I am not sure if this is a character flaw or an asset. I’m not sure if it is a “female” thing or a side effect of my childhood. What I do know is that it is part and parcel of who I am, who I have always been and who I suspect I will always be.

What I am referring to is my desire to make everything okay, to resolve every situation, to bring peace to conflict and have everyone find, if not satisfaction, at least harmony.

I don’t have to look too deeply inside to see the roots of this behavior. My father was rarely, if ever, a happy man. He was disappointed and frustrated in his life and that was often reflected with anger, directed solely at my mother. I don’t ever remember them arguing, what I do remember is his need to blame and her being the only convenient target.

His anger translated into the silent treatment and that could go on for days. He would confine himself to the living room while the rest of us would cluster in the kitchen. I can still see him, one arm tucked under his head and resting on the arm of the couch, legs stretched out across the cushions, his lips compressed in a tight line.

I was always the “go between.” I suspect I was no more than 4 or 5 when this started. I would try to get him to let go of his anger with some combination of cajoling and distraction. I’d talk to him, sitting on the floor at his side, thinking that I could find a way to break the tension and get him to let go of whatever had set him off. Often I carried messages from one to the other parent, hers asking him benign things like if he wanted dinner and his response often a wordless, and angry, shake of the head.

The silent treatment seemed to stop right after my mother’s cancer diagnosis and mastectomy. I was 14 and Dad went with Mom to see her surgeon, a post-operative recheck. Dad could not understand why the surgery had been so extensive and he was angry with the surgeon, who showed him the size of the tumor with his fingers, demonstrating something about an inch in circumference. He ranted about this at home, ranted that it hadn’t been necessary, ranted that the doctor was wrong. For the first time, Mom shut him out and refused to speak to him. He never pulled his silent treatment again.

But the desire to make everything okay was either deeply programmed into me or lives in my DNA—or both. I want to make it all okay, I want to tie things up with ribbons and perfect bows. I want all the puzzle pieces to fit and the boxes to be checked.

Most of the time I can get to that place, both personally and professionally. Most of the time I can find a way to make everybody “okay” if not happy. I can reason, I can negotiate, I can cajole, I can compromise. But there are times when none of those skills are enough, when the issues that exist and the personalities that are at play, are incapable of closure.

Accepting that is difficult. Surely, I think, there has to be a way. Surely, we can find a solution, see reason and make peace. It plagues me when I cannot. I go over it and over it in my mind, looking for what I have missed, how I can make it better. And, in the end, when there is no answer, I try to accept and to give myself the grace I need to accept, remembering that it is also challenge that fills my full heart.