All Things Indeed

It’s November of 1996, and I’m crying in the study of my apartment. I’ve just passed my sixth year of living in Austin, having escaped the chaos of my coastal upbringing. The greatest gift my father ever gave to me was the freedom to be me, whoever and wherever that was. Nowhere in my home […]

Released

I experienced a healing touch via music a few days ago.  From the time I could first operate a turntable, music carried, healed, soothed, and saved all those younger versions of myself. At age 3, I felt it when BB King told me about the thrill and how it was gone. At 12, the vibration of nickel […]

On Being the Pond

When my son was about three years old, I sat down with him to share the news that he had a baby sister on the way.  There we were in the nursery, decorated with new wallpaper, a crib, and a dresser I lovingly finished in an antique off-white. I explained to my son that he […]

Estrangement – The New Generational Trauma

It’s ironic that many of us parents in PLACE have worked to break generational trauma cycles, yet ended up with children who have launched a movement that will almost certainly create its own generational trauma moving forward. Let me be clear: Counselors are not prognosticators. I could be wrong. But consider the following and let […]

The New York Times Article

Is Cutting Off Your Family Good Therapy? Ellen Barry July 14, 2024 As she struggled through her sophomore year in college, Zhenzhen spent hours in therapy, but it hadn’t addressed the central strain in her life: her parents. They called her at her Midwestern campus again and again, badgering her to fulfill their expectations — […]

Number 18

When running an open group such as ours, people come and go. Some people join us often for months on end, while others come only once or twice. People join us when estrangement is new, and their grief is raw, their days chaotic. They also join us when they’re well into radical acceptance, coping better […]

Unambiguous Grief

During hiatus week, I traveled to Austin to spend time with an old friend, and to attend a memorial service for his wife, who passed in November. While there, I had a lot of time to reflect and think about grief. At the memorial, I chatted with my friend’s sister, Maria. She lost her young […]

The Other Grief

The more I work with estranged parents and within this community, the more convinced I am that the label “grief” is rather inaccurate and insufficient to describe what we go through.  We’ve heard this experience called “ambiguous grief,” which makes sense on the surface given the lack of resolution/closure so many of us face. However, […]

ICDs

Any model of grief, change, growth, progress, etc allows for setbacks. One minute we’re cruising along like we have no distress whatsoever, and the next we feel like we’re back at square one. It’s been about 28 months since I last saw my daughter. It has been, far and away, the most difficult thing I’ve […]

The Comfort of the Truth

I don’t know that there’s a prevailing message in the work I do as a counselor; we work to meet the needs of the patient, and as a generalist, I have a caseload that can present with what seem like countless variations of distress. Since PLACE started, though, many people have shared their frustration and […]