S2 E 10: Before We Stop Celebrating Each Other: Love, Beauty and Ritual with Kristina Fitzpatrick

Gabriella Pomare: Welcome back to Before It Breaks with Gabriella Pomare. This is the podcast where we talk about the things that often begin quietly, before the resentment, before the emotional shutdown, before the separation, before the family rituals disappear, before people stop celebrating each other, and before the moments that once held meaning start to pass unnoticed. I'm Gabriella Pomare, family lawyer, award-winning author of The Collaborative Co-Parent. I'm a mum and I'm a co-parent. And this is the podcast where we talk about the before. This podcast is not about perfect families, it is about conscious ones. And let me remind you that today's episode is not therapeutic or legal advice. Every family, relationship, and person circumstances is different. Now let's begin. Today's conversation is about beauty, but not beauty in a shallow sense. Beauty is memory, beauty is effort, beauty is ritual. Beauty is the thing we create around life's most emotional moments. Weddings, birthdays, celebrations, family gatherings, milestones, endings, beginnings, and the moments we want to remember long after they're over. My guest today is Kristina Fitzpatrick, the founder and creative force behind Paper and Flowers, a New York based studio known for handcrafted paper floral installations, large scale event design, and sustainable, emotionally resonant visual experiences. Kristina's work has been seen across major events, luxury brands, and unforgettable celebrations. But what I find so compelling about her work is not only the scale or the beauty of what she creates. It's the idea behind it. She creates flowers that last longer than the moment. And that feels so connected to the heart of this podcast. Because in relationships and families, we often think the big conversations are the only things that matter. But so much of connection is built in the moments we choose to mark, the table we set, the birthday we make special, the wedding we imagine, and the anniversary we remember. The small rituals that tell someone you matter. This matters. We're still here. Before relationships break, people don't only stop communicating. Sometimes they stop celebrating. They stop noticing. They stop making things beautiful for each other. They stop creating memories on purpose. And over time the relationship becomes functional, but no longer meaningful. So today I want to talk to Kristina about creativity, celebration, pressure, perfectionism. sustainability, reinvention, and what it means to build something beautiful around the moments people want to hold on to. This is a conversation about what we create before the moment passes and what we preserve before it breaks. Kristina, thank you for joining me today on Before It Breaks. I'm very happy to be here. I've learned a lot about you recently and your wonderful business and it's very exciting to be together today and to chat. Thank you so much for having me here today. Thank you. It's a pleasure. So for the people who are new to your work and for everyone listening, can you tell me the story about paper and flowers and how it began? Of course. That's actually a very interesting story. So when I opened Paper of Flowers, that was seven years ago, it was a very small idea, what I just wanna test. back then I lived on Rockaway Beach, Queens. Wow. By by the ocean, it was very you know, chill time of my life. I open it as a hobby. And as a business person, I'm in business since 19. And what I learned from there is before you put a lot of effort into idea, try to sell it first and see if it's an interest from the market. So I open Instagram page with some fake pictures in it. and I start sending direct messages to big brands like Dolce Gabbano, IMTE, New York Fashion Week, etc. Back then it wasn't hidden messages, so you couldn't send messages to everybody and everybody would just open them on Instagram. So somehow New York Fashion Week answered me and they ordered my wall. So my very first client was New York Fashion Week, which gave me some insights and idea that it's definitely something that has potential and I should move forward. That is a pretty incredible story with New York Fashion Week being your literally your first client. Tell me about that experience and what you did for them. Well, since it was a first kind, it was very stressful because I didn't make a single flower in my life and New York Fashion Week wants my wall. So we but I saw I saw the paper of flowers online, right? So it doesn't look too complicated for me and seems like just a paper, right? So I wasn't at school, I was pretty crafty. I probably can figure out how to make it. However, that's pretty complicated. But it's OSNL after. So New York Fashion Week was very sweet. It was like, send us your logo. We will put it on our website. I didn't I didn't have even a name for my flowers. My f my company name was like Big Flowers in New York, and I didn't have logo. So I called my friend who's cartoon artist, illustrator, and I asked her, can you make me a logo within like 40 minutes or so? I need to send it to New York Fashion Week. Which she did. of course I changed this log a while ago, but that was something. we started. I bought some I tried to find some courses and classes online to make the first flower. I made it and it was ugliest flower I could ever imagine. It was so bad. So I went through all those stages. But I decided to, you know, New York Fashion wants my wall, so I have no way back how to make it work. So I started searching some courses and classes. I found some courses. I learned how to make paper flowers and make it work in my super small teeny tiny room on the rock away. It was all covered with paper. It was about 75 paper flowers, like the on average, like about 20 inches wide, and a few really large ones, about three feet wide. So they was super happy with it. It was a part of it and it was it was a great show. It was a great experience. a little bit after that, BCG business consulting group saw me there, so that was my second client. A little bit after Google found me online and I flew to California to decorate their s their space. And starting then I start big. My my truly belief is yeah, the same amount of Effort and time you spend to search small clients, you can search to you can spend to search for big clients. So why start small? That's a big start to a