In this episode, I reflect on rereading Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses as a coming-of-age novel and bring it into conversation with one of my favorite books from high school, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. I explore the tragic and beautiful passage into adulthood — the loss of innocence, the grief of seeing the world more clearly, and the difficult courage it takes to keep loving, working, and showing up anyway.

I also connect these themes to my work as a therapist with adolescents and young adults, where therapy can become a kind of initiation space — a place to grieve what is lost, discover what is gained, and learn how to care less about the crowd while caring more about the right people. Along the way, I bring in the idea of la lucha — the struggle, the fight, the refusal to let the bastards get you down — as part of what adulthood asks of us.