Last weekend, at a friend’s suggestion, my husband and I watched the 2013 film The Lunchbox—a surprisingly moving and unexpected love story that unfolds through something almost quaint by today’s standards: handwritten notes.

The premise is simple and quietly heartbreaking. Ila (Nimrat Kaur) wants to recapture her husband’s dwindling attention. Sensing they’ve fallen into a rut, she hopes that elevating his daily lunch—once routine, now carefully spiced and lovingly prepared—might awaken his affection.

The film is shot on location in Mumbai, where the city’s legendary dabbyawallas deliver fresh, homemade lunches from household kitchens to offices across the city through an astonishingly precise delivery system. In a rare error, Ila’s lunch is mistakenly delivered not to her husband, but to Mr. Fernandes (Irrfan Khan), an older, isolated widower nearing retirement after more than thirty years as an insurance claims officer. His work is methodical, lonely, and as monotonous as his personal life.

When Ila’s husband complains about “her” cooking—which is actually the mediocre takeout Mr. Fernandes typically receives—Ila realizes her lovingly prepared meals are landing in the wrong hands. She slips a note into the lunch container to explain. When Mr. Fernandes replies, a tender and witty correspondence begins. Over time, the two strangers become confidants, sharing longings, disappointments, and the small details of their inner lives.

(With today’s explosion of food delivery apps and single-use plastic, the dabbawallas’ clean, reusable metal lunch containers feel like characters in their own right—and a quiet, compelling alternative vision of care and sustainability. But that may be another movie, or at least another conversation.)

The Lunchbox understands that loneliness is a disease of both heart and soul—and that it can exist both inside and outside of a romantic partnership. Ila’s aunt insists that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and the film plays gently with this idea. Ultimately, though, it is the written word—not the food—that becomes the most loving gesture of all.

There is something deeply nostalgic about how true the film feels. It reminds us that not so long ago, writing—slow, intentional, written by human hands—was a primary way we reached for one another. In a world now dominated by instant, disposable messages, The Lunchbox offers a quiet reminder: being seen, named, and responded to may be the most sustaining nourishment of all.

Families, relationships, and communities shape us in ways both obvious and invisible. Jonathan Spector’s This Much I Know explores how our personal histories, inherited beliefs, and the stories we tell ourselves collide—sometimes painfully, sometimes with unexpected insight. In this beautifully acted play, competing truths coexist, challenging us to sit with ambiguity and consider how context shapes conviction.

Therapists understand that children can grow up in the same family and yet experience profoundly different childhoods. A couple can weather the same adversity and later remember it as if they lived through two separate realities. In therapy, two competing truths can share the same space—though it is rarely an easy space to inhabit.

The question of competing narratives frames This Much I Know, which recently left a successful run at Theater J in Washington, D.C., for New York’s 59E59 Theaters. A superb trio of actors fluidly inhabit multiple roles through subtle shifts in costume, accent, and setting, creating a world where memory, identity, and ideology overlap.

We first meet Lukesh (Firdous Bamji), a psychology professor whose dry humor and knowing detachment come through as he asks the audience to silence their phones and launches into a lecture on confirmation bias. His wife, Natalya (Dani Stoller), wrestles with the aftermath of a traumatic experience, channeling her turmoil into research for a book about her grandmother—who fled Russia and was rumored to have been a childhood friend of Stalin’s daughter.
Natalya leaves Lukesh early in the play, while Harold (Ethan Rapp), a university student, faces a reckoning of his own when a news story exposes him as the son of a prominent white supremacist. He insists he doesn’t share all of his father’s beliefs, but no professor will sponsor his thesis—except Lukesh, who reluctantly agrees. Their charged exchanges about truth, bias, and belonging become the play’s intellectual core, while Natalya’s search for her grandmother’s story, and her portrayal of Stalin’s daughter, add layers of haunting symmetry.

Questions of ownership, blame, the butterfly effect, genetics, and epigenetics weave through the dialogue. This Much I Know resists easy answers and refuses to label narratives as right or wrong. Instead, it invites the audience to sit with ambiguity—to consider how context shapes conviction, and how difficult it is to break free from the gravitational pull of family legacy.