pretty incredible journey. What do you think that first experience taught you about resilience and courage? I think that as an entrepreneur, we often make this mistake. We connecting success of our product or our project with our own. confidence and the way how we feel about ourselves. And it feels good to be successful. It feels good to run successful business. But it's very tricky spot. Because if something in business doesn't go well, which is happening all the time, it can be just a stable situation. You go up and down, up and down, this is normal. We connect it with ourselves as well. So if something doesn't work, I think I'm not good enough. as entrepreneur or as an artist or something wrong, it's a bad idea. So I think the best lesson I get in my into my life and in this experience specifically is if I try something and it doesn't work, it shouldn't be connected with me as a business owner. It's just a theory. What I tested and it didn't work. So I should just check it and move to the next one. So within seven years I had so many things that didn't work with me. And that it hurt me in certain ways emotionally, but I learned that should let it go. This is just a business, nothing personal. I should move forward. And the truth is, more mistakes we make, more toughest, uncomfortable situation we go through, the strongest we get the strongest we we get as a business owners, as entrepreneurs, as a leaders. So next time the situation wouldn't be as tough. We will have right skills. or our stress or level of the stress we can handle will be much higher. I think you're absolutely right. And I guess what I'm hearing as well is that you shouldn't be afraid to sort of reach big from the start. I mean you had this dream and they weren't even real photos initially on Instagram, but so what? I mean if you sell yourself as your vision and you've got the confidence within yourself, that dream can be made a reality. And I think that's really interesting. And I think it gives hope to a lot of people who are A little bit too scared to sort of reach out and you know make their goals come true. Definitely. And I think before paper and flowers, if I'm right, you had other businesses and other chapters in your life. What did failure teach you about reinvention? How to be stronger. But it's probably too obvious, you know. Yes, everybody learn how to be stronger through failures. It's the it's probably teach me how to adapt faster. And how to move faster and make another decision faster. The leadership and success is often not about the skills and knowledge and how smart you are. It's about how fast you make a decision, any decision. To be honest, any decision. You don't know if it's right decision or wrong. But if you make right decision fast, cool, you already like step ahead. If you made the wrong decision fast, okay, now you know this decision was wrong, make a next one. Fast. And that's the first thing. And the second thing, don't take failures, f followers personally. That's exactly right. And adaptability to be able to adapt. So change your product what you create. It's not like a baby. It's a structure. It's a system. So I shouldn't feel bad about cut-off some parts what wouldn't work, what doesn't, what what the market doesn't like. It's just a system and I have to adapt the system right to their customers request and do it fast. Yeah. And I guess a lot of that is linked to relationships as well, because we're talking about business today and beauty and flowers, but we're also taking talking about relationships and I think adaptability. I think, you know, being open to change and and not thinking of yourself as a failure is really important as you, you know, have different relationships in life. So I think a lot of what we're learning we can adapt to different aspects as well. And as you probably know, and before it breaks, this podcast, I'm very interested in what people think about and what they do before something breaks, in before it's lost. Do you think that beautiful moments have to be created intentionally? Yes, absolutely. It's just something what we have to take responsibility for. It's much easier to go with the flow than the flow goes right. Yeah, I think that's right. But if it doesn't, which again has happened. we should take responsibility if we want to be successful in this area as well. If we if we have a lot on our plates, if we have family business, I have to work out every day. I do a lot of, you know, I have friends and social life, the family, like a lot. we have to be responsible on a hundred percent of the success of our relationship or success of our business. of quality of our body or amount of workouts we're having or quality of our social life. Not, you know, how they said responsibility should be like 50-50. I think responsibility should be 100-100. Exactly. Yeah. I think you're right. So if we take it this way, it's maybe uncomfortable because you will need to get more work into it. It's definitely requires more. But it also bring more Happiness, more you're satisfied more with the result and they give you more energy. So in my case, I think more we get, more we put in, more we get back. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. But over time. I think you're right. And I guess part of why you're hired and the work you do are to create these curated, these beautiful moments for special events. And I think that people put a lot of effort into, you know, celebrations and and events and and putting together what goes on behind the scenes for that. But do you think that they also forget that love and relationships also needs that effort and it also perhaps needs the curated special moments as well to keep that spark alive. A hundred percent agree with it, yes. What are some things that you think people can be doing at home to create that special moment? I think everybody are different. I think people should do more something what makes them feel happier. What make them feel more energetic. wherever it is, we're all different, right? Somebody like to listen to music, somebody likes to do yoga, somebody likes to stay alone, somebody likes to go social, somebody likes to watch movies. So wherever it is, and I think the most important thing, and also one of the toughest parties, is take responsibility for our thoughts and what's consistently happen in our mind. And teach our brain. to write to to r to play right record. Not whatever came to my mind should