When a teenager youth named Jo (H.E.R.) is not believed for a life story she inherits wisdom-wise from her grandmother Lola Fatima (Dolly de Leon), she stealthily goes to where a car is parked and removes what is useful mechanically for building a rocket. Her best teenager friend Raissa (Liza Soberano) is an aspiring astrophysicist genius. She builds a rocket from the reallocated car miscellaneous.

Meaning the car belongs to a teenage bully named Reynaldo who will no longer drive around not believing thus mocking Jo’s creative reality based on Filipino folklore. Yet the antagonism catapults a goodness found in lifelong female friendship. Of the two friends Raissa is seen from Cal Tech’s perspective as an exceptional college student to accept because she built a rocket. Life’s difficulty detritus often inspires us. Years later Jo shapes her creative reality into a book’s narrative where she gives a reading while her still best friend Raissa listens intently in a front row audience seat at Cal Tech. Each woman working her strengths, as gifted and rocketed over time, encouraged in their lasting friendship.

In theaters now is the movie The Forgotten Island (2026) telling a fiction story to remind ourselves in a modern nonfiction era how friendship is always the point. During the film’s rolling credits, dozens of real-life photos of contemporary people in friendships are shown over the rocket course of lifetimes. Shown in the movie is an ancient Polaroid camera printing paper photos instantly to remind Jo and Raissa how their best night on a glorious island had celebrated. Their memories have been swiped gone through a character called Memory Demon or Manang (Lea Salonga). A fiction Polaroid, a nonfiction Polaroid, art imitating life and life imitating art are the friendship snapshots shown on a theater screen. In the film credits real-life friends are youthful in one photo and years later still connecting in another photo as older adults.

The story’s thematic center propels once Jo gets the phone call. Her parents are not returning for her from America. She is now establishing her home in the Philippines, with her grandmother Lola, who reminds her that friends are family. Jo decides Ryssa can be her forever family-friend. Inherited on Ryssa’s side of the friendship is a penchant for karaoke gifted generationally from her father. When Jo and Ryssa portal travel to a mythical Nakali island turned real, a wild-adventure night has a karaoke platform on which they are singing Journey’s song lyrics to “don’t stop believing, don’t ever lose that feeling.” The movie is an anthem for girls growing into women to never stop believing in themselves, the recalled feeling to be empowered daily.

At the plot’s core is Memory Demon, she who has forgotten how to be empowered. Rather she labors a dog-human character Raww (Dave Franco) who lures island dwellers into her cave where she steals their memory like with Jo and Ryssa. The movie keeps a plot twisty when Jo capitulates to Memory Demon allowing an exchange: she’ll hand her memory over if Memory Demon allows Raissa to go freely on her way to college. A battle royale ensues in glorious animation movie style with an ending where Memory Demon now wears Jo’s vibrantly colored high-top sneakers standing at the cave’s entrance ready to exit for the first time.

A strategic gift to walk in Jo’s brave shoes for even Memory Demon can take determined steps into her own light out of the cave’s darkness. And while a vicious female vampire slayer terrorizes the island, an engrained character to the island’s lore, she has her purple gem rock necklace returned, a memory restored to end her theft of an authentic life. She has her strength back for flying on decisive wings rather than destructive.

This morning upon awakening I read a selection from a meditation book. Mary Casey wrote Each Day a New Beginning, Daily Meditations for Women in 1982. I’m reading the 40th Anniversary Edition published in 2022. Four million copies have been sold as of that year. A book reading statistic that exists because women often encounter familiar patterns over the decades of time lapsing. Today’s October 23 reminds us “how burdened we became, as little girls, with the labels applied by parents, teachers, even school chums.” Truthfully so with school classmates and teachers and principals having influence on Jo and Raissa.

Casey describes that “try as we might to forget the criticisms, the names, they linger in our memories and influence our self-perceptions as adults” (322). Watching this movie The Forgotten Island by directors Januel Mercado and Joel Crawford is vital for families who are raising daughters, who are raising sons, who have parents recognizing their influence on the youth they are raising. When I encouraged my family to go see The Forgotten Island, I was tired.

On a Sunday in which I could have been idle and resting (powerful, too), my intuition guided me to continue a cinema effort. My teenager son Darien, who recently achieved 16 years old a few days ago, was reluctant. Yet I had seen the movie’s trailer showing strong female characters. I had a lesbian sensibility to go anyway. My “younger” brother, who is 60 years old while I am 61 years old, joined as well. All of us seeing the movie together is creative method to continually strengthen our shared conversation on how empowering women look. And all-inclusive since diverse characters are created throughout the movie.

Reflecting on last week’s movie The Kids Are All Right I keep a framework that my being a lesbian Mama has social influence everywhere I gratefully go. Casey concludes in today’s meditation, “Our own thoughts and words, our own labels can become as powerful as those of our youth. It takes practice to believe in ourselves. But we can break the past’s hold on us.” What I discover in cinema are characters who are showing inspiringly how to reinvent an empowered life, a womanly life, a lesbian divine life.