Like therapy itself, the play offers no tidy resolution. It asks us to tolerate complexity, to listen for truth in stories that contradict our own, and to recognize that understanding—like healing—requires curiosity more than certainty.

On the surface, they’re frothy and absurd: wealthy women in fabulous wardrobes, meticulously designed mansions, murder mysteries, and eccentric philanthropists. But look closer, and they’re each telling a deeper story about trauma, birth order, and the bonds that form between sisters who survive dysfunctional families in very different ways.

Chaos Enters the Penthouse
In The Better Sister, Nicky Macintosh (Elizabeth Banks) makes a dramatic reentry into her younger sister Chloe’s life by showing up, un-welcomed, to her pristine Manhattan penthouse. A murder investigation is already underway—Chloe’s husband, who also happens to be Nicky’s ex-husband, has just been found dead. Chloe Taylor (Jessica Biel) is an influential media figure with a picture-perfect life and an image she’s desperate to maintain. Nicky, by contrast, is messy, contrarian, and undeniably inconvenient.

Meanwhile, in Sirens, Devon DeWitt (Meghann Fahy) is released from a night in jail and returns to care for her ailing father. She discovers that her younger sister, Simone (Milly Alcock), has sent an elaborate edible arrangement which is much more performative than helpful. Furious, Devon grabs the display in her car and sets out to confront her sister. She finds Simone at the legendary “Cliff House” working for Michaela “Kiki” Kell (Julianne Moore), a hyper-stylized billionaire philanthropist. Simone has abandoned her upstate New York identity for headbands, cheekiness, and florals. Her tattoos have been removed and Devon finds her almost unrecognizable.

Devon and Nicky are cut from the same chaotic cloth. Both speak in cringey, grammatically obtuse sentences, wear the wrong clothes, and offend nearly everyone they encounter. Law enforcement doesn’t know what to make of them, and their younger sisters—Simone and Chloe—vacillate between embarrassment, protectiveness, and avoidance. They’ve both tried to leave the past behind. But the past, in the form of their big sister, has other plans in store for them.

As a therapist, I often see how unresolved trauma shows up in family relationships. What’s psychologically compelling about Sirens and The Better Sister is how they depict strikingly similar responses to childhood trauma. Both shows invert the familiar sibling stereotype. In many families, the older child plays the achiever, the responsible one, while the younger rebels. But in homes shaped by trauma, especially when the mother is absent or compromised, it’s often the eldest daughter who bears the brunt of the father’s rage. She becomes the shield. And that role comes with consequences—depression, addiction, a deep sense of unworthiness.

In both of these current popular shows, the older sister copes through acting out, numbing, and self-destruction. The younger sister copes by striving, perfecting, and escaping.
Both sets of sisters come from profoundly abusive or neglectful households. The fathers are violent, controlling, or cruel; the mothers are absent, weak, or complicit. In both stories, the older sister—despite her flaws—tried to protect the younger one. But as adults, both younger sisters survive through secrecy, deception and feigned perfection.

Camp with a Core
Sirens and The Better Sister are not high art. They’re over-the-top, glossy, and often ridiculous—streaming’s version of a beach read. But that doesn’t mean they’re devoid of meaning. When the sisters in both shows are forced to confront one another, old wounds resurface. They lash out, shut down, try to run. But in fleeting, tender moments, the emotional core glimmers through: a look, a shared memory, a flash of loyalty or sorrow.

In families marked by danger, siblings often become the only witnesses to the full story. They remember what others can never fully understand. Their bond may be fraught or fractured, but it’s also forged in shared survival. One may long to forget; the other may be paralyzed by what she remembers. That tension, and the love that sometimes endures beneath it, is where these shows find their emotional resonance.

I can’t recommend Sirens or The Better Sister for their realism, narrative logic, or emotional nuance. But I can say this: the messy connection between sisters shaped by trauma is something these shows surprisingly get right. The glitz may be superficial—but the emotional truth, in moments, rings loud and clear.

The results are in: Mikey Madison has officially taken home the Oscar for Best Actress, capping off an incredible awards season where she also won the Independent Spirit Award and the BAFTA. In a historic night, Anora dominated the Academy Awards, proving that its raw intensity and indie roots were no barrier to Hollywood’s top prize. Anora is the film with the lowest budget ever to win best picture.

