Time To Live Again
Time to Live Again is a story of childhood trauma, healing, and resilience through art and music.
What does it mean to live again? Can one overcome their traumatic past to make the best of their hopeful future?
This short documentary profiles Nadia Ackerman, a singer, artist and small-business owner. Originally from Australia, Nadia moved to New York and now sells her art and music from her shop Natchie, in Dumbo, Brooklyn.
In this film, Nadia opens up about the sexual abuse she suffered when she was a child, and how through therapy and perseverance, she was able to heal herself and turn her past into something positive. Her songs and drawings are thematically centered around childhood, and contain whimsical characters and settings. There are, however, some heartbreaking aspects to her art - and that sadness becomes even more apparent once you understand Nadia's past.
This is a story of hope, told from the perspective of a true survivor. Nadia's past is painful and sad, but she has been able to spin it into a positive light by channeling her feelings into her art. She hopes to become a mentor to young girls and boys, and to encourage them to speak up about abuse.
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When I think about this girl in this age,
it's very strange,
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because I don't really have any memories,
which is actually very common.
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If I've had trauma
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at a certain age,
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usually don't have
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a memory of it.
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[MUSIC]
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[LAUGH]
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Sit.
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[MUSIC]
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My name is Nadia Ackerman.
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I'm a singer and a songwriter,
and an illustrator and
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a business lady [LAUGH] entrepreneur.
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I grew up in Sydney on the northern
beaches, so I grew up on the ocean.
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[MUSIC]
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There's four kids, so
it was a very busy household.
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You come home with your first artwork, or
your first project, and it's like yeah,
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that's great, Nadia.
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You've already had siblings that
have come before you that have done
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what you're doing already,
maybe even better than you.
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So, I grew up trying harder.
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I've been wanting to, for a while now,
get into portraits of people
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[MUSIC]
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We're all made up of tons of different
parts of our personality and
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different ages of ourselves.
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[MUSIC]
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Growing up as a child,
I don't really have any memories or
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any, there's no feelings.
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I can't really put a finger
on how I felt then.
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But I definitely remember teenage years,
just darkness, depression.
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And I didn't think anything of it, because
I thought that's what everyone felt like,
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so I didn't say anything about it.
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I didn't speak up about it.
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To top it all off, at 17, my father died.
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His death just started
stirring everything up, and
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brought a lot of things to the surface.
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[MUSIC]
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At 21,
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I had my first flashback of something
that happened to me when I was six.
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[MUSIC]
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In that moment, I knew was the first time
that I really knew that I've been abused,
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and I just didn't know what to do with it,
and
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I just put it away, I was,
okay, that's not happening.
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I think the flashback was sort of
the lid coming up off a tiny bit.
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And once that lid came off,
then everything started coming out,
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slowly in spurts.
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[MUSIC]
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My night terrors began.
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And I would wake up screaming so loud.
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The night terrors were kind of my secret.
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I knew it was related to the abuse.
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But what happens when you start realizing
things is that you just don't want to
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admit it.
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I kept going on with my life.
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I was a singer.
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When I was 23, I moved to New York City.
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It was getting harder to hide.
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I was 25 when I woke up one morning,
and I wanted to kill myself.
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I am done with these feelings.
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I am done with feeling like this.
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And I woke up and I thought, this is it,
I am just going to do it today.
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And there's always been a part
of me that has stopped me,
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a larger part that says hey,
don't do this.
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Go and get some help.
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Go and talk to someone.
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I actually just took myself to the doctor,
cuz I didn't know where else to go,
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what else to do.
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I just walked right in and said,
I need to see a doctor right now.
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Straight away I went, and
started working with a psychotherapist.
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We worked together for about a year.
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One morning, straight out, she just said,
were you sexually abused a child?
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And I just said to her, yeah.
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She was like, it's been a year,
and you didn't tell me.
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And I just said, you didn't ask.
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[MUSIC]
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Dealing with it and earning it has
been very difficult for me, and
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very strange, and
just very good at putting things away.
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She sort of had some kind
of dissociative disorder.
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She recommended a doctor that she
went to school with at Columbia, and
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who specializes in a therapy called EMDR,
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which is eye movement deprocessing and
reprocessing.
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And basically,
what it does is you reprogram your brain.
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With the trauma, your brain has a pattern,
almost like a track in the brain,
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where this trauma lies.
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And you can actually trick the brain and
change the pathway to change the outcome,
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and change the feelings
associated with that trauma.
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[MUSIC]
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When I finished my first session,
I walked out of there on my own, and
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I felt like she had taken 3,000 tons of
weight off my shoulder, in one session.
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It was unbelievable.
