Then we stop listening.

And then, without noticing, we start treating the people we love most — the mother who cooks, the husband who fixes, the grandmother who never complains — as background scenery in our own busy lives.

Strong people.

Useful people.

People who can handle everything.

Until one day you learn they were never handling everything at all.

They were only suffering in silence, leaning against a wall, waiting for one of us to finally turn our head.

So there is a phrase I have erased from my family forever, the phrase my mother lived and nearly died by: I can handle it on my own. No.