I'm Gretchen Rubin and this is a little happier.

As I have said many times, I am always listening for examples of when someone knows just the right thing to say.

So often we want to express our love, our sympathy, or our

sorrow, but we can't find the right words. It's so gratifying to hear a person know

just what to say. Sometimes, too, it's not obvious that something

needs to be said. We must be alert to people's unspoken thoughts. A friend of mine,'ll call her Jill told me this story.

Jill has always been very close to her in-laws. For many years her husband's one

sibling, a brother wasn't married and her husband's one sibling, a brother wasn't married, and her

husband's parents made a big fuss over Jill as their only daughter-in-law. But then

her husband's brother got engaged. as she told me, Jill felt jealous of his

fiance and worried about being displaced in a relationship that was important to

her. There wasn't any reason for her to feel anxious about it, but that was how she felt.

She told me how one night at dinner, the entire family spent the whole time talking about

the upcoming wedding with her brother-in-law and future sister-in-law.

After they'd all finished dinner, my friend collected some dinner plates and was putting them down in the

kitchen when her mother-in-law walked in behind her.

Her mother-in-law said very tenderly,

Jill, you know, you'll always have a special place in our hearts.

Jill told me she almost started crying. It meant so much to her. I thought this was just

about the perfect thing to say. Her mother-in-law guessed what Jill might be feeling

and wanted to reassure her. She didn't deny what my friend was feeling by saying,

oh you shouldn't worry. She wasn't dismissive of the new daughter-in-law or the wedding by saying something like, we don't need to keep talking on and

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