenting journey, understand what it feels like to be or have a child who’s terrified to connect and is unable to trust or have a relationship with even a primary care giver.

Our film isn’t perfect, there are many things I’d change about it, many things I would do differently as a mother back then too. We were still in “deer in headlights” mode back then. Now, I have a far more diverse set of parenting tools and a deeper understanding of what it means to be a trauma-informed, relationship, compassion, and brain focused parent and how to meet my children’s very different special needs.

Having said that, this film has been a big part of our families healing too, especially Faith’s, and I’m grateful for that. I am proud we made it, because it has helped many people understand what families like ours face. Faith still asks that people who care for her see the film, she is proud of it, she feels it helped her release some shame and that has helped people – that is so important to me.

I ask that families NOT watch My Name Is Faith through the lens of “treatment”. The film is not about treatment at all and there is no magic formula to eliminating trauma’s impact. There is higher function, there are skills for regulation and building resilience and there is relationship building and connection making and repair when we mess up.

There were some great things to come out of our experience at therapeutic camp and some not so great things to out of the experience. Just like every treatment experience so far, we went into it to learn and discover new tools, we took from it what worked for our kids and left behind what didn’t. We believe that’s the best a parent can do.

My husband and I believe it’s imperative for parents to deeply educate themselves, and build a diverse toolkit of skills for parenting children with developmental trauma based special needs. We use a lot of very different tools now than you see us using in the film. We wish we’d known then what we know now and we advocate for and teach the newer, brain based, compassionate tools we have now with every family and professional we know.

Parents are the most important advocates for their children and each child deserves a parent expert to stand in the gap for them and to help be a vehicle through which higher function and healing can occur.

We hope you can relate to our family and our journey.

Maybe you are not a parent, but have been touched by early trauma directly or you know someone who has been forever changed by it.

Maybe you have a friend, family, or know a community member parenting a child from a difficult beginning… I hope the film helps you understand what that family is facing and that it calls you to action to help in even a small way.

Everyone knows “It takes a village” to raise a child, people who adopt children with trauma based challenges are often parenting with higher intensity and with less support because communities don’t understand how to help.

We hope our film inspires you to do what you can to stand in the gap for a family, as they stand in the gap for a child in need.


Thank you for your interest in our film, and for a limited time, we’re allowing public streaming access via this page, as we finalize the platforms for streaming the film like it’s 2020, instead of like some gorilla filmmakers only know how to do it.

IG: @xparenting