My Flesh and Blood

Susan Tom, a single mother has 2 birth children and 11 adopted children with special needs. The challenges she faces with patience and perseverance are unimaginable. Faith was burned as a baby, Xenia was born without legs, and Anthony has painful genetic disease called Epidermolysis Bullosa. Most troubling of all is Joe, featured right with Bipolar Disorder and Cystic Fibrosis, who has been passed from home to home and is consumed with rage and hatred towards his siblings. Your gut reaction may be, what a nut house, why would one person take all that on? But the family seems to find strength through their united chaos and Susan Tom proves to be a woman who has been truly called on to fill this role, even when one of the children unexpectedly dies.

I stumbled across this documentary on the Passionate Eye this evening and only caught the second half. I was moved to tears, and soon I dissolved into a full out puddle of sobbing. Really, it was a fun experience. I had just spent the evening with some really frustratingly narrow minded people and needed to cleanse through a good cry. (At one point this evening, someone declared that Brokeback Mountain was an example of moral disintegration - let's just say that I was so angry, I was literally shaking and had to leave...well I tried to leave, but I didn't know the way home, so I had to wait)...ahhh, so to come home and watch something so truly about love was wonderful. It wasn't just my frame of mind that made this a great documentary though, it's won many awards, including two at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival.

If you work at a library, buy it and if you visit a library, request it!

"I really love documentaries. I really believe truth is stranger, weirder, more bizarre, wonderful, frightening, and poignant than fiction," says Jonathan Karsh, director of My Flesh and Blood (the link leads to a pretty good interview with him).

Watch the trailer on the Chaiken Films website.