NAKEDJEN

Tag: reviews

  • Her Name Was Renee Nicole Good

    Her Name Was Renee Nicole Good

    This Did Not Have to Happen

    (and this is where I am placing my attention today)

    Her name was Renee Nicole Good.

    She was a prize-winning poet.
    A legal observer.
    A woman who spent her life taking care of other people.

    Yesterday, she was killed while doing exactly that.

    She was not armed.
    She was not threatening anyone.
    She was not looking for a fight.

    She was there to witness. To observe. To make sure that what was happening was seen and recorded and not erased. She was doing the quiet work that keeps the rest of us honest. The kind of work that rarely gets thanked and too often gets punished.

    This did not have to happen.

    I can’t stop thinking about how familiar she feels to me. A good life, but a hard one. A person who stayed tender in a world that rewards armor. Someone who showed up, again and again, even when it cost her something. Especially when it cost her something.

    We are living in a time when violence feels ambient. Like weather. Like background noise. It seeps into places that are supposed to be safe. Churches. Schools. Sidewalks. Courtrooms. Places of worship. Places of care.

    And our nervous systems are wrecked by it.

    If you feel jumpy, exhausted, angry, numb, or scared, you are not broken. You are responding appropriately to a world that keeps asking us to metabolize the unbearable and then move on as if nothing happened.

    What makes this loss so heavy is not just that Renee is gone. It’s that we’ve been taught to accept this as normal. To respond with sorrow but not with change. To call it a tragedy instead of naming it for what it is: the foreseeable result of choices we keep making.

    This is not about politics.
    It’s about how we value human life.

    It’s about whether we are willing to protect the people who show up with notebooks instead of weapons. Whether we believe that witnessing, caregiving, and accountability deserve safety. Whether we are brave enough to say, out loud, that this way of living is not okay.

    Renee was not reckless.
    She was not naïve.
    She was not trying to be a symbol.

    She was doing her job.
    She was doing her calling.
    And she should be alive today.

    So here is my very human, very non-partisan ask:

    Slow down.
    Pay attention.
    Refuse to normalize what is breaking us.

    Talk to your people.
    Check on your neighbors.
    Support the caregivers, the observers, the poets, the ones who show up with open hands instead of clenched fists. Choose de-escalation when you can. Choose care when it’s available. Choose to notice.

    This is where my Love Is Still Beating practice comes in.

    Every day, I’m committing to naming ten real, verifiable good things that happened in the last 24 hours. Not to deny the grief. Not to look away from the fire. But to remember that love is still moving through us, even now. Especially now.

    Today, one of those ten is this:
    People like Renee exist.
    And they matter.

    Say her name.
    Honor her life by refusing to accept her death as inevitable.
    Let your heart stay open, even when it hurts.

    This did not have to happen.
    And we are allowed to demand a world where it doesn’t keep happening.

    **********

    Here’s what you can do, today:

    Pause before you scroll.
    Check on someone you love.
    Offer steadiness instead of outrage.
    Support people who choose care over force.
    Pay attention to what keeps your heart open.

    This is how we push back against a culture of violence.
    One regulated nervous system at a time.

  • Come See Me In The Good Light

    Come See Me In The Good Light

    Before Sundance officially cracked open this year, those of us who volunteer were ushered into a whisper-level pre-festival screening. A special showing. A quiet gathering in the dark. The kind that makes you feel like the universe nudged you in early on purpose.

    The film was Come See Me In the Good Light, directed with exquisite tenderness by Ryan White, anchored by Andrea Gibson and their life partner, Megan Falley.

    From the very first moments, something inside my ribcage shifted. I held my breath through the entire film. Even while simultaneously laughing and crying. When the lights came up, I turned to my sister—still stunned and breathless—and said,
    “This is the most transformative documentary I’ve ever experienced. A gift. Ten stars. This film will change people.”

    A few days later, at the official Sundance premiere, the room rose in a standing ovation that felt like a wave with no shoreline. The entire film team was there, filling the theatre with a kind of love and presence usually reserved for sacred spaces. It was electric and gentle all at once—poetry in the shape of applause. Andrea sharing a poem right off the of their head. Pure light and magic.

    Then they came to my green room.

    All of them.

    Andrea. Meg. Ryan. Tig. The whole magnificent constellation that shaped this film.

    I tried to be my usual Sundance faerie self, the one who’s seen it all for 25 years and floats around like it’s no big deal. But let’s be honest:
    I was NOT cool.
    Not for one second.
    I was a happy, messy, overjoyed fangirl puddle.
    I hugged everyone twice.
    I spoke too many feelings and used way too many words.
    I told them the truth:
    “I’ve been at Sundance for 25 years. I have seen hundreds of first screenings. This film changed the shape of my heart. You need to know that.
    You also need to believe me when I tell you, right now, that it will also save lives and win all the awards. Thank you for sharing every bit of both of you with all of us.”

    They were kind. Gentle. Human. We laughed. We shared. We breathed the same gratitude-filled air.

    And then—my favorite Sundance moment of all—
    they all came back.

    Later in the week, the whole team quietly returned to my theatre to sneak into another film together. Not their own. Someone else’s. Not for applause. Not for press. Not for spotlight.

    Just to be people again.
    To sit in the dark with strangers.
    To watch a movie like regular festival-goers, shoulder-to-shoulder, no fanfare required.

    And I helped them do it.

    I tucked them into that anonymity.
    Found them a path in the chaos.
    Gave them the dignity of being unseen, while knowing—
    they were deeply, reverently SEEN.
    Not by cameras.
    Not by crowds.
    But by community.
    By Sundance itself, which always saves a quiet corner for the artists who give us so much of their hearts.

    That—right there—is the heartbeat and essence of Come See Me In The Good Light.
    The sacred act of being witnessed.
    The tenderness of being ordinary.
    The courage of showing up exactly as you are.
    And the miracle of having someone love you through it.

    Ryan White’s direction allows Andrea’s language to land where it always lands—inside you—and Meg’s love to hold the shape of the whole film. It is a portrait of devotion, mortality, artistry, partnership, and the radical act of telling the truth beautifully.

    If you do nothing else this week, please:
    watch this film on Apple TV.
    Let it remind you that love is brave, art is necessary, and being human together is still the point.

    Ten stars.
    Every single one glowing.

    xo,
    nakedjen