What happens when the answers we seek are not what we find | Collier Landry | TEDxMansfield

As a child, Collier Landry lost his mother to a gruesome murder at the hands of his father. He then became the primary witness for the prosecution in the case. Though raised by a caring adoptive family, he had unresolved questions for his father that nagged at him into adulthood. One of his attempts to reconcile the impact of violence on his own life was to create a documentary about the case. That documentary brought more questions than closure. In his talk, Collier explores what happens when we can't get the answers we desperately need. Collier Landry is a Los Angeles based cinematographer, filmmaker, and keynote speaker. He is the Founder of "Don’t Touch My Radio," a full-service commercial production company.

As a formally trained musician and photographer, Collier segued into filmmaking as a means to creatively express and deal with his own traumatic story – that of the murder of his mother at the hands of his father when he was 11 years old – and to give a narrative voice to others in similar circumstances.

Collier is the co-creator and subject of A Murder in Mansfield, a documentary directed by two-time Academy Award Winner Barbara Kopple. Having played in over 50 film festivals worldwide, the film debuts on Investigation Discovery Network on November 17, 2018.

The film explores not only the collateral damage of violence and its traumatic repercussions but the beauty of human strength and resilience through seemingly insurmountable odds.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

I would like everyone here
to take a moment, right now,

and close your eyes.

Go ahead. Close your eyes, please.

Now, I want you to imagine
that you are 11 years old.

It’s the holidays ...

You are asleep in your bed,
dreaming away.

Okay?

Now open your eyes.

Those two sounds, those thuds,

are what woke me up
on the morning of December 31, 1989,

and those sounds were
my mother’s skull being smashed in

while she was being suffocated,

15 feet away from my bedroom.

I then counted 12 footsteps

as they slowly walked down the hallway,

and then they stopped at my door.

I knew at that moment
that if I had looked up,

I wouldn’t be standing here today.

Twenty-five days later,

police exhumed my mother’s body
from underneath my father’s new home

in our neighboring state of Pennsylvania.

Little did I know at that moment

that I was about ready
to embark on a journey

to discover what resilience is,

to turn my “why” into “what now?”

and to realize that sometimes
the answer that you seek

is not necessarily
the answer that you need.

My father murdered my mother,

and my life was changed forever.

Just as my mother’s skull was smashed in,
so was the innocence of my youth.

Now, instead of deciding which video game
I was going to play with my friends,

or which action figure
I was going to get at the toy store,

I was faced with
a different set of questions.

Being torn from my home, my dog
and my whole way of life,

I was wondering,
“Where am I going to live?

Will I get a new mommy and daddy?

What the hell is foster care?”

And most importantly,

“How did I get here?”

My father’s selfish act

turned not only
my own life upside down,

but affected an entire community,

the community of Mansfield, Ohio,

the audience that sits
here before me right now.

And little did we know that our tiny town
of 25,000 people at that time

was going to be thrust
into the national spotlight

for a trial that was
so horrific in its nature.

I testified at trial for two and half days

against my father,

as the key witness for the prosecution,

because I heard the murder happen.

And I worked with them
because I was angry, I was hurt,

but I was determined.

I was determined to put my father
in the one place that he belonged:

in prison for life.

Little did I realize
that when I testified at trial,

I was actually working through
my own trauma,

because I was going through an action -

because at that point in my life,

I felt like I had no control
over anything.

I had no say in where
I was going to live,

I was stuck in a foster care home
I didn’t want to be in,

I was separated from my family
and I was abandoned by my family.

But the one thing that I could do,
that I could make a difference in,

is testifying.

But one thing always evaded me,

and it continued to evade me
the rest of my life:

Why?

Why did my father,

my own flesh and blood,

commit such a horrific and heinous act?

And how could he so selfishly
turn not only his own life upside down,

destroy my mother’s life,

but destroy and affect
an entire community

that was so connected to this trial?

I struggled for the next 25 years
with this question,

so much so that I took myself
to Los Angeles, California,

after getting out of music school,

because I wanted
to do something with this story.

I had to do something positive with this,

because I was not going
to let this define me.

I went as far as to creating a film

with a two-time Academy Award winner,

and the result

was “A Murder in Mansfield.”

Now, I want to take a moment

to say that over that 25 years,

my father manipulated, deceived,

did everything he could in his power
to have me rescind my testimony,

to have me represent him
at the parole board

to help him get out,

anything that this man could do
to manipulate me,

and I always just wanted
my father’s love, right?

Because I had already lost one parent,

and despite as gruesome as everything was,

I wasn’t prepared to lose another.

Now, in the film’s final scene,

I confront my incarcerated
father in prison.

And finally, finally,

I’m going to get that moment,

I’m going to have that moment
where I can ask this man,

“Why?

Why, Dad?

Why did you do this?”

You know what?

In what is definitely
a very heartbreaking scene,

my father is unable to answer.

Hidden below the depths
of narcissism and self-protection,

he denies any wrongdoing.

