Jay-Z’s song “Moment of Clarity” is a powerful example of what renowned family psychotherapist Murray Bowen calls “going home” and “doing the work” to make sense of your family system.  To thoroughly experience the song, I recommend you find his version from The Black Album on your favorite streaming platform. The variations posted on YouTube have mostly the same lyrics, but don’t include the somber depth of the original music production that was so moving when it first came out in the early 2000s. This video of him describing his process in writing the song, however, is fascinating and inspiring. This interview clip with MTV host, Sway, is like a mini therapy exploration.

While exploring the reconnection with his estranged father shortly before he died, Jay-Z echos many experiences I have heard my therapy clients discuss in terms of how  vulnerable it can feel to confront challenging family conflicts, estrangements, and stalemates.  This conversation reflects and normalizes that, as an adult, it’s your prerogative to determine who your family is, how close you want to be, and what boundaries you keep. Young Jay-Z recognizes that he didn’t owe his dad tears, and he didn’t owe his dad silence either. He is striking a balance between boundaries and outreach on his own terms, as both are psychologically important. He states, “I didn’t let him off the hook,” in expressing what it was like to be his son.

In Jay-Z’s processing I hear how confronting his family system opened up a path for forgiveness and acceptance. He acknowledges in this interview that he still has a lot of work to do. He is able to articulate vulnerabilities and defenses he is still working through. We see his progress throughout his career both through his own art and his (now) wife’s – especially in Beyonce’s masterpiece album, Lemonade, and his response 4:44.

A note on the psychotherapist reference from the beginning of this post: Dr. Murray Bowen’s family system’s theory is a foundation for most relationship therapists. To some degree, we always use it in our work. For more information visit The Bowen Center , or explore with your therapist.

Moment of Clarity

By Shawn Carter, Marshall Mathers, Luis Resto, and Steve King

Turn the music up turn the lights down I’m in my zone

 Refrain:

Thank God for granting me this
Moment of clarity, this moment of honesty
The world’ll feel my truths
My “Hard Knock Life” time my gift and a curse
I gave you volume after volume of my work so you can feel my truths
I built the Dynasty by being one of the realest [n-word]s out
Way beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Y’all can’t fill my shoes)
From my Blueprint beginnings ’til that Black Album ending
Listen close you hear what I’m about, [n-word] feel my truths

 Pop died, didn’t cry, didn’t know him that well
Between him doing heroin and me doing crack sales
With that in the egg shell standing at the tabernacle
Rather the church pretending to be hurt
Wouldn’t work, so a smirk was all on my face
Like damn that mans face was just like my face
So pop, I forgive you for all the shit that I lived through
It wasn’t all your fault homie you got caught

And to the same game I fault that Uncle Ray lost
My big brothers and so many others I saw
I’m just glad we got to see each other
Talk and re-meet each other save a place in Heaven
‘Til the next time we meet forever

 Refrain

 The music business hate me ’cause the industry ain’t make me
Hustlers and boosters embrace me and the music I be making
I dumb down for my audience and double my dollars
They criticize me for it yet they all yell “Holla”
If skills sold truth be told
I’d probably be lyrically Talib Kweli
Truthfully I want to rhyme like Common Sense (But I did five Mil)
I ain’t been rhyming like Common since

When your sense got that much in common
And you been hustling since, your inception, fuck perception
Go with what makes sense
Since I know what I’m up against
We as rappers must decide what’s most important
And I can’t help the poor if I’m one of them
So I got rich and gave back to me, that’s the win, win
So next time you see the homie and his rims spin
Just know my mind is working just like them (The rims that is)

 Refrain

 My homie Sigel’s on a tier where no tears should fall
‘Cause he was on the block where no squares get off
See in my inner circle all we do is ball
‘Til we all got triangles on our wall
He ain’t just rapping for the platinum, y’all record
I recall, ’cause I really been there before
Four scores and seven years ago prepared to flow prepare for war
I shall fear no man you don’t hear me though

These words ain’t just paired to go in one ear out the other ear, no
Yo, my balls and my word is all’s I have
What you gonna do to me? [N-word] scars’ll scab
What you gonna box me homie? I can dodge and jab
Three shots couldn’t touch me thank God for that
I’m strong enough to carry Biggie Smalls on my back
And the whole BK [n-word] holla back

Refrain

In addition to asking about parents, grandparents and siblings, I also inquire about role models and mentors. It is fascinating how many times an unexpected adult plays an essential role in a person’s development. Mentors are especially meaningful to children raised by single parents, and some take on a psychological significance that is life-shaping.

Director Andrew Ahn’s quiet film Driveways celebrates the transformational role a non-familial adult can play in during a child’s formative years. The film delicately explores grief, loss, longing and absence. But it is also about finding parental love and protection in unexpected places, like rickety front porches, bingo halls, and deserted suburban driveways.

Eight year old Cody (Lucas Jaye) arrives in an unassuming New York suburb with his mother Kathy (Hong Chau). Their mission is to clean out the home of Cody’s recently deceased Aunt April. We soon learn that April was a recluse and a hoarder who fell out of touch with Kathy and most of the outside world. The dead cat in April’s bathtub is one of many unpleasant discoveries left behind, highlighting April’s loss and isolation. We also learn that Cody’s father is not around much and that Cody is anxious and sensitive and shy. The process of cleaning out April’s home to prepare it for sale turns out to be much more work than expected. Unfortunately, the house is not habitable and finances are tight, so Cody and his mother camp out on the porch for the bulk of the film, as they sort through piles of April’s hoarded belongings and sort them in her yard and on her driveway.

