The Story

In 1995, Sandy Salas lost both of her parents in a murder-suicide after years of domestic violence. But the story she carried with her was never that simple. She also remembered a home filled with laughter, music, family gatherings, and love.

Years later, when her nephew is arrested after a domestic violence incident, Sandy begins looking back at her own family with new eyes. She turns to her siblings, relatives, and family friends, piecing together memories and stories that reveal a history much more complicated than the one she thought she knew.

As she begins to understand how violence and trauma can echo through a family for generations, Sandy finds herself wondering: if trauma can be passed down, can healing be passed down too?

Growing up in a large Mexican American family in Downey, California, Sandy Salas experiences two very different realities. On the outside, the Salas family is filled with laughter, music, road trips, and community. Her mother, Irma, is vibrant, adventurous, and deeply connected to family, culture, and spirituality. Her father, Rudy Jr., is hardworking, charismatic, and loved by family and friends. But inside the home, domestic violence shapes daily life. Sandy and her siblings learn to read the atmosphere of the house, anticipating the moments when fear will arrive.

The family finds refuge on annual road trips from Los Angeles to El Paso, where Irma connects her children to family history, ancestral lands, and Indigenous traditions. "If you know where you come from, you always have a home," she tells them. Years later, just as Irma decides to leave the marriage after decades of abuse, Sandy receives a call from her father. Through tears, he tells her, "I shot your mom, Sandy." Her parents' deaths leave the family devastated. Standing together at their caskets, the siblings vow that the violence will end with them. Years later, Sandy's nephew Lorenzo, whom she helped raise, is arrested for domestic violence. The arrest forces her to confront the possibility that the cycle they vowed to break may be repeating itself. She takes Lorenzo on a journey through the Southwest, hoping to reconnect him with the values and traditions her mother passed down. But Sandy eventually realizes she is looking for answers in the wrong place. Lorenzo is carrying the consequences of the family's history, but he cannot explain its origins.

Sandy turns instead to her siblings, relatives, and family friends. Their memories reveal the survival roles the children adopted, the warning signs they couldn't yet understand, and a more complicated portrait of Irma and Rudy as people capable of profound love and profound harm.

Guided by her brother Gilbert's reminder that buffalo survive storms by running directly into them, Sandy turns toward the history she has spent a lifetime trying to understand. What emerges is not a single explanation for what happened, but a deeper understanding of what it means to break a generational cycle: learning to carry love, grief, anger, forgiveness, and compassion at the same time.