<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[A Key Therapy]]></title><description><![CDATA[A Key Therapy]]></description><link>https://www.akeytherapy.co/blog</link><generator>RSS for Node</generator><lastBuildDate>Sun, 24 May 2026 16:52:52 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://www.akeytherapy.co/blog-feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title><![CDATA[The Space Between Clinician and Human]]></title><description><![CDATA[Developing boundaries as a therapist needs to happen before it is too late. Lex E Santí, LCSW, Clinical Director, A Key Therapy It was Halloween. Six, maybe seven years ago. I was driving home on Perry City Road, about three miles from my house, coming off a shift at Family and Children's of Ithaca. It might have been my first year working there, before A Key Therapy, this private practice, before the novel, before most of what has since become my life. I was learning something about living...]]></description><link>https://www.akeytherapy.co/post/the-cat-the-stranger-and-the-walk-back-to-my-car</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a008f3decab90113756a749</guid><pubDate>Wed, 13 May 2026 00:33:44 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/cb142f_76aaa84f80ff44b8ac7119b159c6f7ba~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_640,h_640,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Lex Santí</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Thunder Road and the Song of the Midnight Rider]]></title><description><![CDATA[The lineage that my novel comes from, The Song of the Midnight Rider, goes directly to the original road movie, Thunder Road from 1958. A movie so powerful and fierce that it took Robert Mitchum producing it himself to make it work. ]]></description><link>https://www.akeytherapy.co/post/thunder-road-and-the-song-of-the-midnight-rider</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fd335c4f7ebdc9f6a815f9</guid><pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2026 01:03:35 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/cb142f_81d7b1e563d04c109e76c8a308dc914d~mv2.webp/v1/fit/w_838,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Lex Santí</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[I Keep Coming Back]]></title><description><![CDATA[On Pallas, the people, and why this place keeps calling me home by Lex E. Santí, LCSW, MFA On May 3rd, from 2 to 4 in the afternoon, I’m doing something vulnerable: my first real public reading of The Song of the Midnight Rider at Pallas Fitness. My debut novel. The one I’ve been working on, in one form or another, for twenty years. I’m doing it here—not a bookstore, not a library, not a stage with a podium and strangers in folding chairs—because this gym has shaped the last thirteen years of...]]></description><link>https://www.akeytherapy.co/post/i-keep-coming-back</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fd2b89e0c02101aa65f9f7</guid><pubDate>Mon, 27 Apr 2026 18:02:13 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/cb142f_5980802541ce4495abbc2585c0795112~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_960,h_720,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Lex Santí</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[My Apple Playlists, My iPod and the music behind The Song of the Midnight Rider]]></title><description><![CDATA[Lex E. Santí, My old iPod  is sitting on my desk again, or at least it will be when the charger arrives. I ordered it on eBay without thinking too hard about why, the way you sometimes reach for something instinctively, like calling an old number you’re not sure still works. I know the playlists are still on it. A while back, I hacked the battery and upgraded it. I even tried to buy a mod for a Bluetooth plugin and then gave up. I'm looking forward to having it in my life again. The New York...]]></description><link>https://www.akeytherapy.co/post/my-apple-playlists-my-ipod-and-the-music-behind-the-song-of-the-midnight-rider</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fd2b89e0c02101aa65fa61</guid><pubDate>Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:07:35 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/cb142f_1c49878b75d84f18bd270285eff9fd48~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Lex Santí</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Where Do the Mosquitoes Go?]]></title><description><![CDATA[On fingerprints, snapping turtles, and the grace of small mercies Lex E. Santí · A Key Therapy LCSW, PLLC I was late. It was raining. The drive to Odessa is a little windy going from Tburg, and I had somewhere to be — the kind of official somewhere that does not forgive tardiness: fingerprints and a background check, the formal machinery of a New Jersey license, another state in the slow accumulation of permissions that will let me do the work I’ve been doing for years. You know the kind of...]]></description><link>https://www.akeytherapy.co/post/where-do-the-mosquitoes-go</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fd2b89e0c02101aa65fa46</guid><pubDate>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 18:57:14 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/cb142f_b10f2e7a24954c248363572fbf67e206~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Lex Santí</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[TV Shows that Inspired the Song of the Midnight Rider]]></title><description><![CDATA[Lex E Santí, A Key Therapy LCSW, PLLC There are shows that pass through your life like a rest stop on the highway — you pull in, get what you need, pull out, and forget the exit number by the next mile marker. And then there are shows that stay with you  — not because they're prestige television or because someone told you they were important, but because they did something to you. They changed the way you see. The way you drive, metaphorically speaking. The way you sit with the dark. This is...]]