A young woman spends the night at a laundromat struggling to wash out a blood stain after an abortion.

Director’s Vision for ‘Cycle’

The day the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was released, I was teaching a room of 16-year-old girls how to paint. Not unlike the 50-year precedent, we annihilated the lesson plan to instead wipe away tears with dancing and Disney. How could I console the fears of these young women whose decisions over their own bodies are no longer theirs to make? I thought of our mothers who marched. I thought of my friend’s pregnancy scare at 16. I thought of the guilt and shame taught to me in catholic school. But mostly, I thought of anger for the loss of bodily autonomy for any person with the capacity for pregnancy; people with no access to safe abortions, people whose lives would be at risk, people who already have children, people who are too young, people who were assaulted, people who have the human right to choose. All of this pain exacerbated by stigma and hate. But like our mothers, sisters, elders, and leaders, who stomped and shouted for all of us, now we must scream.

One way to scream is through stories.