“This Is Us” Is Currently My Family Systems Therapy

Trigger Warning: Addiction, death and This is Us spoilers….

I just finished watching the episode in This Is Us -where Jack experiences the death of his mother. It’s in the most recent season, which will be the last season of the show. The reason that I have loved the show is that it has often helped me to understand some things about my own family that I had not been able to put into words. This particular episode does this to a T.

The episode begins with Jack getting a phone call from his cousin Debbie to let him know that his mother has died. Through flashbacks, we see how Jack had helped his mom to escape a situation at home with an alcoholic husband and violent domestic abuse. Throughout the show, over the years, we have seen how growing up in this alcoholic home has impacted Jack, his brother Nicky, and the subsequent generations in their family. Because addiction is a generational disease and it affects the future generations in ways that are often not completely understood.

When the episode cuts to Jack showing up for his mother‘s funeral, we find out that it has been 13 years since he has been to see her in Ohio, where she had moved in with her cousin Debbie after escaping from her husband. Jack finds that he knew nothing about the life of his mother in Ohio, even though they talked every Sunday evening on the phone at 6 PM. His…