SHAZAM and a Home for Billy

@IMDB

This month I presented a discussion on Foster Care to other geeky therapists like me- Foster Care's systematic problems and some of the ways I explore trauma work through narrative therapy.

I'll probably never do that again. One of us has some pretty severe social anxiety when attention is on me (I am one of us). And, it was HARD to work on. Reviewing facts and stats on the mess that is Foster Care over the years was heavy and painful, especially for someone who has aged out of state custody. Even if it was 24 years ago now. Even if none of the stats were a surprise.

(Shout out to the new book Torn Apart by Dorothy Roberts for those interested!)

And I've come a long way since then. (Shudders, remembering being 19.)

But I do REALLY like how Warner Brothers handles the story of Billy Batson in the

@cinemablend

2019 movie SHAZAM. Billy, a 14-year-old foster kid, gets released from a residential program and placed in a new foster home. He has a history of running, but he seems kind of tired of it all. Some of us have been there, haven't we? But that doesn't mean he's interested in trusting, or loving, anyone new. He's convinced that his Mother is out there looking for him, a feeling many of those who have been in foster care (and many adoptees, our trauma cousins) can relate to. Sure, some kids do eventually find out that their parents had been searching for them, and the system had done their family wrong the whole time (which happens more than most non-fosters realize). But a percentage of those out there, as I did, find out they don't ever want to go back. But I'm getting ahead of the story.

Billy entered foster care when he was a toddler- when he was separated from his Mom at a Carnival. Billy spends most of his childhood blaming himself for the separation, convinced he had wandered off, and she hadn't been able to find him. Have I mentioned how easily children are often willing to take on the blame, rather than see it in their parent? That drive within us to love our parents is natural and runs so deep, so when a parent might not be healthy and does harmful things, children are often much more likely to place the blame on themselves, rather than accept their parent is not a good parent.

Billy spends the next ELEVEN years bouncing from placement to placement in the system, often struggling with running. Learning to gradually shut himself off from connection with others, as abandonment becomes second nature- both the being left and the leaving. Internal walls built for defense began to fear the vulnerability of being loved. Of fearing things that last.

@artunews

So it's no doubt that when Billy finds himself on the Vasquez's doorsteps, to him

it's just another place and another group of people he will likely leave. So when he starts to connect with Freddy, and feels a sense of empathy and protectiveness for his foster sibs during a bullying incident at school, he begins to struggle. Struggle with feeling too close, struggle with the idea of needing others, really struggle with the concept of what family feels like.

Because when you don't know what safe belonging feels like, it can very often feel uncertain.

But the Universe pulls Billy into a crisis of identity. This is Billy as SHAZAM's origin story, he gets drawn into the Rock of Eternity

@comicbookmovie

through the subway while running from the Bullies he had stood up to for his foster siblings. There he faces the Wizard before him, a defender of the Shazam power, who selects Billy as his new Champion. Albeit one he isn't sure is perfect for the job. And Billy is endowed with powers he can't fully figure out on his own.

@slashfilm

So, rather than take off from the Vasquez's like Billy had planned, he and Freddy begin to explore and understand his new powers. Billy can change into a fully grown adult (played by the fantastic Zachary Levi from Chuck), with super strength, near-vulnerability, electricity manipulation, and flying. He and Freddy get a kick out of these new powers, helping people some, but also taking advantage of the benefits. For once, Billy stays around long enough to begin to build some actual closeness with his foster siblings.

But then, as always, there is a villain. There's always a villain, isn't there? Life can't

@denofgeek

just be easy for anyone. Just as Billy faces Sivana, who wants Billy's Shazam powers, we all tend to face some villains in our lives. Some of us, pretty harmful ones too, leading to separation of families, and trust, and safety. And some of us went from villains to more villains in a system that harmed us even more as well. Not all of us found a family like the Vasquez's.

Rose and Victor Vasquez had been foster kids once too. They understood it more than some well intending foster parents do. They didn't pressure Billy to feel or do or become anything other than what he was in the moment. And they were repeatedly there for him- even when some others might not be. They didn't give up on showing Billy that some people could be counted on.

@dcextendeduniversewiki

Eventually, Billy learns that he cannot defeat his villain alone. This origin story

required him to rely on the connections he had recently been making with this newfound and tentative family he was in. It required him to trust and to offer a shared space of vulnerability in the power he had been granted. Rather than keep them out of his new powerful defense he had acquired, he invited them in, and allowed connection, family, to become the defense by which they protected the world and themselves.

@thefilmmagaine

And Billy faced his greatest fear, that his mother hadn't been looking for him, but had actually left him.

Now, whether or not you left care and went and found your family and it has been a successful reunion, there are still lessons to be learned here. One family doesn't replace another. Who said you can have too much love? Too much safety? Too much belonging? Billy needed to learn that. And so do some of us. Even those of us who find our parents had their own traumas to unpack, and some may have never managed to, instead passing those traumas on to us.

Life offers us spaces of connection. And when like Billy, or you or I, we have experienced harm or abandonment on repeat, we can often find ourselves closing in our own walls to run away and protect ourselves. Or maybe we lash out in a fighting stance, so we can hurt someone before they hurt us.

But there is a far greater defense to be found in the safe and loving families we surround ourselves with. Maybe that's not your first family, maybe it's not even your foster or adoptive family. But we can surround ourselves with our chosen family, those who have been there consistently for us, loved and protected us, and have never given up. And those we offer the same to.

@geekatarms

It took me decades to build that after aging out of a broken system. There were years I thought that safe love would never exist. Don't give up. Those relationships don't build as quickly as a movie makes them seem. You are worth the time it takes to cautiously observe people's nature and patterns, to assess their safety in your life.

Just make sure you have a key to that lock on the door of your heart where you can let someone in when you are ready. So the Universe doesn't slam you through a subway portal into the Rock of Eternity like Billy. Hey, it could happen. 🤷‍♀️

Keeping my eye peeled on the upcoming BLACK ADAM (released in October 2022! Already have family tickets!), and the follow-up SHAZAM! FURY OF THE GODS released March 2023. Maybe, just maybe, you'll find me back here posting again.

@dcextendeduniversewiki