Raising kids is tough. It’s extremely hard to do alone. And it’s not exactly easy doing it with someone else either. Marriage is no walk in the park—literally 50% of the time it fails.
Joan Didion was married for nearly 40 years. Her marriage went through ups and downs. In fact, it inspired one of her most famous sentences: “We are here on this island in the middle of the Pacific in lieu of filing for divorce.”
But she and John, who raised a daughter Quintana, worked out a little system that kept them together—both as parents, spouses and as co-workers. “We found an approach that was kind of helpful,” she once explained. “If we were fighting and somebody said something unforgivable, all that person had to do was say, ‘That came out wrong,’ and the other person was supposed to accept it.”
This little trick worked for them. Maybe it will work for you. It might work for you and your teenager too—in both directions. Because we all say things we regret. We could all use some grace and forgiveness. We could all get better at apologizing…and shrugging things off. This is a long haul we signed up for.
P.S. For more wisdom about embracing grace and forgiveness within our families, The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights are really great parenting books disguised as memoirs (grab both at the Painted Porch!).
And over at the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan spoke with Evelyn McDonnell, who wrote an excellent biography on Didion, about how staying calm can be contagious for families and how to prepare for emergencies as a parent.