Directed by Sean Baker, Anora is a striking commentary on wealth, power, and sex work—a clear reminder that, despite progress, it is still a man’s world. Baker, known for his 2015 iPhone-shot indie hit Tangerine, once again spotlights the lives of sex workers with unflinching realism and respect. His protagonist, Anora, or Ani as she prefers, is a New York City-based stripper and escort. Her grandmother never learned English, so she speaks a bit of Russian. When Ivan, the reckless, entitled son of a Russian oligarch, requests a dancer who speaks his language, Ani is the obvious match. Their chemistry is immediate, but their connection—like so many modern relationships—is built on performance and illusion.

Ani presents herself as confident and agreeable, masking the harsh realities of her profession with a well-practiced charm. Ivan, meanwhile, embodies unchecked privilege, approaching his surroundings—both in terms of people and places—as a limitless playground. Their relationship escalates when Ivan offers Ani $15,000 to be his girlfriend for a week—a transaction she negotiates matter-of-factly. As their dynamic deepens, the film peels back their façades. Ani is not just a seductress; she is a vulnerable young woman in pain. Ivan is not just a playboy; he is an impotent child lost in excess. Together, they expose the thin line between self-deception and survival.

As a therapist who works with many clients navigating modern dating, what makes Anora especially compelling is how it mirrors common challenges of real-world courtship. Beneath the film’s exaggerated scenario lies a universal truth: in early relationships, people often wear masks. Ani feigns enjoyment of bad sex. Ivan convinces himself he’s falling in love. Their self-delusions unravel when reality—in the form of Ivan’s furious parents—comes crashing into town.

I often remind clients that rushing into intimacy can cloud judgment. The modern dating landscape makes slow, intentional connection increasingly rare. Ani and Ivan’s memorable, marvelous, heartbreaking story serves as a cautionary tale. Their circumstances may be extreme, but the emotional risks they take are all too familiar. In the end, Anora forces audiences to confront uncomfortable truths—about power, relationships, and the transactional nature of desire.

With its Oscar triumph, Anora is no longer just a critical darling—it’s an undeniable cinematic milestone. And Madison’s fearless performance has been rightfully celebrated as one of the most unforgettable in recent memory.
If you are interested, check out my original version of this post – pre-oscars, on Psychology .Today

“Do any human beings every realize life while they live it?”

I saw Thornton Wilder’s 1928 Pulitzer Prize winning play Our Town at some point during my childhood and remembered it vaguely. Mostly I remembered that the plot followed two young people in a small town falling in love and that the boy loved baseball. I recently read Ann Patchett’s new novel, Tom Lake, which centers around various productions of this play. Patchett’s novel shares Our Town’s emphasis on the theme that life happens most profoundly during our small daily moments. Reading this novel, I realized it was time to revisit the play.

My curiosity was well timed, as Kenny Leon’s production at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre opened recently though the production plans have been in the works for this ensemble since the COVID-19 pandemic. The fact that this production was, in part, conceptualized during the stay-at-home orders is interesting, given the play’s emphasis on quiet moments, stillness, and the passage of time. This is Our Town’s fifth return to Broadway.

There is so much to say about this superb production led by Jim Parson’s fearless performance as the stage manager. His take is edgy and somewhat sardonic and thus sets the stage for an unsentimental unfolding which ironically leads the audience to especially emotional and heartfelt conclusions.

The play’s three acts — Daily Life (set in 1901), Love and Marriage (set in 1904) and a final act set 9 years later in the local cemetery – unfold during a gripping 80 minutes with no intermission. The simple earnest arc of daily life makes all the characters in the small, fictional, New England town of Grover’s Corners seem vulnerable and deeply human. This play challenges us to understand that we cry during weddings and graduations and life’s grander milestones in part because we are all unbearably vulnerable. We never know what life will throw at us during the journey of the everyday small moments that define the arc of a life. If only the mysteries of the line between life and death were clearer, we might be able to learn from our loved ones who are no longer with us. And we might even see each other more lucidly and with even more compassion and love.

Reading or viewing this play would be a wonderful way to begin 2025 with renewed awe and abandon.

