Filmmaker Statement

After one chat with the doctor, I used hormonal contraception for over 12 years: from the age of 15 to 28. I got to know myself as someone who is always low-level depressed, with incidents of real depression - until I stopped taking hormones. Within a month, not only did the intensely black thoughts disappear, but eventually also the low-level depression that I thought belonged to me. I felt different on a fundamental level. And I realized that we talk too little about this. I then started to speak to other people with a uterus, and found the profound experiences with hormones to be widespread. We are our hormones - for better or for worse. Although it seems common knowledge that hormones impact us, there hasn't been any real change in how they are prescribed to (pre)pubescent girls. This film is a way to open an important conversation and share experiences - both good and bad - with hormonal birth control.