A new film is set to explore the healing power of a relationship between a woman and her parrot. In her new documentary Parrot Kindergarten, Jen Taylor-O'Connor says she escaped a "cult." Ultimately, her pet birds helped her heal from the pain she felt.
According to Taylor-O'Connor, she escaped a "cult" as a teen. She's referring to the Institute in Basic Life Principles. Speaking with People, she discussed her new documentary. Director Amy Herdy also explained why she chose to tackle her story.
"When I dove into it, I realized, well, this isn't a story about a woman having been in a cult. That's a piece of it, but it's a small piece of it," Herdy told the outlet. "This is a story about her connection with her parrot and the tremendous journey they went on, and her attempts to prove that her parrot was capable of intentional communication."
A Woman And Her Parrot
"It made me very quiet and made me extremely introverted," Taylor-O'Connor said. That's when she decided to buy a parrot named Ellie. The bird ultimately helped her heal.
"I didn't want her to experience what I had felt from my training center experiences, which is you just keep it all inside and then it bubbles out in harder ways. I wanted her to always have a voice," she said. "So, that's how it began to spur me into 'What does it look like for her to communicate? What does it look like for other animals to communicate? What does it look like to give them agency and continue to push and push those boundaries so that we're really almost on equal footing in our relationships with animals?'"
"I have a lot more love, compassion and patience for people in the sense of a human story than I did before," she says. "I was upset and unhappy and a little bit angry about the things that had happened in the past and working with the animals, you just kind of learn that everybody's doing the best they can with the tools that were given to them, even the ones that are hard. So, while we all have choice in our lives and we make decisions every day about our conduct, I think that it helps me to forgive people who had hurt me in the past."
