Family

Kimberly Akimbo

By Elisabeth LaMotte / January 10, 2024

Kimberly Akimbo, the most awarded musical of the 2023 Tony Awards, announced that it will hold its final Broadway performance on April 28th, 2024. If you have teenagers in your family or college students willing to hang with you over spring break, consider a family road trip to NYC to catch the show. Victoria Clark,…

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The Holdovers

By Elisabeth LaMotte / December 25, 2023

If your young adult children are home for the holidays, consider bonding while viewing The Holdovers which is available to stream on multiple platforms. The attached New York Times review captures a lot of what makes the film heartwarming and worthwhile. As a therapist, what the review leaves out that will be relevant to viewers…

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Terms of Endearment

By Elisabeth LaMotte / November 28, 2023

I came across this moving review of multiple Oscar winner Terms of Endearment and memories of Emma, Aurora, Flap and Patsy felt like resisting old friends. Then I watched the four minute and twenty second trailer and quickly became a tear soaked puddle. The film’s centerpiece – the exceedingly real mother-daughter/ Aurora-Emma duo, inspire us…

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Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow

By Elisabeth LaMotte / October 29, 2023

Tomorrow and, Tomorrow and, Tomorrow’s book jacket describes a “love story you haven’t heard before”. This provocative welcome offers a fitting invitation to enter the page turning journey of Sadie, Sam and Marx – three super smart college students at MIT and Harvard, making their way in the gaming industry. The love story is new…

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How Do You Measure a Year?

By Elisabeth LaMotte / July 29, 2023

As an empty nester I feel reasonably grounded when I reflect on my approach to raising our daughters. I wish that we had found a way to live abroad at some point. It never felt like the right time, and though my husband had professional opportunities that would have allowed for postings abroad, I did…

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Being Mortal

By Elisabeth LaMotte / March 1, 2023

“Be where the client is at.” This phrase – despite and because of its grammatical flaw – was written and spoken and repeated by several social work professors in my early graduate training. A willingness to refrain from my own agenda in order to respect and deeply probe the psychological space and experience of my…

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Diary of a Mad Housewife

By Elisabeth LaMotte / January 17, 2023

The book jacket for Diary of a Mad Housewife describes the novel as “a classic of urban women’s fiction that gave a wry voice to the nascent feminist stirrings of the 1960s.” I’m not sure how I missed it on my mother’s bookshelf while growing up in the 70s, but she confirms that it was…

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Leopoldsdadt

By Elisabeth LaMotte / December 7, 2022

Family therapists love a good genogram. For those unfamiliar with this term, a genogram is a comprehensive family history framed through the psychological lens of Family Systems Theory. Family Systems Theory is a relationally oriented approach to therapy emphasizing the formative importance of the family landscape. Systemic therapists believe that relational patterns are often passed…

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Run Towards the Danger

By Elisabeth LaMotte / May 26, 2022

Practically speaking, preparing for foot surgery feels surprisingly like preparing to have a baby. I stopped taking new therapy clients two months prior to my surgery date in an attempt to mold my work/life balance into the most manageable place during the 3 to 6 month recovery period. Not since giving birth two decades ago…

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Coda

By Elisabeth LaMotte / April 20, 2022

As a systems therapist, family roles and dynamics are an important area of exploration. Developing a deeper understanding of the roles directly or indirectly assigned in childhood helps therapy clients reflect on how such roles are internalized and carried into adult careers and adult relationships. Developing a grasp of how past roles play out in…

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