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.

Sadie is a gifted, determined, Jewish mathlete making her way in a man’s world where the gamers dominating the field often embody as much toxic masculinity as the characters in their games. Sadie’s grandmother is a holocaust survivor. Sam and Marx are both half Asian. In addition to being mixed race and estranged from his biological father, Sam has a chronically ailing foot that leaves him crippled and eventually amputated. Otherness and trauma are thematic threads that bind this gaming trio.
The book is also a love letter to artists – the title itself a Shakespeare reference alluding to the artistic elements necessary to create any truly great work of art including a meaningful video game.

What makes this love story most unusual (and somewhat heartbreaking) is its focus on what it means to be professionally in love as souldmate collaborators who do not consummate a romance, but rather engage in a relationship that lives and breathes in the creative realm rather than the romantic. What does it mean to make magnificent wholly original creative work as an authentic team. What is it like to love, live and breathe the work – without consummating a romantic path? Sadie and Sam meet and befriend one another while playing video games as children in a hospital game room. And Sadie’s somewhat OCD betrayal of Sam leads to a multi-year estrangement that is interrupted when they run into one another as college students in Boston. Gaming once again brings them together. Their collaboration lasts decades and includes all sorts of slights and pain points and highs and lows that mimic the arc of a married life.

The therapist in me can’t help but root for the romance, but the book’s captivating appeal challenges conventional psychological thinking about love, marriage, careers and relationships. Gabrielle Zevin successfully tells a flourishing, memorable love story that is a true original.

When my book club selected Emma Donoghue’s bestselling novel, Room, for our monthly read, I was not too psyched about revisiting this memorable, haunting tale. I saw the 2015 film in theaters and sat riveted through Brie Larson’s masterful performance which won her academy award for best actress in a lead role. Given the emotional impact of the film, I felt unmotivated to revisit the tale of five-year-old Jack and his mother (Ma) trapped in a tiny windowless space, held prisoner by the evil Old Nick while they plotted an unlikely escape.

I felt hesitant about returning to Jack’s fears when Old Nick would visit in the evenings and Jack was forced to hide in the closet (which doubled as his bedroom) and wonder why the bed kept banging against the wall and what Old Nick was doing on top of his mother. The horror of their ongoing captivity, the chill in the room when Old Nick did not pay the electric bill, the ongoing agony of Ma’s rotting teeth. These are some of the horrifying details I remembered. I was unsure about drudging up whatever details I had forgotten.

But Donoghue’s stunning novel captures the vivid corners of Jack’s inner emotional life much more deeply than the film. The book is told more completely from Jack’s earnest, innocent perspective. Jack may not like when Old Nick visits or seeing his mother despondent and comatose on the sporadic days when a paralyzing depression descends and immobilizes her. But Jack is content in their routine. He loves watching Dora the Explorer. He relishes trying to understand the difference between what exists inside the television and what exists outside in the world. He feels soothed by sensation of “having some” (his language for nursing) and his perspective remains mainly positive and satiated. Donohue manages to convey, through Jack’s descriptive perspective, the simultaneous experience of Ma’s ongoing trauma and her remarkable ability to shield Jack from her pain.

The bizarre and unimaginable circumstances of the plot set a stage that elegantly captures how profoundly young children form their world around their primary caregiving parent. Room is, at its core, a celebration of the immense power of unconditional love.

When Jack succeeds in Ma’s unlikely escape plan, the outside world causes a heartbreaking strain on their mother/child bond. After several years of captivity, they are finally freed! Jack is outside for the first time in his life, police are on the hunt for Old Nick, and all Jack wants to do is go back into the room and curl up in the only home he has ever known.

Once hospitalized for post traumatic medical, dental and mental health care, a well-intended therapist explains that his job is to help Jack recover from the trauma of living in the room and Jack thinks to himself:

“I don’t say because of manners, but he’s actually got it backwards. In Room I was safe and out here is scary.”

From a psychological perspective, the enclosed world of their room created a cocoon that met Jack’s primary needs for unconditional love and secure attachment. The room also delayed early developmental milestones of infant/mother separation and engagement with the external world. In this context, Jack’s believable and heartwarming headspace raises powerful insights about the bonds between mothers and children and how young children experience their world. The book is even more memorable than the film and I could read it all over again.

