Response to Movie:

Healing Neen takes viewers on a journey to places and subjects that most find too difficult or uncomfortable to fathom. For two decades, Neen hustled on the streets of Annapolis, Maryland, desperately feeding an insatiable crack addiction and racking up 83 arrests along the way. Rapes and beatings were a routine part of life; home was underneath a bridge or inside the locked cage of a prison. In 2004, pregnant and incarcerated for violation of parole, she was provided the opportunity to go to a community trauma, mental health and addictions program. Feeling safe for the first time in her life, Neen confronted the haunting childhood memories that she tried to numb with drugs: filth and chronic hunger, sexual assaults by neighborhood men, routine physical and mental abuse dished out by her drunken mother. Realizing for the first time that she had been a victim, she began to heal and reclaim power over her life.

You answers should be brief/concise – just as if we were discussing the movie together in a classroom setting.

1. What did your group think about the movie? Please be specific and provide some specific examples of things/events that impacted you.

2. Can you identify at least two social contexts (biological, psychological, and/or social) that we have covered in class that helped you to understand Neen’s life story?

3. The movie refers to the ACE (adverse childhood experiences) Study – briefly discuss how this relates to Neen’s life and to what we have covered in this first module of SWK/WGS 326.