ELUL 21 · DAY 21 of 29 · SEPTEMBER 1, 2026

When I took my teenage daughter to see Encanto a cartoon tale about intergenerational trauma and split-off parts, she squeezed my hand and wisely said, “Dad is Bruno.” As in the song, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.”

I realized that for all of us to begin to heal, individually and as a family, I needed to start talking to my ex after a year of silence. Vulnerable phone conversations led to shared meals, platonic outings, long hugs, and a slow but eventual reconciliation.

I’m a seasoned therapist who had to admit my own mistakes. I had to discard my snarky diagnoses and rediscover who he was beneath the labels of husband or father. I realized I knew how to interpret his behavior, but I had forgotten how to see him. I had to stop blaming and projecting long enough to understand his different way of being in the world and his love language. I got to know him anew, from a more mature vantage point than when we’d first met 25 years earlier.

The great artist Wassily Kandinsky discovered abstraction by accident when he turned one of his figurative paintings on its side. That turning made all the difference.

So too, we’ve discovered a brand-new, creative way to be together—in love, happily unmarried, living separately.

Perhaps that’s the true meaning of t’shuvah—not returning to who we once were, but learning to see one another anew.