Of my pre and post-surgical reading, Sarah Polley’s Run Towards the Danger offered the most meaningful and memorable frame for navigating physical adversity. The book chronicles her fascinating career in film and television but focuses on the long-standing psychological impact of trauma and the challenges of recovering from traumatic a physical injury.

Polley is widely known throughout Canada for her childhood role as Sara Stanley in the wildly popular television series Avonlea (1990-1996). She has starred in several films including Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter. But it is Polley’s work as a screenwriter and director which fully showcases her astonishing talent.

She has written and directed two of the most realistic films about infidelity ever made. Away From Her (2006) won Polley the Canadian Screen Award for Best Director and demonstrates how one can forgive a spousal betrayal but may never forget it. Take This Waltz (2011) stars Michelle Williams, Luke Kirby, Seth Rogan and Sarah Silverman in a study of the human tendency to want what we don’t have. I often suggest one or both films to therapy clients who are navigating the discovery of a spousal betrayal.

Polley’s 2012 The Stories We Tell won the best film of the year award from the Toronto Film Critics Association. The film unpacks a family secret about Polley’s parents’ marriage years after her mother’s death. This unforgettable autobiographical documentary showcases the director’s depth and innate understanding of complex familial bonds and the power of denial. Interestingly, this film and its revelation are not explored in her book.

Polley also wrote a memorable New York Times article about Harvey Weinstein soon after the revelations surfaced about his predatory crimes.

Clearly, I am a fan of her work. So if Polley writes a book about how trauma shapes the body and her journey through multiple health challenges and a concussion that forced her to drop out of plans to write and direct the film Little Women, I am keen to read it regardless of my foot surgery.

Polley writes earnestly and honestly about the traumatizing underbelly of childhood stardom. Part of Polley’s appeal is that she may be the least vain, least materialistic film star with the smallest ego in entertainment history. She was breaking ground for female filmmakers way before it became a hashtag or a movement. Weinstein tried to seduce her by telling her he could make her an even bigger star, but even as a young girl, she did not want to be a star, she wanted to write and direct. This depth and resolve fuse her account of the myriad of trauma and adversity she faced as a child actor with somewhat absent parents, vicious scoliosis, dramatically lopsided breasts and chronic pain.

At times, it seems Polley may not fully appreciate the breadth of rare door openings her stardom affords her. But maybe that’s because she seems so profoundly disinterested in being a star. The book is full of powerful behind-the-scenes accounts of her experience as a young actor, as a patient hospitalized with a high-risk pregnancy, as an early member of the Me Too movement and a tireless activist. But it is her journey fighting to recover from her three-year concussion that resonates most with my therapeutic training. Polley works with multiple experts and specialists and remains largely incapacitated for several years. As the title suggests, healing comes only when she finds a doctor who insists she run toward rather than away from her pain. Diving into excruciating physical pain runs a parallel track with excavating her traumatic childhood history. The book reads as if it was necessary that she write it in order to fully heal. By running toward her danger, this strong woman comes out even stronger on the other side.

The authenticity and simplicity of these lyrics and the video caught me today. Like with many songs on this blog, the words and emotion feel like I’m communicating directly with a client. They echo what I’ve heard clients express to me over the years, and especially these past years. I feel a lump welling in my throat as I think about the love and the stories I have heard while processing grief these past years. The song starts, “I thought I’d only be a moment…but it’s like a landslide of emotion…everyday” and every lyric after details the outpouring of emotion and ups and downs of living without someone who was important to you.

Another lyric that caught me is that the feeling is, “not something that just fades overnight it’s something that stays for the rest of your life.” Many clients have expressed that this is a bittersweet way of keeping their love for that person. The process she describes indicates that she’s never fully healed back to the way she was before. This makes me think of a line the 13^th century Persian poet Rumi that is often quoted by grief and trauma therapists: “The wound is where the light enters you.” There is a lot of meaning to be gleaned from that line. In therapy it generally means that we support a journey through grief and trauma that connects us to a deeper experience of humanity.  With our hearts this raw and bare from pain we let in more insight, we let in more love.

If you need more support as you process grief and trauma here are a few more resources.

