Some Things Don’t Get Fixed. They Get Carried
And how you carry them is everything
Easter morning started out as a shit show with me as the lead actress.
We were scheduled to go to church. That was the agreed plan. When I woke up, I did not want to go.
In fact, the rebellious f-you teenager who still holds a seat at my boardroom table showed up as CEO about an hour before I found myself in the pew. I actually told my husband to go without me in that snarky, no you just go voice I even cringe to hear.
But partnership doesn’t work that way for me, and I knew immediately I needed to change my tone. My husband is Catholic, and Easter Sunday is as foundational to him as my morning matcha ritual is to me. I wouldn’t rip away that anchor because my own was fraying.
And the truth is, I needed to be there too. I just didn’t know why yet.
There is a relationship in my life right now that has unraveled without explanation. I’ve tried to mend it. Tried to understand it. I’ve created space for it. I’ve even fawned for it, which in hindsight makes me pity myself a little.
This person, this lifelong friend, has built a narrative I’m not part of. One that others have seemingly been pulled into in a way that feels like being left at the end of a middle school cafeteria table, desperately trying to enter a conversation already happening without you.
I’ve known that for a while. And I kept showing up anyway.
I rehashed every recent encounter, every text, every conversation through my head forty times throughout the weekend, desperate to make sense of it all. None of it. Not one part of it made sense. And by Sunday morning, the inner teenager had taken the wheel.
That is what happens when we keep trying to fix what will not be fixed.
We do not just fail to fix it. We lose ourselves inside the trying.
And some of us genuinely believe that if we try hard enough and keep showing up, something in the other person will finally give.
So there I sat in the pew, pissed off, half listening, when the message started. The old man with a cane in front of me was doing everything he could just to be there. His son steady beside him at every moment. And I was sitting there furious about a friendship.
And then the minister, not the priest, because my cold rebellion caused us to miss Catholic Easter Mass and pivot to a church across the street, told a story from 17 years ago about a snow globe.
He and his wife, along with their one-year-old son, had been invited to a dinner party to meet members of their new congregation. Their hosts were prominent members of the community, the kind with influential connections they were proud to drop into conversation.
At the center of the table sat a snow globe.
Not an ordinary one. Though it was Christmas, it was obvious this globe held center stage year-round, waiting for someone to ask about it. And when someone finally did that evening, the group gathered around to hear its significance.
It had been given to the family by a well-known country star, with an autograph as proof. Meaningful. Precious. The kind of object you do not touch casually.
Everyone listened in admiration.
And then, as the room began to mingle again, the minister’s curious one-year-old reached in just fast enough, lifted it high enough, and let go abruptly enough for the globe to come crashing down with enough force to shatter into tiny pieces, its contents spilling across the table and onto the family heirloom Bible all at once.
The room went silent. There was no fixing it. Not the globe. Not the Bible. Not the moment.
And that is when it clicked for me.