A Little Out of This World Movie about a Big Coming Home... To Yourself

Back home, I didn’t fit in. I thought Earth was the problem, but what if it’s me? – Elio

Well, I like you and you seem fine to me. – Glordon (from the Pixar movie, Elio)

Recently, John and I and our younger son, two of our gkids, and young friends decided to see the animated film, Elio.  We went to see it primarily because one of the kids is an almost six-year-old named Elio who highly recommended the Pixar movie. He wanted to go with us to see it again.

We were a bit late getting into the theatre, but when we got there and looked up on the screen, we saw an imaginative boy with an upside-down steel colander with coils and wires attached to it on his head. The boy is holding a ham radio and seems passionately desirous of finding aliens… AND is intensely longing to be abducted by them!

Elio, we find out, doesn’t fit in. He stumbles through his days like a misfit in the world, misunderstood by his peers, disconnected from his aunt (it seems his parents have died and he’s ended up with an aunt who doesn’t quite understand her own feelings); he’s sometimes rude and becomes the target of bullies.

Pixar seems to pick up on the universal issue of trauma and loneliness and feeling like a misfit.

When actual aliens abduct Elio, he’s ecstatic.  He makes many friends, especially a young alien friend named Glordon.

At last, someone wants him. Sees him. Thinks he’s important. That's when I noticed our son and John taking an opportunity to snooze, but it brought me to attention.

I started thinking about the work of physician turned trauma whisperer, Dr. Gabor Maté.  Maté has spent a lifetime listening to stories like Elio’s. Stories of children who learn to hide their real selves to stay safe. Stories of boys and girls who feel too much and are told to feel less.

Stories of adults who keep trying to earn love the way they once earned approval—by pleasing, performing, or pretending. Maté has, according to some, democratized trauma.  He believes it is pretty impossible to live life, especially in Western society, without experiencing trauma which he calls a disconnection from our authentic selves.

However, people deal with trauma differently.

In his book The Myth of Normal, Maté writes:

“Trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you.”

That quote has become Maté's signature quote. You might want to read it again.

Elio’s trauma isn’t just the death of his parents or the bullying at school. It’s the way he learns to shrink himself. To live behind a mask. To turn away from Earth and gaze longingly at distant galaxies, not because he wants to explore, but because he wants to escape.

And haven’t we all, in our loneliest moments, dreamed of escape? Going to another place where people get us.

But here’s what Elio—and Maté—so beautifully remind us: healing doesn’t happen by running away.

As we gathered around pizza later and shared our favorite moments from the movie. The youngest one, named Elio, thought it was when Elio, in the movie, found a friend. But eventually we all agreed on the most impactful moment. It didn't directly involve Elio, but his friend, Glordon and Glordon's father.

Glordon is a “child” – but imagine a lovable larval sort of wormy insect with no eyes and a mouth full of sharp teeth if you can (see the second image way up the page), whose father is Lord Grigon, a fierce warlord ruler with a big, tough carapace that functions like gigantic, impenetrable armor.

Throughout the movie, Glordon is pressured to follow in his father’s footsteps, to suit up, toughen up, and become a warrior too.

But then comes this quiet, astonishing scene. Glordon, while trying to help Elio, puts himself at risk, his body starts freezing. When the father sees the situation, he slowly removes his carapace, his armor, and lays it aside. He bundles Glordon gently in his arms. For the first time, he is soft.

And in that safety, Glordon finds his voice.

“I don’t want to be a warrior,” the child says to his father, trembling.

There’s a long silence. The father looks at his child—really sees him—and says, “I may not understand you. But I still love you.”

Gabor Maté says:

“The essence of trauma is disconnection from the self. And the essence of healing is not just uncovering the past, but reconnecting with the present—our bodies, our feelings, our needs.”

In that moment, Glordon reconnects—with himself, and with his father. And it all happened not because the child fought harder, but because his father laid down the armor - made it clear that he loved his child and that his child was safe to be himself.

But that taking off the armor is the one thing we’re often too scared to do even with, perhaps even especially with, those who are closest to us. (I remember research and actually talking to the psychologist behind it... because the research was so incredible, about people diagnosed with serious cancer who would not change their lives even though they were totally out of whack with their desires because they were still trying to please a father or sometimes a spouse. For example, a man who remained a lawyer even though he hated it because it pleased his father. The researchers felt this inauthenticity figured in prominently with their illness. )

For me, Elio is not a little a sci-fi story. It’s a coming-home story. A coming-home-to-yourself story. What does that even mean? It means reconnecting with and accepting your true self, including your thoughts, feelings, and needs, and living in alignment with your values. It's about shedding the expectations and conditioning imposed by others and embracing your authentic self, recognizing your unique qualities and worth. It involves self-compassion, self-awareness, and honoring your needs, both physical and emotional. 