For more reflection on the Rumi quote:

https://medium.com/invisible-illness/the-wound-is-where-the-light-enters-you-c5328744417e

For a comprehensive network of resources on grief:

https://grief.com

For a collection of helpful articles on grief, especially different types of grief:

https://www.helpguide.org/articles/grief/coping-with-grief-and-loss.htm

For a link to a list of 64 things about grief that my clients have found helpful:

https://whatsyourgrief.com/64-things-about-grief/

If you enjoyed the artist, Nina Nesbit, she will be performing at the Filmore in Silver Spring in May 2022:

https://www.ninanesbittmusic.com/tour/

When you Lose Someone

By Nina Nesbitt

Full Lyrics:

I thought it’d only be a moment
Like a night of summer rain
But it’s like a landslide of emotion
Everyday

I’ve been trying to recover
I put you to the back of my brain
Now I’m just to remember you
In the best way

Refrain:

I go from feeling numb to feeling everything at once
And don’t know if I
Wanna cry, one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to learn
Is how to lose someone

First, you don’t have the words
It’s the kinda flame you don’t see ’til it burns
Then it hurts ’til it eats you alive
Changes you forever in the blink of an eye
And it’s not something that just fades overnight
It’s something that stays for the rest of your life
When you lose somebody you love
When you lose somebody you love

It comes and goes like it’s a season
But the clouds are always grey
And late at night when I’m alone with my thoughts
It feels like a Ferrari racing (on and on)

Refrain repeats

Lucy Barton, a relatable and compelling underdog admired by readers everywhere, is back for a third round in Elizabeth Strout’s magnificent continuation of a journey that began in a small New York City hospital room. Fans fell in love with Lucy reading the novel showcasing her name. My Name is Lucy Barton (2016) and the engrossing follow up Anything is Possible (2017) trace Lucy’s story and those in her orbit, as they navigate illness, betrayal, abuse and love. Some of us (myself included!) were fortunate enough to see a Laura Linney embody Lucy with abandon in the critically revered Broadway show based on the book (2019).

Oh William! (2021) picks up several years later as Lucy grieves the death of her adoring second husband. Despite widowhood, it feels satisfying to learn that Lucy finally knew intimate and fulfilling romantic love. And unsurprising that Lucy’s first husband and the father of her children, William, is on his third marriage which comes to an abrupt conclusion when his much younger wife suddenly moves out along with their teenage daughter. Lucy and William’s two daughters are both grown and married, and Lucy’s literary career has continued to blossom. While William is grappling with marital abandonment and the faltering of his career, he makes the shocking discovery that he has an older half-sister living in Maine. This nod to his mother’s mysterious past pushes William to seek solace in his amicable friendship with Lucy.

Lucy and William’s dual journey through their own grief brings them together, and they decide to travel to Maine to learn more about William’s mother’s past. Oh William! carries a plethora of insightful jewels along the way. The plot looks backwards contemplating the backstory about William’s half-sister and other unexplored chapters in Lucy and William’s earlier life together. Family secrets and betrayals are contemplated, and Lucy reflects on the devastating memories of uncovering William’s infidelity years earlier:

A tulip stem inside me snapped. This is what I felt. It has stayed snapped, it never grew back. I began to write more truthfully after that.

Despite terrific professional success, the traumatic nature of Lucy’s childhood continues to define and drive her. Stroud understands this tension and continues to cultivate the inner emotional life of her protagonist, still trying to grow and understand and learn from her mistakes.

About authority: When I taught writing – which I did for many years – I talked about authority. I told the students that what was most important was the authority they went to the page with. And when I saw a photograph of Wilhelm Gerhardt in the library I thought: Oh, there is authority. I understood immediately why Catherine had fallen in love with him. It was not just his looks, it was the WAY he looked, as though he would do what he was told, but no one would ever have his soul…And – slowly – I realized this: This authority was why I had fallen in love with William. We crave authority. We do. No matter what anyone says, we crave that sense of authority. Of believing that in the presence of this person, we are safe.

Oh William! continues a memorable journey that will leave readers longing for more. I can’t wait to reconnect with Lucy when she is in her Eighties!

This blog post is one of many exploring Encanto from a family systems perspective. In this contribution, I am focusing on how each of the songs depicts a concept from the “father” of family therapy, Dr. Murray Bowen’s, original concepts. For more information about Bowenian System’s Theory, here is a brief overview from the Bowen Center for Study of the Family:

https://www.thebowencenter.org/core-concepts-diagrams

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t seen the movie yet, please be aware that there may be spoilers in my examples below.

