When she was approached about participating in a documentary about You Tube performers, Princess Shaw thought nothing of it. She had been singing on You Tube for years and had built up a respectable following. The documentary, Introducing Princess Shaw, found its way to Netflix. In this episode, Shaw opens up about how excited she was when her You Tube videos were noticed by an Israeli music producer and then his filmmaker friend. She admits that she was going through a deep depression during the taping of the documentary, but still recorded because she saw it as important to her career. She also trusted the filmmaker and music producer to present her story in a way that would inspire others. Shaw is unabashed when she talks about revealing on film that she was a survivor of sexual abuse. She tells the truth about her mother’s involvement in the abuse and denial of how she allowed Shaw and her siblings to suffer under the hands of her boyfriend. She says music and her other creative expressions were not what helped her work through her trauma. Speaking out as she did with family and then on camera released some of the silence and secrecy that surrounded the abuse. When she was not talking about it, she was giving it more power. “I am free sometimes,” Shaw reports. “There are times when I sing on stage and I feel like nothing can stop me, like I have let everything go. Then sometimes I get off the stage and that feeling leaves. It’s a process. It’s work I have to do.”
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