Ann Patchett’s 2023 novel, Tom Lake, is a relationally-oriented therapist’s dream. A love letter both to northern Michigan’s cherry farms and to small-town family life, Patchett’s novel unpacks how greater emotional maturity is conducive to choosing healthier, more sustainable romantic partnerships.

The novel begins during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic while protagonist Lara is quarantining with her three daughters and her husband on their cherry farm in northern Michigan. With the world at a standstill, Lara’s daughters insist that she finally share with them the story from her early adulthood when she dated a young actor who went on to become the world’s most famous movie star. Lara’s three daughters worship the devastatingly handsome Peter Duke and demand that their mother finally give them the backstory. Reluctantly, and with strict and entertaining boundaries, Lara agrees.

What unfolds is a moving tale of a young, innocent and unassuming girl plucked from small town life in part because of her uncanny ability to portray small-town life through her performance in the lead role (Emily) in various productions of Thornton Wilder’s classic play Our Town. Lara’s youthful whirlwind romance with Duke is a classic Hollywood tale of innocence lost and how the spotlight of fame corrupts and contorts. Tom Lake’s plot toggles between Lara’s quarantine with her close-knit family and the complexities of life on the farm and Lara’s detailed description of her years as a young, unsuspecting, aspiring starlet. Heartache, sibling rivalry, and family love are concurrent themes, and Our Town’s cherishment of the wholesomeness of small-town life works as a convincing psychological template for emotional maturity and the beauty of healthy choices and a quiet, connected, authentic life.

The late Shirley Glass, a prominent infidelity researcher, encouraged an ideal script at the outset. Her suggestion is that when a married person notices a spark with another, it is highly advisable to discuss this spark with one’s spouse. To say something like:

“I was having coffee with Lucy today and I felt surprised that our conversation quickly became both personal and flirtatious. I was also surprised that I enjoyed it. It reminded me of how you and I used to be with one another, and I want to try to get that back. Can we work on that?”

If only more married adults chose to run this script.

Elizabeth Stroud’s latest novel, Tell Me Everything, is one of her very best. In a showcase that feels something like a finale, she allows her beloved, previously unacquainted characters from her various critically acclaimed series to intersect and collide with one another in the small town of Crosby, Maine. Set during the later part of the pandemic, the novel begins with the meek, brilliant novelist Lucy Barton having recently befriended the angsty attorney Bob Burgess. The friendship has become romantic, though Lucy and Bob remain in denial of their palpable romantic spark. They believe they are good friends and insist their frequent walks are covid-friendly and purely platonic. Quirky local fixture Olive Kitteridge (of Stroud’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name) understands the blossoming romance between Lucy and Bob and easily sees straight through their blind spots. Olive’s friendships with Lucy and Bob animate the novel as does the plot’s unfolding murder mystery.

Stroud understands that intimate life happens in the small quiet moments rather than the large romantic gestures. Lucy and Bob cherish their deep unfiltered conversations. Lucy calls Bob a sin eater because she understands that Bob has sacrificed to much for others, especially his older brother. Lucy opens up about her impoverished and abusive childhood:

“But I don’t remember feeling envious a lot, Bob, and I don’t understand that. You would think, I would think, that I would have been envious of people from the start, all these mothers who seemed to love their children as they picked them up from school, all those kids who seemed to have normal lives, but I just somehow understood: That’s not my life. And I was always inside my head, and I remember thinking: I’m glad this is my head.”

Even Bob’s bad haircut illuminates the intricacy and hilarity of the human connection. He and Lucy both agree that it makes him look like a twelve-year-old with a man’s face, and their dual experiences of this unfortunate new style represent their powerful connection and the unexpected path forward.

Bob loves his wife, the minister of their local church. And Lucy loves her ex-husband William. Lucy and William reconnected during the pandemic and are giving it another go. Despite these satisfying unions, the chemistry fueling Lucy and Bob’s conversations anchor the plot and transfix these two central characters.

Emotional repairs, infidelity, betrayal, sexual abuse, neglect, isolation, therapy and memory are all important themes explored with rich emotional intelligence. And yet, as a therapist, what stays with me most about this beautiful story is its exploration of the road not taken.

