I'll never forget the first time I saw the film, Billy Elliot. It was 9 years ago, and I went to see it in a rundown theater in Albuquerque. I was with my Spiritual Teacher, who happens to be Irish. I hadn't really heard anything about it, but we were in the mood to see a movie, and the idea of Irish, dancing, and youth were all appealing. As we watched the movie, I really enjoyed it, found it quite funny, and – by the end – pretty inspiring. Yet, it was what happened after the film that really turned out to have a dramatic impact on me that I have come to use as a teaching piece for my clients and workshop participants ever since.
When my teacher and I started walking to her car after the show, I noticed that I was beginning to feel a bit sad, like tears couldn't be far away…and they weren't. While she went into a grocery store to pick some things up after we left the theater, I suddenly found myself sobbing uncontrollably. I was, to say the least, totally bewildered. Fortunately, though, one of the earliest skills I learned when I was training to be a coach was tracking, like a tracker in an old Western, the source of any emotional upsets or distress. So, I wracked my brain, while still wearing out my shirt sleeve, to see if I could remember when I started feeling any kind of sadness or melancholy during the film. What then came to me immediately was a scene near the end of the film, where Billy's father and brother have come to put him (at age 11 or 12) on a train to go live his dream…of going to Ballet School in London. In this scene, Billy's father lifts him up off the train platform and tearfully embraces him. I had felt the twinge of sadness and tears coming then, but for whatever reason, its seismic impact had to wait for the grocery store parking lot.
What I came to realize was that seeing the genuine love of that father for his son reopened a deep, deep wound I had thought I'd come to terms with around my birth father. [The story, and its full impact, of my father and I is part of a series I'm doing on my other blog, Spirited Musings (see the link on the top of the page above this posting).] Suffice it to say here that the core of that wound was abandonment. That night, out of the blue, in a Von's parking lot, I was getting to experience another level of healing the gaping tear that my father's leaving our family had created in my heart. Getting to release more of that old energy, that old grief, was very satisfying (I highly recommend the practice). But, that was only the beginning of what Billy Elliot had to offer me, and many others. It was several years later, when I had gotten the inspiration to start using films in my Parenting Your Inner Selves workshops (now the Raising Your Spirit's Voice workshop) that I watched Billy Elliot again. This time, there was a trove of new gifts and treasures I hadn't noticed before.
The first thing that was quite a revelation for me was realizing that this film really was the only film I'd found (still true, to this day) that shows someone healthfully making the journey from being a child (born magical, alive, passionate, and sure of himself) – with all of his essential gifts and qualities challenged and trashed by life circumstances beyond his control – to a man that is whole with his life's purpose still intact. Now that, in and of itself, is nothing new in films. What makes Billy Elliot so rare and valuable is it's the only movie I've seen, with the possible exception of Slumdog Millionaire, that shows the journey from childhood magic, to loss and tragedy, and back to magic and divinity again all the way through to his adult life. Put another way, I can't think of any other movie that depicts a wounded child, inner and outer, making it to adulthood with his Spirit so intact and unadulterated.
When you watch the film carefully, what you will see is a blueprint for how to face family dysfunctions, tragedy, and disappointment without having to lose your core self and self-esteem. You can pay attention to how easy it is for us (particularly men, in my experience) to cover up devastating heartache under bravado, workaholism, feigned lack of interest, and rage. You can carefully observe the relationship between Billy's Dad and Billy's older brother, Tony. The rage that Tony takes out on his father and Billy looks suspiciously similar to the rage that Billy's father takes out on life in general. It shows the way in which energy patterns get unconsciously transmitted from one generation to the next, leaving a pathway of dysfunction that no child ever asks for and no adult easily gets to heal. You can see how a deeply hurt heart (the province of the Divine Feminine) gets falsely "protected" by a bulldozing, un-Divined Masculine energy. You also will likely notice a key theme and source of childhood/adolescent dysfunction centered around what happens when you are not following the pack in your family? What happens when all eyes are on you to be a certain way, and your heart is clearly guiding you to go another? Most importantly, perhaps, you will see the healing power of not giving up your dream, or your personal and spiritual integrity, and noticing how healing that is for those watching you do so.
For this middle-aged man, what this film has repeatedly given me, time and time again, that's been an even greater gift than the insights I've referred to above, is a visceral reminder of the joy that I had, as a boy, in dancing, taking life one day at a time, dreaming, using my imagination without any limitations, and loving out loud…no matter what. It never fails to connect me with the boy who still lives inside me…not just the boy that still carries the scars of his wounds and hurts, but also the boy who has never stopped dreaming or seeing the best in people, even when they can't. This has been the gift that I've been giving to myself and others my whole life. Once upon a time, I had forgotten that. A young Irish boy in a film helped – and continues to help – me remember the cost of forgetting.
