I have a conversation coming up with someone I deeply respect, and I am dreading it. Not because of the conversation itself, but because of what it requires: the willingness to take responsibility for something that didn’t go as it should have. 

Over the past few months, I dropped some balls. Not in a dramatic or visible way, but in the accumulation of small misses. And now, understandably, our relationship is holding something I never intended. They feel let down, and I know I need to acknowledge that I did not show up in the way I would have liked.

Many of us know this feeling. When something goes wrong in a relationship that matters, our instinct is often not to lean in, but to pull back. To avoid. To hope that time will ease the discomfort. Or our instinct may be to explain, to point to how much has been going on, how many moving pieces there are, how none of it was intentional. And all of that may be true. But it is not what ultimately serves the relationship. Because avoidance grows wedges in relationships, and they only grow heavier over time. 

I have written a lot this year about the blessing and the responsibility of living in community. And this, too, is part of what it means to live in community: the willingness to lean into these conversations, to take responsibility for the ways we have fallen short, and to try again.



I was reminded of this recently in a different context. A parent shared with us that their child was struggling socially. It was heartbreaking for all of us. And then the parent shared that what might have made the difference was not only addressing the behavior, but helping the children involved come back to one another. Not just stopping what went wrong, which everyone agreed the school had done, but repairing what had been broken. Because while behaviors had shifted, the relationships had never healed, and now the situation had reached a point in which they were not sure their child could remain meaningfully in the community. 

Part of what makes that kind of repair so difficult is how hard it is for any of us to take responsibility in the first place. We see this often as parents. Many times, when children have a hard time taking responsibility for mistakes, it is not because they do not care about their mistake; but rather, because they care so much. They want to be seen as good and capable, they want to please the adults in their lives, and admitting an error can feel like it threatens that identity, that it might change how we see them, or how they are seen by their friends or teachers.

But of course, the opposite ends up being true. When they avoid responsibility, trust begins to erode. And over time, that erosion matters more than the original mistake. And if we are honest, this is not just true for children.

And so I keep returning to a central question: how do we take responsibility for the ways we’ve fallen short while still holding onto a sense of ourselves as capable and good? And as parents, how do we help our children do the same?

Sometimes the answers reveal themselves in small moments. Last week, a colleague pointed out a mistake I had made. I felt the instinct to explain and to tell them why they were wrong. But instead, I simply said, “You’re right.” The moment shifted immediately. They appreciated my ownership, and we moved forward together. And in that moment, I was reminded that taking responsibility does not diminish us - it strengthens trust.

Relationships are not sustained by getting everything right. They are sustained by the willingness to return to one another when we don’t.



At Pressman, we ask our students to do this work every day. When children have a conflict on the playground, our staff supports them in problem solving. The students slow down, they hear how someone else experienced it, they learn to take responsibility, and to repair in a way that is real and meaningful. We have tools to teach them how to do this work, and yet, just as our children learn what it means to be in relationship with other people, it is just as true for us as adults.

In a relationship, there will always be moments when we get it wrong. We will misunderstand one another. We will fall short of our own intentions. We will say or do things we wish we had handled differently. But the strength of a community is not measured by whether we avoid mistakes, but by whether we are willing to come back to one another when we’ve made them.

So I will walk into that conversation. Not with an explanation, but with ownership. Not to smooth it over, but to acknowledge what I could have done differently and to try, honestly, to make it right. I’m not looking forward to the conversation, but if I care about the relationship - and I do, deeply - the only possible path forward is to take responsibility for my actions. And in doing so, I am reminded that taking responsibility does not diminish who we are. It strengthens our relationships, and it strengthens our sense of ourselves within them. Because this is what it takes to build - and sustain - a community.