Bowenian System’s Concepts Illustrated by The Songs of Encanto

Relevant to all of these Bowenian concepts illustrated in Encanto is the goal of Differentiation. Differentiation means that a person experiences a healthy balance of feeling whole as an individual and also connected to their family members. The opposite of differentiated is “undifferentiated.” Experiencing Cut-Offs or Enmeshments can both be undifferentiated because differentiation is about balance and not going to either extreme.

 Genograms

 A genogram is like a therapeutic combination of a family tree and a family diagnostic assessment. When depicting the family, we look at several generations. Ideally as far out, or farther, as the “identified patient’s” grandparents.  Genograms show family structure, family roles, individual issues within the family, and family dynamics.

In “The Family Madrigal” we learn about the family structure, individual qualities and roles, and some dynamics such as who is close and who has conflict.

Family Projection Process

 In short, the family projection process is how we talk about older generations’ values, strengths, fears, and anxieties affecting their view and behavior toward the younger generations. Depending on the view, this process can help or hurt the child. The child can either be seen disproportionately as a “problem child” or a “golden child” depending on what the older generation is projecting on to them.

In “Waiting on a Miracle,” Mirabel is reacting to the family value that you must have a magic power to help and belong in her family. Since she has no magical talent, she is seen as a problem and doesn’t feel like she belongs. As we see through the film, this projection process creates a whole system of anxiety for the family.

Family Fusion 

 Fusion occurs when a family member takes on the anxieties of others to the point that they lose themselves. It creates an unmanageable amount of stress for the individual and also enables disfunction in the family system.

In “Surface Pressure,” Luisa sings about the intense pressure of carrying so many family burdens. In the song’s bridge she dreams of living a more differentiated life where she could let go of family pressures and take better care of herself.

Cut-Offs

 Cut-Offs can be both physical and emotional, or just emotional. They occur when the family system cannot handle the anxiety of maintaining a connection with one or more of its members, so it shuts people out. This is a reflection of the system itself and not the individual(s) it is shutting out.

In “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” the family sings about how this member is both physically and emotionally cut off from the family to the point they (unsuccessfully) avoid even talking about him. The family sings about the anxieties this member brings up for them. As we learn, failing to resolve these issues and connect with this family member harmful effect on everyone.

Differentiation

Again, differentiation means being able to feel both whole individually and connected to your family. It means breaking free from becoming an exact replica of previous generations, molded by their values. Differentiation means you find your own unique, often creative, existence. Bowen theory recognizes that even just one person differentiating themselves can begin the healing process for the entire family system. Once someone differentiates themselves, it makes it hard for the family system to continue churning along with the same patterns of disfunction.

In “What Else Can I Do?,” Isabel breaks free of the perfectionism projected onto her by her family. She celebrates with a burst of vitality and creativity. She and her sister reconcile tension, and together stand up to dysfunctional family processes. This ultimately breaks the old dysfunctional family system so that they can build a healthier one.

Intergenerational Trauma

 With intergenerational trauma, the anxiety created from the older generation’s trauma affects the younger generations. Family healing requires either the older generation to heal and make amends, or for the younger generation to recognize the challenges experienced by the older generation and work towards forgiveness, acceptance, and differentiation. When both generations can engage in healing, we have a miracle!

In “Dos Orugitas,” Abuela is able to recognize how her trauma has affected the family. She is able to make amends for the harmful pattern of behavior towards her family, especially her granddaughter, Mirabel. Mirabel expresses understanding of all that her Abuela went through, and the two experience a beautiful reconciliation.

This is a heavy post. September is Suicide Prevention Awareness month so it’s time to post it. “Heavy” was actually my very first blog inspiration. It just so happened that this song popped up in a random Spotify mix right after a session. As I heard the lyrics for the first time, they echoed the words shared by my client only moments before. It reminded me how songs are so full of therapeutic content. I thought about my response to my client and what my response would be to the singers in this song. After drafting my blog response to the song, considering the words and experience of my client, I realized that the person who wrote this song was no longer with us. Chester Bennington, the writer and singer in this song, died by suicide a year before in 2017. My client was able to work through the experiences expressed in this song and the graduated therapy thriving. However, the writer of this song was unable to do that.

