So when a client tells me a book moved him, I listen. When several clients mention the same book, I consider it part of my continuing education. And when my adult daughter brings Heart the Lover by Lily King on vacation and can’t put it down, I pay attention.

I came to this novel without having read King’s companion book, Writers & Lovers. I will likely circle back. But Heart the Lover stands beautifully on its own—a work of elegant prose that captures both the innocence and the psychological complexity of young adulthood.

We follow a protagonist whose name is withheld until the final pages, a choice that feels psychologically intentional. Identity, after all, is not fixed in youth—it is constructed, tested, defended, and revised in relationship. Within an intoxicating circle of collegiate friends who both intimidate and inspire her, she becomes “Jordan,” a version of herself that feels braver, sharper, more socially fluent. She falls into a love triangle that ultimately crystallizes into something deeper: a connection between two ambitious, idealistic young people who want their lives to matter.
What unfolds is tender and devastating in equal measure. King captures something rare: the almost sacred intensity of first adult love. It is fragile. It is precarious. It is infused with longing and projection. And it is often unsustainable—not because the love is false, but because the people inside it are still becoming.

That is where the novel feels especially relevant to my work as a therapist.

Heart the Lover is not simply a romance. It is a study in development. It shows how profoundly we are shaped by our families—by what was spoken, and what was not; by what was expected, and what was silently demanded. The characters are intelligent and sincere. They want to love well. But wanting and being ready are not the same thing.

Many young adults carry into romance unresolved family dynamics, unexamined fears, and unconscious loyalties. The capacity for intimacy requires differentiation—the ability to remain oneself while moving toward another. And that capacity often lags behind longing.

What I admire most about King’s writing is her portrayal of the approach–avoidance dance so common in love: the simultaneous pull toward closeness and retreat from it. In one scene, the narrator waits at baggage claim for the man she loves. Her anticipation is electric; her body is alive with sensation. Yet she recognizes a quiet truth: if he fully understood the depth of her love, it would terrify him.
That moment captures something universal. Intimacy exposes us. To be loved is to be seen. And to be seen can feel dangerous when we are still uncertain of ourselves.

Alongside this exquisite rendering of young love, King writes with unusual clarity about existential awakening. Her characters metabolize pain in real time. They feel it in their bodies. They struggle with it. And through it, they become more conscious, more deliberate, more themselves.

As both a therapist and a mother of adult children, I find myself moved by that arc. Youthful love is rarely tidy. It can be misguided, misaligned, or mistimed. And yet it is formative. It shapes the nervous system. It clarifies values. It exposes vulnerabilities that must eventually be integrated.
In that way, heartbreak is not the opposite of growth. It is often its catalyst.

And perhaps that is why so many of my clients—and my daughter—pressed this book into my hands. It does what good fiction does best: it illuminates the private terrain of becoming.

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.

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.

It’s not every day that a series dares to explore female sexuality with honesty—and even less often does it do so in tandem with the realities of terminal illness. Hulu’s Dying for Sex manages both, telling a bold yet intimate story that invites us to think differently about what it means to be alive. Based on the real experiences of Molly Kochan (1973–2019), the show fictionalizes the podcast and book she created with her friend Nikki Boyer. Michelle Williams plays the role of Molly, whose terminal breast cancer diagnosis sparks an unexpected, deeply personal sexual and emotional awakening.

We first meet Molly in therapy, visibly on edge while her husband, Steve (Jay Duplass), laments that her illness has dampened his desire and compromised their sex life. His tone is self-pitying and oblivious—he’s technically supportive but emotionally absent. When she learns her cancer has returned and is no longer treatable, Molly quietly but definitively walks out: of the therapy session and of her marriage.

Stepping into the emotional and logistical void is Molly’s best friend, Nikki (played with radiant depth by Jenny Slate). Rather than chase a standard “bucket list,” Molly decides to reclaim her sexual self. She turns to dating apps, hoping to reconnect with pleasure and presence. The sexual adventures that follow range from awkward to absurd: one man insists on saying “clasp” repeatedly, another won’t remove his puppy costume—even at chemo appointments. Some moments edge into caricature, though they also highlight how surreal modern dating can feel, especially under extraordinary circumstances.

Still, these escapades aren’t where the soul of the story lives.

What makes Dying for Sex so affecting is its portrayal of emotional intimacy, not just sexual experimentation. Molly’s real transformation unfolds in the spaces where she drops her armor: in group therapy, in tough conversations with her mother (played with haunting grit by Sissy Spacek), in her growing rapport with a next-door neighbor (Rob Delaney), and most poignantly, in her evolving bond with Nikki. Her terminal diagnosis intensifies her life force. She begins to confront her history of sexual trauma, to inhabit her truth with startling clarity, and to allow connection where before there was guardedness and inhibition.

In this way, Dying for Sex isn’t primarily about sex—it’s about awakening. The show refuses to look away from the ordinary and sacred elements of dying. Its quietest scenes often carry the most weight, like those involving a compassionate hospice nurse who feels like the show’s spiritual center. As a therapist, I was especially struck by the series’ invitation to reflect on how grief, mortality, and intimacy are deeply entangled.

Rather than pit death against desire, the series suggests that the two can coexist—and that, in fact, real intimacy often blooms in the shadow of our most finite moments. Many will press play for the edgy premise, but it’s the honesty, vulnerability, and deep humanity that will stay will resonate long after the final credits.

“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.

Early adulthood is a rich psychological time when personalities develop more deeply, and individuals begin to cultivate what systems therapists describe as a more grounded sense of self. Early adulthood marks a wonderful but often fraught stage of life full of pondering, pain and possibility.

Illinoise, a stunning musical directed and choreographed by Justin Peck, takes an unconventional approach that celebrates this psychological stage of adulthood with reverence and abandon.

Set to Sufjan Stevens’s dreamy 2005 album, Illinois, the play contains no dialogue, and the plot is a moving and somewhat fluid series of dance movements that are both inspiring and humbling. Presumably, the plays title adds the silent “e” to the title to allude to the emotional “noise” of young adulthood. Lovers come together and move apart, relocation is a theme, cancer strikes a beloved friend, and each scene conveys meaningful coming-of-age milestones, challenges and heartbreaks. The music is performed by ethereal musicians and singers lingering in the air to stage right and stage left, dressed as butterflies. The choreography is moving and expressive, and the exceptional dance ensemble includes So You Think You Can Dance winner Ricky Ubeda.

Systems therapists understand that early adulthood is often accompanied with a surge of anxiety that is often triggered by a life transition (like graduation) that marks a passage onto a new path determined through one’s own choices, and no longer framed by a parentally dictated plan. Such freedom is important and developmentally necessary, but also a significant psychological leap, especially for individuals who have unfinished pain points from childhood. Each vignette is distinct, but each shares an unspoken understanding of the richness imbued in the stage of life when adults launch into the world and chart their independent course and solidify their distinct identities.

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!