Daniel: The HBO Documentary and the Story Behind It

Chapter One: Baby Brother

I was three years old the first time I held my brother as a newborn. I’m told that I had been asking for a brother with such insistence that my parents, who hadn’t planned on having another child so soon, were eventually persuaded by me to try sooner. I was so certain of the coming of my brother that I told my parents, before they left for the hospital: “If it’s not a boy, then it’s the wrong baby. Don’t bring it home.”

Luckily for us all, they had a boy, and I learned at a young age the power of my own determination, or as others may call it, manifestation. When he arrived, my whole world felt complete, and it stayed that way for a long time. I was barely more than a toddler myself, but I carried him everywhere, the way you carry something that already feels like yours to protect. We were close straight through childhood.

Chapter Three: The Pact

I moved to Los Angeles at eighteen; Dan was fifteen. In my last year of college and Dan’s last year of high school, we started having these long-distance calls. These were the days when talking a couple of nights a week could cost over $250 a month, so after the first month we tried to limit it, but it was clear we craved the closeness we once had.

We shared the lyrics to the songs we loved, lots of which were in the first few albums of Ben Harper and Dave Matthews. Daniel sent me his spoken word pieces; I sent him some of mine (that were so clearly not as awesome as his). We talked about the homeless feeling we’d both felt at times since the divorce, and we made a pact: we would be each other’s home. Our homes would always be open to each other.

We started talking about seeing the world. We were both afraid to travel, and penniless to do so, but a determination to see the world was brewing in us.

Chapter Five: Taiwan

We worked as English teachers in Taiwan for a year, and gained the confidence to start traveling on our own, all around Asia and Europe. I then went home for a year and Dan stayed in Taiwan. After a year, I was missing my brother and the warmth of Asia, so I stayed in Daniel’s living room for a couple of months while I resettled in Taiwan.

We were not easy on each other, siblings often aren’t, but we had so much fun together. We had an unconditional love and loyalty that flowed between us like a roaring river, and we shared values and friends, but we lived at completely different speeds. He was willing to take risks I never would have. He was passionate, sometimes explosive, and my instinct to protect him as the older sibling was never welcome.

After those first two years living together, one in LA and one in Taipei, we had done it. We were very close, and never wanted to live together again, in the most lovingly healthy way. But we were still each other’s homes, and our living rooms stayed open. We were the only two people alive who carried the same story, and there is a particular kind of freedom in knowing someone will always catch you and, for the most part, even understand you. This let us both take chances, move to new places, try on new lives. There was always at least a couch to land on. I landed on his more than once, and he, the bigger risk taker, landed on mine many more times.

Chapter Seven: Still Held

For years after his death I felt like I could fall so easily. I felt like everything was unstable and untrustable. Then I began to make his footage into a film, weathering so many disappointments, mistakes, huge learning curves and more. Although it took eleven years, I finally saw it released into the world. Though it will never be the same, I began to trust I might not fall all the way down, and with a healthy mix of caution and awe, I’ve allowed myself to feel held by the miracle and wild adventure of my life and myself.

Through my own personal work journey I discovered my own patterns established in my early childhood. I learned how to listen to my intuition and actually follow it, and most of all how to hold myself as I feel all the feels that us humans do, but often haven’t known how to feel them. Later, I trained in the modalities that brought me the most peace and transformation. I rebuilt my own inner stability, creating a resilient safety net within myself that has been the key to navigating life as it comes and allowing beauty to constantly show up, even in the harder times.