Lyric Sample:

 I’m holding on
Why is everything so heavy?
Holding on
So much more than I can carry
I keep dragging around what’s bringing me down
If I just let go, I’d be set free
Holding on
Why is everything so heavy?

 So my blog started in 2018, in September, with a different post, avoiding the topic of suicide. So you can see how even psychotherapists find it hard to talk about suicide.

But talking about suicide in an attempt to prevent it, does actually help prevent suicide. As therapists, we are trained to frequently monitor and ask directly about suicidal ideation with clients who are demonstrating symptoms of anxiety and depression, or basically anyone experiencing stress. We are encouraged to safety-plan with our clients. We “contract” with clients that they will not harm themselves. A significant number of clients have told me over the years that the piece of paper we signed committing to a plan to prevent harm has been their lifeline. Developing the ability to acknowledge these feelings and deeply process them can prevent the impulse to act on them.

One of the most powerful interventions for suicide that I witnessed as a very new therapist was when I called in a supervisor for backup.  She came in to talk to a young adult male who was feeling desperate and hopeless. He wondered why people who want to die shouldn’t just be allowed to die. I didn’t have the words to respond, but her wise words went something like this:

“I agree with you. I believe you should be able to die on your own terms: If you are terminally ill. But you’re not. Depression is episodic, and you will feel better eventually. So we can’t let you die just because it’s hard right now.”

After hearing that he agreed to go to the hospital to stabilize.

This is the stance I now take with my own clients when need be. Mental health issues are tough, but they never have to be a terminal illness. We can get through them. Help is always around if there is a willingness to reach out and seek comfort and guidance during the most difficult, frightening times.  You can turn to supportive friends and family if you have a system to support you. If you haven’t found that system yet, professional help is completely worth it. You can even call a hotline 24/7:  https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/chat/.

If you are feeling low and considering hurting yourself, I want you to reach out for help. Remember that you are never completely alone. (Yes, you may feel and even actually be alone now, but the way humans-as-social-animals works is that anyone needing connection and support will eventually find it). And the pain will pass. No one feels emotionally miserable forever, that’s not how human emotions work. You will feel better and find a meaning to your suffering eventually.

Here are some more resources for support and suicide prevention:

More on Suicide Prevention Awareness Month:

https://www.nami.org/get-involved/awareness-events/suicide-prevention-awareness-month

More on Connection to a Community to Prevent Suicide:

https://afsp.org

More General Suicide Prevention Resources:

https://www.sprc.org/effective-suicide-prevention

More on Basic Statistics and Warning Signs:

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/suicide-prevention

https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/index.html

Fully Lyrics:

Heavy

Performed by Linkin Park, featuring Kiiara

Written by Chester Bennington, Brad Delson, Mike Shinoda, Justin Trantor, and Julia Cavazos

Male:

I don’t like my mind right now
Stacking up problems that are so unnecessary
Wish that I could slow things down
I wanna let go but there’s comfort in the panic
And I drive myself crazy
Thinking everything’s about me
Yeah, I drive myself crazy
‘Cause I can’t escape the gravity

I’m holding on
Why is everything so heavy?
Holding on
So much more than I can carry
I keep dragging around what’s bringing me down
If I just let go, I’d be set free
Holding on
Why is everything so heavy?

Female:

You say that I’m paranoid
But I’m pretty sure the world is out to get me
It’s not like I make the choice
To let my mind stay so fucking messy
I know I’m not the center of the universe
But you keep spinning ’round me just the same
I know I’m not the center of the universe
But you keep spinning ’round me just the same

 I’m holding on
Why is everything so heavy?
Holding on
So much more than I can carry
I keep dragging around what’s bringing me down
If I just let go, I’d be set free
Holding on
Why is everything so heavy?

 Both:

I know I’m not the center of the universe
But you keep spinning ’round me just the same
I know I’m not the center of the universe
But you keep spinning ’round me just the same
And I drive myself crazy
Thinking everything’s about me

Holding on
Why is everything so heavy?
Holding on
So much more than I can carry
I keep dragging around what’s bringing me down
If I just let go, I’d be set free
Holding on
Why is everything so heavy?
Why is everything so heavy?
Why is everything so heavy?

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