Across the driveway sits Del (Brian Dennehy, in one of his final performances), a widower and retired Korean war veteran who slowly strikes up a bond with Cody that frames the film’s understated plot. Kathy is wary of Del in the beginning and has raised Cody to avoid strangers. Any responsible single mother would take this approach. And yet Del becomes less of a stranger and more of a neighbor, cultivating a bond with Cody that is part surrogate grandfather and part friend. The psychological distance between them creates an entryway for Del to become the father figure Cody craves. Their relationship also frames an opportunity for Del to succeed with Cody where he failed with his own daughter when she was young and he was too busy. So the corrective emotional nature of the paring is mutual.

Driveways is exceedingly subtle but its understated plot intersperses memorable scenes that punctuate Cody’s formative experience. Cody, Kathy and Del’s shared journey demonstrates how grief can be an opportunity for growth and how deep connection can form in the most surprising places.

Steve Carell convincingly plays David, a thoughtful writer who is cool enough to smoke a joint with his son Nic. (Maybe he is too cool?) David is obviously bonded with Nic and they seem to have carved out a delightful, artistic existence in the Marin County, California. Timothee Chalemet plays Nic, David’s creative, lovable son who applied to seven colleges and is accepted to them all. Nic seems well adjusted to his parent’s divorce and genuinely happily connected to his stepmother and his two half-siblings. It’s Nic’s idea to smoke the joint to celebrate his college acceptances. David is clueless to the secret that the joint is merely a light appetizer warming Nic up to an extensive smorgasbord of other drugs.

The screenplay is adapted from two different books – one written by David Scheff, the other written by his son Nic — and it toggles between the past and the present. Belgian Director and screenwriter Felix Van Groeningen also made the exquisite film about loss and addiction The Broken Circle Breakdown that was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2014.

David learns the basic principles and tag lines of substance abuse treatment. “Relapse is a part of recovery.” “Call your sponsor.” Through each relapse episode and subsequent rehab stint, David continues his determined mission to discover why this addiction is so tough to beat. He reads brain studies. He takes other addicts out to lunch. He even tries the drug himself! He listens with a weeping furrowed brow as Nic explains that his first meth high delivered an experience of euphoria so strong that it filled an underlying void. But we never quite learn is what the void is about. This feels a bit frustrating and leaves viewers imagining that the void relates to Nic’s parent’s divorce. Several flashbacks focus on Nic’s trips from one parent to the other. In one flashback, a sullen young Nic boards a flight back to his mother in Los Angeles, and David assures him that he loves him more than everything. The phrase “everything” becomes an ongoing spoken reference code to their connection. Nic’s mother acknowledges that there was a phase of the addiction that she couldn’t handle. But still, we do not gain much clarity about the void.

Perhaps this unanswered question is intentional and implies the possibility that methamphetamine addiction has no “why”. Perhaps the “why” is as random as making one bad choice on one teenage night out blowing off steam. Or, the “why” might involve choosing a friend who turns out to be an addict who convinces others, in a moment of weakness, to give it a try. Regardless of the answer to this difficult question, the film is worth viewing with teenagers to discuss the perils of addiction and the gravity of this current American epidemic.

Fatima Farheen Mirza’s mesmerizing novel A Place For Us begins its story when a young first generation American named Amar, who has cut off from his family, returns to his hometown to attend his oldest sister Hadia’s traditional Indian wedding. The tale unfolds in a series of flashbacks describing the trajectory of Amar’s parents’ immigration and arranged marriage. Their family life sets a simple stage to demonstrate how organically siblings fall into family roles which then become cemented over time. Hadia is the determined and studious perfect oldest child. Huda fades into her sister’s shadow and generally does what she is told, possibly thriving through an organic tendency to receive limited parental attention. Amar, meanwhile, cannot be popped into any mold. He is rebellious and questioning by nature, creative, and constantly clashes with his father Rafiq’s high expectations and limited emotional bandwidth. Amar is not academic. He will not put away his things. He wants to speak English at home and resists the use of Urdu.

The tension for the survival of tradition in the face of assimilation is an important focus of the book, and the plot explores the dynamic relationship between family roles and cultural expectations:

“Speak in Urdu, Ami” [his mother] reminds him. Ever since Hadia first learned English at school it has been difficult to make any of them speak in Urdu. They speak in English so quickly that they sound like little trains zooming by. They act as though it were the superior language, the more stylish one. She has to make it a game at dinner to encourage them. It confuses her. Urdu is the language she and Rafiq speak with one another and all they every spoke with the children, but one goes to school and the others pick it up like wildfire, as if they’ve forgotten their own tongue entirely. It worries her: if they so easily lose their own language, what else will be lost?

The absorbing final chapters of the novel are the most compelling, as the plot line shifts to Rafiq’s perspective and explores Amir’s cutoff from a father’s perspective. Readers can finally experience the patriarch’s character from a different angle that texturizes the story and digs deeper into the tragic consequences that trail a cut off family relationship. Some relationships are so dangerous and dysfunctional that they must be severed. But in most instances, discovering a way to relate and communicate and engage is a far healthier strategy that allows for a sense of closure and a freeing of powerful emotional energy.