Senior Therapists Rachael Benjamin and Kelly Scott Quoted in Verywell Family and The Ringer

From parenting to relationships, our therapists’ expertise has been sought out by numerous publications. Senior Therapist and Director of Tribeca Maternity Rachael Benjamin and Senior Therapist Kelly Scott were recently featured in Verywell Family and The Ringer, reflecting on, respectively, how the pandemic affected moms’ mental health and the post-breakup revenge fantasy at the center of the 2001 film Legally Blonde.

In “Mom’s Mental Health Suffered from Pandemic School Closures,” Rachael Benjamin responds in Verywell Family to a recent study that reveals school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted mothers’ mental health. For many parents, this isn’t surprising as parents, similar to their children, were left isolated from their social circles and even small daily interactions with other parents. Rachael explains, “You’re very isolated in your world. That’s the picture of why you might be lonely. You don’t have any of the everyday interactions and you don’t have [those] meaningful interactions.”

Often, as the article reveals, mothers can put their family’s needs first, overlooking that they’re also grappling with their own fears, anxieties, grieving, loneliness, and numerous other feelings. “Moms are more complicated than ‘fine,’” Rachael describes. “They might feel fine, they might operate as fine. And maybe they are fine on some days. But we really need to look at their complexity and that they’re allowed to have that complexity throughout the day.”

In a fun article for The Ringer, “20 Years Later, ‘Legally Blonde’ Remains a Benchmark for Revenge Fantasy,” Kelly Scott weighs in on how Legally Blonde’s Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) turns being underestimated and dumped by her boyfriend Warner (Matthew Davis) into motivation to succeed at Harvard Law. Kelly notes, “[We see her] recognizing, ‘I don’t need to see myself in the same way that you see me.’ It’s really her rejecting the criticism as something she needs to be organized by.”

Not only does the impulse to prove Warner wrong contribute to Elle’s professional drive, but it is also cathartic for viewers to witness. “I think everyone loves a revenge fantasy. I think everyone has a revenge fantasy,” Kelly observes. She continues, “There’s something that feels really deeply emotionally satisfying about [Elle’s rejection of Warner]. It feels like it’s balanced, like all is right in the world.”