Dear Edward toggles between two stories. One follows a 183 passenger morning flight from Newark to LA packed with a dynamic cast of characters — an ailing billionaire, a tounge pierced misfit who discovers she is pregnant while testing in the plane’s compact bathroom, a hippy in a jingle skirt who is leaving her husband to embrace a new roller blading lifestyle, a gay soldier struggling with his identify, a conceited econ bro and an impossibly glamourous flight attendant. And then there’s the Adler family – Bruce (a math professor who recently did not make tenure) Jane, a frustrated but successful writer, Jordan a vegan teen missing his first love and twelve-year-old Edward. The flight is intimate, humorous and relatable to anyone who has ever crammed themselves through a tight squeeze on a plane in order to attempt to not awakening a sleeping seatmate in order to reach the aisle and head to the toilet. Readers experience a robust tribute to the simultaneous excitement and compromised dignity of air travel, and there is no indication that the plane will implode other than the alternating chapters about Edward’s life in the crash’s aftermath.

The second tale begins in the hospital after the crash and navigates young Edward’s traumatic grief. Edward’s shellshocked aunt and uncle struggle to raise and care for him. Uncle John and Aunt Lacey experience years of infertility and limited exposure to child rearing before inheriting responsibility for their nephew who has become an internet and world-wide obsession. His devastating pain and grief are met by an engaging community of characters who rally around him to varying degrees. Neighbors, a principle, a coach, and a reasonable great therapist offer lessons in healing wounds that will never entirely disappear.

Sibling bonds are central to both plot threads. Edward wears his dead older brother’s clothing for years, despite the inappropriate sizing. And in a particularly heartbreaking moment – one of many scattered throughout the novel — Edward longs for his mother as his Aunt Lacey attempts to nurture him:

Edward nods and is surprised that as she leaves the kitchen, she bends down and kisses his cheek. It’s a gentle kiss, and she ruffles his hair on the way up. He’s surprised party because Lacey rarely kisses him but also because the moment separates, the way the individual clous did in the sky and the threads of grass did on the ground. He sees – and feels – two separate realities. Lacey kisses his cheek the exact same way his mother had kissed Edward’s cheek when she was alive. The kiss feels deliberate and intentional; Lacey can’t write her sister’s movie, but this is something she can do. But she also kisses his cheek the way Lacey would have kissed the cheek of the baby she had so badly wanted. Edward knows this, even though he can’t explain how. The word cherish enters his brain as if on a foreign breeze and then departs…

In her acknowledgments, Napolitano explains that her book was inspired by the 2010 crash of Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 in which all passengers died except for one surviving nine-year-old boy. She also drew from the details of Air France Flight 447 and a 2011 article in Popular Mechanics detailing the crash. She shares that her additional inspiration was her personal observations about the love that transpires between her own two sons. The author’s palpable awe of sibling love and passion for travel despite it’s remote but real risks come alive in all corners of this beautiful novel. Take it in the air if you dare, it’s a magical read.

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, who won best actress in a musical for her role as Kimberly, captivates the audience playing a fifteen-year-old with a rare condition that causes her to rapidly age well beyond her teenage years. Emotionally, she is as mature as any other hormonal, angsty teenager. Physically, she is post-menopausal, cardiac-comprised and well into her seventies.

While the Kimberly’s disease is fictional, it mimics projeria, a rare and fatal condition that inspired Rabbi Ariel Kushner Haber to write the book When Bad Things Happen to Good People about his son, Aaron, who died at age fourteen.

The play blends its exploration of the pain of being different with humor and depth and joy. And while the ending is morally problematic, the characters and their journey make up for this shortcoming. The play’s questionable conclusion can spark meaningful conversation with your teen or young adult family members, and Clark’s spectacular and convincing performance is surrounded by a gifted supporting cast. It turns out that all of the original cast has stuck with the show, which speaks to its on stage chemistry and is further reason to get your tickets before the curtain drops!

As a therapist, what the review leaves out that will be relevant to viewers in therapy, is its exploration of grief, traumatic loss and depression. A lot has changed since the 1970s — during which the film is set and captures magically — but the shame and secrecy that plagues so many with depressive disorders remains. And the Holdovers treats this topic with seriousness and sensitivity.