Sometimes a film moves you to the core and gives you brand new appreciation for your ability to walk, to feed yourself, to go to bed, to work. Even gratitude for the fact that your organs are in the right place. And sometimes a film can show you what a woman is made of and the capacity for human resilience. Don’t miss the documentary States of Grace.
Dr. Grace Damman was a nearby neighbor and close friend of a close friend. So I was familiar with her tragic accident a few years ago and as a result told almost everyone I knew to stay on the right lane when crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. I had also heard about her through Isabel Allende’s memoir, The Sum of our Days, where Allende recounts Grace’s impressively open-hearted decision to adopt Allende’s granddaughter who was born addicted to drugs from the mother’s severe addiction. The infant was not given much time to live, yet Grace and her partner received her with open arms.
Even knowing all this, the documentary brings the story to life in an intimate portrayal that only a close friend would be able to film. Equally inspiring was Grace’s motivation to live her life as it unfolded after the accident in front of the camera. During the screening I attended last week, she shared that she wanted to help medical professionals understand more deeply what it means to be a patient. Grace had been a pioneering doctor who founded the first HIV/AIDS hospital for poor people in San Francisco. Now as a patient, she realized how important the healthcare worker’s inner well-being was. “I could tell right away as they walked into my room whether they were happy or not,” she says in the film. “If they weren’t, I would just pretend to be asleep until the next one would walk in.”
Without spoiling the end for you, she now against all possible odds works to address this. You have to watch it. And especially if you work in Health and Wellness.
The screening coincided with the opening of the innovative moveable barrier installed on the Golden Gate Bridge this week, to prevent anymore devastating head-on collisions like hers while enabling the lanes to be adjusted to traffic flow.