Every night when he slept, I stood over his bed and told myself: tomorrow I will do better. Sometimes it was even true. Sometimes, we would run laughing down to the beach and he would sit snug in my lap as we watched the waves. His feet still kicked, his hands pulled restlessly at the skin of my arms. Yet his cheek lay on my chest, and I felt the swell and fall of his breath. My patience overflowed. Scream and scream, I thought. I can bear it. Will it was, every hour, will. Like a spell after all, but one that I had to cast upon myself. Circe, Madeline Miller
I often think that healthy relationships are defined not by a lack of rupture but by how well we repair. All relationships have rough patches, and yet, these moments can be the greatest sources of deepening connection. A rupture moment occurs because both people are in their own experience, and they are unable to temporarily put that experience to the side to understand and connect to the other person. Even if we’re working on understanding our triggers, or trying to become more self-aware so that we recognize our experiences without letting them take over, we still can’t avoid rupture moments in our close relationships—not with our friends or spouses and certainly not with our kids. So we need to get better at repair. Becky Kennedy, Good Inside