On the Path of Healing

A Talk with Gisela Sanders Alcántara, Mexican-American Filmmaker / TV Producer & Editor / Disability Activist

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By Zoe Zhang, Molly Yan, and James Tian

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The air in the highlands of Mexico City is thick, carrying the scent of earth and the distant, vivid urban hum. Surrounded by mountains, this was the world where Gisela Sanders-Alcantara grew up. Gisela is a Mexican storyteller, television producer, educator, and disability activist. Her story begins in Mexico City, where she was born and raised. Later, she moved to New York to continue her education and pursue her passion of storytelling through film. Through exploring her past, helping teens express themselves, and understanding her disability, Gisela discovered her real purpose—healing herself, others, and the earth. 

 

Healing Through Storytelling

 

Gisela’s first film project –Yo Soy Alcántara – took her back to the mountains of her childhood. Through this personal film about her upbringing, and how her family changed and dispersed, she explored the relationship of family and the individual. She retraced her steps and the journey of her family, from her grandparents’ 13 children to her 34 cousins, and explored her mother’s struggles as a single mother in a Catholic family. Understanding her family and her past through storytelling was an especially healing process for Gisela. It was the first time she confronted members of her family who had been violent towards her mother, “The camera really gave me the power to approach them,” she explained, “and ask questions that I had never asked before.” Personal films gave her power. 

 

However, when considering narrative’s potential with audiences, Gisela pointed out that people are trained to tell stories in a linear tradition – beginning, middle and ending – which narrows creative freedom. But, some stories could have a different shape. So, Gisela hopes that the next generation of filmmakers could break the structural mold and explore new ways to tell stories bravely. As a result, she is now gradually moving towards the field of education.

 

Gisela and her team set up a workshop in Bushwick, New York, a neighborhood known for its vibrant Latino community. This workshop provides the opportunity and access for teenagers to learn filmmaking. There, Gisela met children bravely grappling with their Latino identity, immigration status, and family separation in their works. The workshop provided a space where they could not only depict their struggles but also their stories of overcoming them. 

 

Healing From Disability

 

Similar to her mother’s parental experience, Gisela’s motherhood was also filled with obstacles. When Gisela’s son was born, she noticed how different the world seemed through his eyes. The diagnosis of her son’s autism and her daughter’s ADHD inspired Gisela to wonder if she might also have been born disabled. Gisela talked with professionals and, after living her whole life unaware of her condition, was ultimately diagnosed with ADHD. After confronting integral questions about how to understand disability in her life and the lives of her children, she determined: “Disability is an opportunity to sit down, to look at your body, at your mind, at your emotions, whatever your disability is, and just reflect deeply about what's going on with you.”                                          

 

Although Gisela had come to embrace disability as a natural part of life, she still found herself overwhelmed by the pressure of raising a disabled child while, as she said, “trying to fit into the society.” The weight of these responsibilities, along with the sense of isolation, led to an increase in anxiety and neglect of her own well-being. This unhealthy mental state eventually manifested physically, resulting in frequent panic attacks with one even landing her in the emergency room. The incident was a wake-up call, leading her to realize the urgent need to change her lifestyle.

 

Healing Through Voz Esencial

 

After the emergency, Gisela tried various forms of meditation to help relieve her anxiety, but none seemed to work for her. Eventually, she discovered Voz Esencial, a practice introduced as "a prayer to spirituality." As she immersed herself in the practice, it became her medicine – no longer did she need to reach for a pill when she felt suffocated by darkness. Instead, she learned to breathe, to vibrate, and to reclaim her sense of balance. Meanwhile, the practice gave her more than just calmness. Through vibrating and chanting, she became deeply attuned to her surroundings – not just recognizing the existence of nature, but truly sensing its aliveness: “Kind of like realizing that I was part of something bigger than me, right? That I was just a minuscule part of something… that I have input, that I'm part of something.” With that awareness, she found both humility and power – the understanding that, though small compared to the vastness of the world, she was still capable of shaping it.

Through this practice, she not only found personal solace but also began to see how voice held the power to heal. As she shared her experience with others, she realized that the act of guiding her students toward their own voices was, in turn, healing her as well. As Gisela deepened her practice, she learned that healing was not about erasing imperfections, but about embracing them: “Embracing disability because we are not perfect, and we will never be perfect. And it's great that we are not perfect.” 

 

On the Path of Healing

Healing, Gisela discovered, is rooted in awareness – of the self, the body, and the world. Understanding what nurtured her and letting go of what no longer served her became essential to that process. Healing, after all, is not about curing pain or erasing disability, but about embracing these obstacles as integral parts of the human experience – it is about movement, about constant change, about adapting without losing oneself.