It’s also a reminder that kids like Elio and Glordon are everywhere— look around. I see children and teens who feel lost, unsure of their place, trying on different identities like oxygen masks. Boys who hide behind hours of gaming… say nothing. Girls who scroll and scroll through social media, Tik Tok, and YouTube shorts, aching for someone to see behind the filters (consumed with how their bodies look and their personalities - too short, too fat, too tall, to thin, too dumb, too quiet) .

Grown-ups, too—busy and brilliant and burned out—afraid that if they stop performing, no one will love the real them.

But what if, instead of rushing or numbing or pretending, we got curious about what hurts?

What if we practiced compassionate inquiry, as Maté teaches—asking not “What’s wrong with you?” but “What happened to you?”

What if we didn’t need to be abducted by aliens to feel seen?

What if we could say to each other the most radical thing of all: “You’re not weird. You’re not broken. You’re human. And you belong here with all the rest of us humans experiencing life."

The good life, as it turns out, is not lived out in galaxies far, far away. It starts right here, with honest connection, courageous vulnerability, and the willingness to come home—to ourselves and to each other.

Here’s what I think Maté would say to Elio and to those of us who sometimes feel lost and lonely and looking for our place in the universe at different times in our lives.  

You are already enough.

You don’t need to become someone else to be worthy of love. You just need to become more fully, more kindly, more bravely...you.

I’m not recommending that you see the movie, perhaps a clip (like the one I've provided a link to above which I definitely DO recommend - I hope the image sticks in our minds for a very long time) will do. However, the message of the movie is huge for us all.  We don’t need to run away.  We need to come home, take off our armor – especially with those close to us; maybe we will or won’t understand each other, but we can always be loving and compassionate toward both ourselves and each other.

How might we journey together to The Good Life by understanding the importance of coming home to ourselves and to authentically communicating and living in alignment with our needs and values?

Now here is where I choose to go down a little rabbit trail. By now, if you are a regular reader, you know that I often bring personal experiences, science and researcher, and spirituality and religion to the blogs. That's where's I am going now.

What also struck me in this movie is the super masculine images we often give to fathers and leaders and how that can block us in many ways. It can block us as we consider how to effectively parent and how to effectively lead AND it can block us spiritually. I appreciate the efforts in the last few movies I have seen to endow men also with nurturing qualities which seem, according to research, good for everyone including good for our workplaces. It's also good for our images of God.

We. in various religions, despite the many images of God available to us in our own scriptures, seem conflicted about how we think about God - powerful and controlling or loving and nurturing? It can make a difference also to our ability to "accept God." Here's what I mean.

My mother, who was a Christian psychologist and therapist, among many of her roles, was also a hospital chaplain where I grew up in East Tennessee. She was called late one night to come to the hospital - a terminal man was having a religious crisis which the nurse explained. He was "trying to accept Jesus as his Savior and finding it impossible." Actually, the real reason she called is the man was creating a big ruckus. Yelling, throwing the Bible against the wall.

When my mother got to the hospital she saw a frail, irritable looking youngish man trying to read the Bible with disgust on his face . Mom said gently, "I hear that you are terminal and that you would like to accept Jesus but you are having difficulty."

He replied through gritted teeth, "Yes, ma'am."

Mom didn't start giving the man religious advice. Instead she said, "Tell me about your daddy."

The man's eyes widened as he looked at Mom. Perhaps he was deciding whether or not to tell this woman chaplain the truth. "My pa was a sonofabitch. He beat us and he beat my ma. We hated him. I was glad when he died."

My mother paused. Then she simply said, "Jesus is nothing like your daddy." The man wept in my mother's arms.

The next day he was found dead with a peaceful look on his face. The Bible was open and laying on his chest.

My mother told me this story the day after it happened. After I said something indicating what an incredible story it was that she was sharing, Mom said, "I thought it was too early to tell him God was a black woman."

That was just our little inside joke because a movie, The Shack, had come out featuring Octavia Spencer as God. It really rattled a lot of folks in the Bible Belt who had a rigid image of God as an old stern looking white man with a long white beard who lived in the sky.

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