There needs to be the support and help around you, even when you may have an unhealthy home environment.

I also think there is a wisdom and strength in that generation [of our parents], in terms of getting through difficult times, and there is a stoicism in the face of challenges that I greatly admire.

I'm in full support of that technique [meditation] , and what David Lynch is doing. It's very important.

Resilience is not just a complimentary individual quality, but something that is built. And you build it through a number of things in your life, part of it being social fabric.

In documentary films, being able to be a storytelling and embrace film as an art form - while being very clearly connected in trying to help make the world a better place - is really important to me.

The word 'resilience,' in our American culture is closely aligned with 'grit,' and that word implies a certain moral fiber that says you can survive and thrive in any adversity, because you are strong - but that message of strength is both disqualifying and problematic.

When you introduce these tools into the community, they can be adopted and implemented at the local level - and the results have been powerful. We have to ask the questions, how do people survive in poverty and other challenges of traumatic childhoods? And, until we fix this underlying problems, how do we help people in the meantime?