Lemondrop

I've been a family therapist for seven years now, and for much longer than that, I've been obsessed with the concept of family. I'm intrigued by the idea that no matter how many relationships we form in our lives, we still consider blood relatives sacred. In Fantasyland, your relatives are the closest people in your life, but in Realityland, relatives can be hurtful, honest, indifferent, wonderful, or just ghosts. Since I deal with a lot of clients who live in Realityland, the WeTV show "The Locator" has always struck me as a show that looks at families the same way I do: honestly.

On "The Locator" -- hint: season finale tonight -- Troy Dunn works to reunite men and women with their long-lost friends and family members. Sometimes it's a happy ending. Sometimes, not so much. Ultimately he's there to help them find answers.

Many of Troy's clients are women looking for fathers who disappeared at some point in their childhoods. And, according to a recent U.S. census, 12.9 million American households are single-parent families, with 80 percent of those headed by mothers, so that kind of makes sense. But what's interesting is that the women seem to have different motivations for seeking their dads, depending on their age.

The younger women still need a father figure and are hoping their missing dads will provide stability, guidance, and a day-to-day relationship. The older women, on the other hand, are often settled into families of their own, and far from looking for a source of comfort, just want to make sense of their past.

Here's a clip from tonight's season finale of one of Troy's clients, Leticia, waiting to hear if she'll ever see her father again.



The wide range of emotions in just one episode is what makes the show so intimate and watchable. Some of the young women are furious with their missing fathers, and rage over how feeling abandoned leaves them unable to trust people.

"I've never been able to have a strong relationship because I'm always like, 'They're just going to walk out just like my dad did'," says one 18-year-old. These girls are clearly in a lot of pain, and it seems that their fathers have played a larger role in their lives by being absent than they would have if they'd always been there.

The importance of one's life story is an essential element to women, and part of an approach to thinking about emotional development called narrative therapy. In narrative therapy, it is thought that our identities are shaped by how we remember the stories in our lives. Our very values and beliefs are locked into specific life events, and having a missing piece of your own story can make it hard to feel complete. That desperate search for identity is the show's can't-look-away appeal.

It's hard not to get goosebumps when a woman hugs the father she thought was gone forever, or to feel your heart ache when Troy comes back with nothing but photographs -- and you know a missing dad is gone for good. But, all in all, the show is a great reminder that what most people are really looking for is to make sense of themselves.

Here's some exclusive post-reunion footage of Leticia and her father -- watch the entire episode tonight on WEtv.



Emily Gordon is a couples and family therapist turned blogger that lives in Brooklyn, far away from her family in North Carolina. She visits often. She is available if you need a clinical opinion from a real dame, or if you need someone to pass you the Kleenex while watching "The Locator."