></description><link>https://www.akeytherapy.co/post/tv-shows-that-inspired-the-song-of-the-midnight-rider</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fd2b89e0c02101aa65fa45</guid><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 13:30:09 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/cb142f_ef2f8eb2d24b4fc5b7de69df01153af1~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Lex Santí</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Night Reality Slipped]]></title><description><![CDATA[True confessions from a young child facing their worst fear Lex E. Santí, A Key Therapy LCSW, PLLC It was 1987, and I woke up in the dark to something crawling over me. Dazed I rubbed my eyes and pulled back the sleeping bag. I heard screeching. I don't remember having awoken to screeching like this in the last 40 years. This type of screeching landed in my chest before it reached my ears. I was a teenager and something was moving in the living room of Jesse Winter's house the night that I...]]></description><link>https://www.akeytherapy.co/post/the-night-reality-slipped</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fd2b89e0c02101aa65fa44</guid><pubDate>Wed, 25 Mar 2026 13:00:20 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/cb142f_7183444f2a964c09b1b0ecc90743e488~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Lex Santí</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Now on Substack... and TikTok]]></title><description><![CDATA[A Key to Something  -- On starting a newsletter, staying with the blog, and what I'm thinking about these days A Key Therapy PLLC, LCSW I've been writing here for years — poems, essays, dispatches from the practice, the occasional film recommendation — and that continues. This is still home base. But I've been circling the idea of a newsletter for a while now, and I finally did it. It's called A Key to Something . The name is a play on aquí  — the Spanish word for here, which is also the...]]></description><link>https://www.akeytherapy.co/post/now-on-substack-and-tiktok</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fd2b89e0c02101aa65f9f6</guid><pubDate>Fri, 20 Mar 2026 20:34:15 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/cb142f_f8a6d1d868cb40fd92f594bb1b7a12f8~mv2.jpeg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Lex Santí</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Song of the Midnight Rider Is Now Available]]></title><description><![CDATA[After years of writing, revising, and carrying the story in my head, I’m excited to share that my debut novel, The Song of the Midnight Rider, is now available. At its core, the book is a literary noir road novel —a story about loyalty, found family, and the restless pull of the American road. The novel follows Jordan Samson , a young man moving through a fractured landscape of ambition, violence, and uneasy alliances. Along the way he encounters hustlers, drifters, and unlikely companions...]]></description><link>https://www.akeytherapy.co/post/the-song-of-the-midnight-rider-is-now-available</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fd2b89e0c02101aa65fa43</guid><pubDate>Thu, 05 Mar 2026 14:22:02 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/cb142f_813386bc41c24ebea19c31bb0f086e89~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Lex Santí</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Poetry from the Plum Ruby Review]]></title><description><![CDATA[Lex Enrico Santí, LCSW, PLLC - A Key Therapy Three Poems from 2004 Plum Ruby Review, Summer Issue In the summer of 2004, I published three poems in Plum Ruby Review . I was living in Washington, DC, on the edge of entering an MFA program, politically charged, aesthetically restless, and deeply interested in how language could stretch—visually, ethically, bodily. These poems come from a time when I was less concerned with coherence and more interested in pressure : how an image holds, how a...]]></description><link>https://www.akeytherapy.co/post/poetry-from-the-plum-ruby-review</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fd2b89e0c02101aa65faad</guid><pubDate>Tue, 13 Jan 2026 21:12:03 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/cb142f_1f0d731ae41943f5a88a0f6dfecfe99e~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Lex Santí</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Proposal Isn’t the Problem—The Problem Is Everything Around It]]></title><description><![CDATA[Lex E Santí, LCSW, MFA – Founder, A Key Therapy LCSW, PLLC Every few years, the federal government finds a new way to remind us that the “helping professions” aren’t actually meant to be helped. The newest example is the U.S. Department of Education’s proposal to reclassify certain master’s programs — education, nursing, public health, social work — so that they are no longer considered “professional degrees” for federal student loan purposes. The Department of Education insists this is a...]]></description><link>https://www.akeytherapy.co/post/the-proposal-isn-t-the-problem-the-problem-is-everything-around-it</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fd2b89e0c02101aa65fa60</guid><pubDate>Thu, 27 Nov 2025 15:00:20 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/cb142f_e853569d788545048f98fbf474f88d73~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Lex Santí</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Fifteen Books That Made Me]]></title><description><![CDATA[Lex Enrico Santí, LCSW, MFA Books have been my most loyal companions. I’ve been reading since I was old enough to understand that the world was bigger than my family, bigger than the town where I grew up, bigger even than the United States. Books were my way out and my way in. They taught me how to live, how to argue, how to be tender. They’ve never once ghosted me, though I’ve been guilty of ignoring them. Below are fifteen that shaped me. Not in some linear list, not as a curriculum—but as...]]