It was at that moment that I realized

that I had taken back
the power in that room

by confronting my father
finally, and saying,

“You did this. I want to know why.”

But I never got the answer to my question.

So you know what?

I was a failure.

I failed as filmmaker,

I failed as a human being -

I never got the answer
to the one question that I wanted!

Then I realized something,
because like most things in life,

failure often disguises as success.

I realized that: what if
the answer that I was seeking

wasn’t really the answer that I needed?

Hmm, it’s an interesting concept, right?

You see, life will never ever
really give us the answer

to the whys that we want, right?

It just doesn’t.
Life doesn’t work that way.

So I thought, “Well, there’s got
to be something to this, right?”

And I thought, well -

When we go through a traumatic event,

human beings are natural empaths.

We want to know why, “Why? Why?”

Why did the gunman walk into a school
and shoot up a bunch of children?

Why did terrorists fly planes
into two towers in New York City

and kill 3,000 people?

Why did a husband
selfishly murder his wife?

So I did a little bit of a deep dive,

and I discovered what researchers call

the mirror-neuron system.

Now, researchers classify
the mirror-neuron system

as this group of cells in our brain
that lies in our limbic system

that is responsible for compassion.

It’s how we relate to one another.

So I thought, “Okay, so there’s
a little bit of science behind this.

So I’m not too far off base here.”

And then I come back to my why -

my why, my why ...

I just want to know why.

And then I really realized something.

“Why?” looks into the past,

but “what now?” ...

“What now?” looks to the future.

So, what if our approach
to trauma is all wrong?

What if instead of saying
“Why? Why? Why?”

and trying to understand
and justify in our heads

why these horrible things happen,

we instead say, “What now?
What are we going to do about it?

What can push us forward
and lead us through the trauma?”

And I argue that that is being of service.

That is doing something
that helps the greater good.

For me, creating my film,
when I set out,

I wanted to heal myself
and help one person,

because I could show in the film,

as plain as day, and be as honest
and open as I can for the camera

to show everything that’s going on

and to show that you can
really work through trauma.

That was my way of giving back
because I know that people would see this.

I had hoped to change one life,

and in fact I ended up
changing thousands of lives,

which is a really cool thing.

So anyways, back to this:
what if in our approach to trauma,

we lead ourselves through service

and that ends up pushing us
through the trauma?

See, I realized that my “what now” began
on the morning of December 31, 1989,

because I knew that my mother was dead,

but I knew I had to do something about it.

I worked with investigators,

I got into the courtroom, I testified,

and I had a whole wonderful community -

some of these individuals
are sitting in this audience -

that pillared me up,

that brought to me the resilience.

And my quest for resilience
continued then.

I was in high school,
I dove head-on into the arts,

because as a child,
growing up in this community,

we have always had wonderful art programs.

And art is what lead me through my trauma.

It lead me to create,

which helped me get to my “what now”

It’s a really wonderful place to be.

And that community continues to be with me
as I work in Los Angeles as a filmmaker,

because I have a different
group of friends now,

and a different community,
a more expanded community,

that also supports resilience

and that also understands
the “what now” of the world.

But don’t just take my word for it

because when you go through
these types of things,

you end up making other friends.

This is my friend James Gribble -
or Gribbs, as he likes to be called.

In 2008,

James set off on a life-changing journey
to travel the world for two years.

His first stop was
the African nation of Zambia,

where he was going to fish

for one the world’s rarest
and most prized fish to catch:

a tiger fish.

James arrived at this remote island
on the Zambezi River,

sat down on a stool and was dehydrated,

fainted onto sand

and broke his C4 and C5 vertebrae

and became a quadriplegic immediately.

But Gribbs didn’t …

didn’t say, “Why? Why?”

In fact, his father was a rugby coach,

took to his immediate rehabilitation,

his whole family rallied around him,

and James often said,

“You can’t feel sorry for me
because I don’t feel sorry for me.

I’m on my journey.”

And through doing that,

James had a passion, which was golf,

and James was determined
to get back on the links,

determined to rehabilitate himself.

So [after] tens of thousands
of hours of rehabilitation,

James partnered with a company in Germany,

and helped to bring to market
a device called

the ParaGolfer,

which put James back on the links.

Now, the ParaGolfer is designed

to help spinal cord victims,
stroke victims, get back and play sport.

James is also someone
who took his why, put it in the past

and faced the “what now.”

And the work that he has done
has been adopted by doctors and clinicians

in his native country of Australia

to treat spinal cord injury.

So when it comes to resilience,

it really is a team sport.

I wouldn’t be standing here
if it wasn’t for members of this audience

and the community that pillared me up.

I wouldn’t be standing here if it wasn’t
for the resilience of the arts

and me diving into that.

When I was a freshman at music school,

I heard a great quote,

and it was by Aristotle.

It says, “We are what we repeatedly do.

Excellence, therefore,
is not an act, but a habit."

Well, so is resilience.

I’m here to say ...

biography is not destiny.

You can be both the author
and the audience of your life.

Thank you.

(Applause)