My mother and I don't see eye-to-eye when it comes to religion or politics...

Sometimes we cannot even talk because our core beliefs are different and neither of us can budge. When the talks do happen, nothing can be more mentally taxing. They only serve to hurt our already strained relationship. Each conversation like an ocean wave, and one after another they break rock foundation into dust.

We shut up. Stop the conversation, and it's a tentative truce of silence with the undertones of a miniature Cold War --bottling up our words, storing them away.

Her religion fuels her. My belief in social justice fuels mine.

How can we have ended up so different?

…is to assume that they are uninformed, and that once they know what you know, they will change their mind. (A marketing problem!)

The second easiest way to disagree is to assume that the other person is a dolt, a loon, a misguided zealot who refuses to…