></description><link>https://www.akeytherapy.co/post/fifteen-books-that-made-me-1</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fd2b89e0c02101aa65fa87</guid><pubDate>Mon, 24 Nov 2025 21:52:17 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/cb142f_cc4d2bbf1bd04c1690c37eed34348779~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Lex Santí</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Literature Review: Acceptance and Motivation Inquiry]]></title><description><![CDATA[Literature Review Acceptance / Motivation Inquiry (AMI) Lex E Santí, LCSW, MFA Introduction Client engagement in psychotherapy is a...]]></description><link>https://www.akeytherapy.co/post/literature-review-acceptance-and-motivation-inquiry-1</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fd2b89e0c02101aa65fa02</guid><pubDate>Fri, 19 Sep 2025 17:57:50 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/cb142f_26a6732e65da4c6f8d807626cd954e41~mv2.jpeg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Lex Santí</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Remembering Greg Eells, Six Years On]]></title><description><![CDATA[Reflection on Mourning in the Shadow of a Giant at Cornell By Lex Enrico Santí, LCSW, MFA On September 9, 2019, the Cornell community...]]></description><link>https://www.akeytherapy.co/post/remembering-greg-eells-six-years-on</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fd2b89e0c02101aa65fa20</guid><pubDate>Mon, 08 Sep 2025 20:59:19 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/cb142f_76eefbcc79154af1ac65257102871f65~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Lex Santí</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Query Letters, Rejection, and the Midnight Rider]]></title><description><![CDATA[A Field Guide to Agents, Queries, and Other Creative Punishments Lex E. Santi, LCSW, MFA At one point in its life, Song of the Midnight...]]></description><link>https://www.akeytherapy.co/post/query-letters-rejection-and-the-midnight-rider</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fd2b89e0c02101aa65f9f5</guid><category><![CDATA[Creative Writing]]></category><category><![CDATA[Experiences]]></category><pubDate>Wed, 03 Sep 2025 19:13:03 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/cb142f_98b9e394acb94ee38f7f9cddc38b6450~mv2.webp/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Lex Santí</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[So You Want to Start a Private Practice? Here’s the Roadmap (2 of 2)]]></title><description><![CDATA[Beginning your private practice, step-by-step... It's been 6 years since I started my private practice and I love it. If the first part...]]></description><link>https://www.akeytherapy.co/post/so-you-want-to-start-a-private-practice-here-s-the-roadmap-2-of-2</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fd2b89e0c02101aa65faac</guid><category><![CDATA[Therapy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Experiences]]></category><pubDate>Fri, 29 Aug 2025 08:03:07 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/cb142f_840f5f6a42274995ba89ae3a3c8d9af3~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Lex Santí</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Why I Love Having a Private Practice (And Why You Might Too) (1 of 2)]]></title><description><![CDATA[A therapist’s joy in small rooms with big conversations Lex E. Santi, LCSW, MFA One of the wonderful things about becoming a therapist —...]]></description><link>https://www.akeytherapy.co/post/why-i-love-having-a-private-practice-and-why-you-might-too-1-of-2</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fd2b89e0c02101aa65fa84</guid><category><![CDATA[Therapy]]></category><pubDate>Tue, 26 Aug 2025 08:00:16 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/cb142f_c94aa083a5824e97942570a49d6a8b01~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Lex Santí</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Gatekeeping and Deportation ]]></title><description><![CDATA[On Latinidad, fear, and who gets to belong I saw this meme recently — a hand-drawn fortress surrounded by moat after moat, each layer...]]></description><link>https://www.akeytherapy.co/post/gatekeeping-and-deportation</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fd2b89e0c02101aa65f9f4</guid><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><pubDate>Thu, 21 Aug 2025 17:57:36 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/cb142f_97ab091a3f934424b3a3f4df4a8f7d6e~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Lex Santí</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Gaza, Grief, and the Ghosts of Our Wars]]></title><description><![CDATA[Lex E Santi, LCSW, MFA In the days after 9/11, there was a feeling in the United States that something irreversible had cracked open, not just buildings, not just lives, but the idea that war could ever be clean, swift, or justified by pain alone. We have been collectively fighting that system of fear and terror ever since. What followed: Afghanistan, Iraq, drone strikes, proxy wars, black sites, enhanced interrogations, the blank check of homeland security — taught us that violence...]]></description><link>https://www.akeytherapy.co/post/gaza-grief-and-the-ghosts-of-our-wars</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fd2b89e0c02101aa65fa5e</guid><pubDate>Fri, 15 Aug 2025 17:53:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/cb142f_8c20f48744ee4d479a938b74b87691d2~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Lex Santí</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Meditation That Got Derailed by a Trip to Wegmans]]></title><description><![CDATA[Lex Enrico Santi, LCSW MFA I tell this story a lot, purposefully, as beginning a meditation project is brutal and stories and while...]]></description><link>https://www.akeytherapy.co/post/the-meditation-that-got-derailed-by-a-trip-to-wegmans-1</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fd2b89e0c02101aa65fa29</guid><category><![CDATA[Therapy]]></category><pubDate>Wed, 06 Aug 2025 16:44:06 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/cb142f_80d13cac8d204e1cb24cf9e15f44db99~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Lex Santí</dc:creator></item></channel></rss>