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[MUSIC]
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The thing about trauma, and
the thing about healing is that you,
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you spend your whole life
running away from it.
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And in order to heal,
you have to actually walk through it, and
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nobody, nobody wants to
walk through it again.
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[MUSIC]
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I thought I knew what happened.
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We worked with the flashback memory
that I had, and I believed in
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every ounce of my being that it
was my childhood friend's brother,
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I believe that, for some reason,
that was the answer I had.
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It was him.
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So, we did a lot of work on that,
processing and working through it.
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And years into it,
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I finally got the courage to
want to reach out to him.
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[MUSIC]
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I found him on Facebook, and
my heart was pounding out of my chest.
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And I wrote to him, and I just told him,
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I know what you did to me, and I just
wanted to let you know that I know, and
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that it's not okay, and I'm going to give
it back to you so you can carry it now.
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He denied it, big time.
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Which I thought, well,
of course you're going to deny it,
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as if you're going to say yeah,
sorry about that.
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I just got to the place where I was,
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I don't need you to tell me
whether you did it or not to heal.
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Two years later, my childhood
friend reached out to me and said I
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have wanted to tell you this for
a really long time, but
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I've not, don't know how to say it,
and I know who abused you.
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What she said to me was,
it wasn't my brother,
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it was my father, and it didn't
happen once, it actually happened for
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three years, and
he abused her as well at the same time.
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So, it was the two of us for three years.
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So suddenly, what I'd been thinking
was one time, and I was six,
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was actually no, you were six, you were
seven, you were eight, you were nine.
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And the only reason it
stopped was they moved.
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[MUSIC]
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I don't know what he said to me,
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I don't know what he threatened me with,
and
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when you're a child, and
you don't understand,
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when you have somebody big and strong and
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scary controlling you,
I don't really know.
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I don't really know why I went back.
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And I don't know why I
didn't say anything.
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I feel like a lot of survivors
struggle with shame and guilt.
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It's what keeps me quiet.
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When I started to take the steps to
heal was when I took my power back.
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And decided no,
the rest of my life that I have left,
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this last half I want to live free and
free of him, and
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free of the past, and
free of all those memories.
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Fast forward a year later,
I had about 365 songs on my hands,
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I just started writing every single day.
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It was an outpouring of years of
silence and years of not speaking.
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So, I went about making my first record.
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And then I went about
making my second record.
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I started seeing my songs as drawings.
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One thing turned into another,
into another, and
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I went from greeting cards to print.
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To markets, to opening my own store.
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And here I am today with Natchie,
my own brand.
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It's my nine year old self
who's doing all these drawings.
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It's my nine year old self
who's writing the songs, and
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she was silent for all those years.
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And it's really is
amazing situation where I
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have built almost a world for
the ages of myself that are abused,
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the seven year old,
the eight year old, the nine year old.
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I've built a land for them that's safe,
that nothing can happen to them.
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And they always get to play all day.
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[MUSIC]
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One of the great things about having
the store is my connection with people and
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strangers.
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Hey.
Hey.
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How you doing?
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Great.
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I've met a lot of
really amazing children.
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One child in particular,
her name is Allie, and she's 11.
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She's a budding young artist.
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She's really smart and really switched on.
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When I first met her, she's like,
hey, welcome, and in open arms.
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That shows a lot of character already
once you first meet a person.
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These are really good.
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It's a lot of, a lot of charcoal.
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And this,
these are a little doodles I did.
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I have a whole bunch of ideas.
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I should do this, and then I kinda
move on, and then I forget about that.
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It can be a real problem for a lot of
artists where they don't finish anything.
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Yeah.
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So, it's a good, it'd be a good
habit to start getting into.
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Obviously, I got a special place
in my heart for young girls, and
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to be able to mentor them means a lot
to me, and it's very important.
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[MUSIC]
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She's amazing.
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She's a pretty cool
superstar to look up to.
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Before, I guess I thought I
never had anything to talk about or
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anything to share, but
that's absolutely untrue.
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I've got a lot to talk about,
and a lot to share.
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And I'm starting to wake up to that,
that I have a lot to give.
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Everything happens for a reason.
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I'm a really big believer in that.
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And as sad, and as horrific as my past is,
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I wouldn't be the person I am
today if it didn't happen.
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There was years and years of being in
that tunnel, and not seeing anything
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and wanting to give up.
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And I'm just so glad I didn't,
so glad I didn't.
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And you just gotta, you gotta keep going.
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You gotta keep moving forward,
no matter what.
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No matter what, you have to keep moving,
that's the key.
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[MUSIC]
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[MUSIC]
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Come on love,
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it will be all right.
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Don't give up without a fight.
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[MUSIC]