Hard Conversations. Have Them.

I've said it before on this blog. For me, happiness is conversation. I believe this. This is why I write. Because writing a novel? It is having one long and winding conversation with myself and the world. It is having small conversations with my characters, my creations. And maintaining this blog? It is having five conversations a week with people I know and people I don't. People that matter. And being married to Husband? It is a continuous conversation. About who we are individually and together. About what we want and what we need and what we hope for. Alas, in my estimation, a good life is a constellation of conversations.

Even hard ones.

Yes, hard conversations. The conversations about tricky and treacherous topics. About emotion and artifice, loss and longing, disappointment and doubt. The exchanges about expectations and effort, about fears and flaws, about cracks and confusion. The talks that stir anger and apology, grist and guilt, rawness and regret. The words that bring hurt and hope, tears and clarity.

Hard conversations. I had one recently. And it was not easy. Because these conversations aren't. On the way to transparency, to stable ground and deeper love, we encounter scary moments of torture and turbulence.

These conversations? They shake us. But they also make us.

Hard conversations. Have them.

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Do you have hard conversations or do you do your best to avoid them? What happens to these conversations when we do not have them? Do they fade or fester? Do you agree that sometimes the path to mutual understanding and awareness is not smooth, that we need to stumble and struggle to reach the other side? Can life be good without constant conversation?