Patrick Murphy, MS, LLPC
Bio
I am a licensed therapist.Stories (2/0)
How I Explained Charlottesville to My Kids
The events in Charlottesville, Virginia, have been described as many things — hateful, terrorism, supremacist, etc. There are self-flagellating white liberals grieving over whiteness. There are Blacks who are tired of hearing the same old song. There are conservatives saying, “Hey, that ain’t us.” There are cyberbullies doxxing people who look like the neo-Nazis who gathered there. And I, well, I’m just trying to help my kids — the oldest of whom is mixed — digest it.
By Patrick Murphy, MS, LLPC7 years ago in The Swamp
Breakfast Sandwich Makers are Tools for Mourning
The Breakfast Sandwich Maker is a $15 tribute to American economic malaise. It hit the market at a time when the U.S. Department of Labor stopped counting people who gave up fruitlessly looking for work in their unemployment statistics in a desperate attempt to paint a rosier picture of the Great Recession. Well-paid talking heads in big coastal cities were telling average Joes and Janes in flyover country that the new normal was scraping by with a little help from the dole. And as so-called experts sat with garbage smiles and wagging fingers, telling flyover country to check its privilege as jobs went overseas and foreclosures stole homes, this machine made its debut on Meijer and Walmart shelves. And while its utility in the kitchen may be questionable at best, this machine and its generic knock-offs served a greater purpose: to help working-class men and women to grieve the passing of the Good Life.
By Patrick Murphy, MS, LLPC7 years ago in Journal