affect me and I should go with that flow. I want to create flow. And I think those beautiful moments, this is some th this is like a type of flow that you want to create. We sometimes Want to have those moments at home, but we want somebody else create them. Or we may put a little bit of effort, or we may put a little bit of energy in there, and if we don't have the the what we expected back, they get disappointed. I had the great idea from somebody that relationship is never 50-50. sometimes I have 80% and you have 20%. So in this case, I cannot expect you to bring the same 80% or same 50%. You only have 20. But you know what? I got you covered. I know that you're having a half tough time right now. I'm here. I can leave you alone, even if I want to spend time with you, even I want to, you know, do something together. I see he's on his 20. So I should let him be there. And sometimes I'm on my 20. Sometimes I need him, or even on 10. I went a zero. I think we all feel that. Yes, yes, definitely. And he should take care of, you know, me and understand that. But sometimes we're both on twenties. We're both on tens. Lives happened. So what to do in this case? We should sit and talk with trying not to fight against each other, but together fight against something. what makes our relationship weak. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you're right. It is really about lowering that expectation because if you're always waiting for the other person to create the event or the moment, you probably will be disappointed more often than not. So where you can you make the effort, you create what you want out of the relationship, but then you know your expectations won't be, you know, broken. Yes. You do a lot of work, I'm assuming, with couples and with individuals and families. When you're planning for an event, do you think the way that couples in particular plan for an event reveals something about their relationship dynamics? I think everybody's trying to make their events special for themselves. nowadays, people trying to tell some stories through the events, what they put in together. It's not anymore about just the beautiful decorations, it's about something very specific for them. People break the rules a lot. Let's say if we're talking about weddings, we recently done weddings with lemons and tomatoes. Wow. We create large lemons for them and big tomatoes and the put the flowers on the ceiling. So it's a completely different story because that was something that was related to the couple. We had another wedding and the colors was dark wine and rich green, which is not wedding colors either. But this is a beautiful and by the way, the same bride who get married a few years after she starts out. she was expecting the baby girl and she asked us to make the flowers in the same concept for her daughters. Yeah. So which is another beautiful idea. So people like to get those part of the like to care as part of the stories with them. But also it's a lot about creating those stories, keep creating those stories. You know how in the beginning it's everything is very easy. It's easy to create everything and and everything feels so like effortless. True. So simple. And we kind of can stick to those emotions, to the stories, what we used to have and we just met, which is easy. That was our emotions was very high. Our adrenaline, serotonin, whatever it is happening in the chemistry of our bodies, it was very high. I think it's important to keep those stories running and keep events around it. Go like maybe less fluff, but deeper into the story, deeper into into their the book what you're writing together what you're writing together. Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes I guess I worry that with social media in particular these days, there is a lot of that fluff. there's a lot of people wanting, you know, the huge curated events to keep up with the other person, the bigger and bigger events, spending a lot of money that even perhaps they don't have. Do you find that? in the events you're doing, you know, in particular with couples and with families, that there is that this need to keep up and and and you know be on top of what's happening on social media, have the next biggest event simply for their Instagram reel or their grid. Yes. Yes. but I wouldn't take it as a bad thing. Well not for work or business, that's for sure. So I would say social media is a huge part of our life, right? And we cannot just Take off of it. We may like something visually and we wanna may want to repeat it. It may be just a short trend. And in a few years it may seem a little, you know, silly or something, or just you know, doesn't fit anymore. I think it's important to listen yourself when you choose the type of decorations. originament so like anything what you choose for for your events not just looking at somebody else which is which is I think the great d mood board you can create yes but I would say try to bring something yours truly yours what you will look at in fifty years and it wouldn't be a story of Kim Kardashian it would be your own story what you what you brought here even with mix of some trends nothing wrong with that Yeah. Just feel make it feel very personal to me. So keep up with the trends, but also I think you need to be very intentional. What do you think happens in relationships when people stop being intentional with each other? Getting stronger. It's getting if you're paying more attention to each other, you're getting better with what happened. I I think it's not just about relationship in the family, it's just about any relationship. It's the with the coworkers. What will happen if I will pay more attention to my employees, to my kids, to my parents, to somebody who appreciate it, which is another point. Are you with a person who appreciates what you're doing to them? Or just one player game? If not, if both people are open and both people want to take care of each other, yeah, that's definitely something that brings more value to the relationship. Yeah, I think so. I guess sometimes with events, when you when you're doing events, do you find that sometimes people get so lost and they're focusing so much on the event themselves then they forget to look at what, you know, how they're feeling on the day and how they're feeling through the occasion and within their relationship. Do you remember sex in a city? Absolutely. When the Caribbean show had this huge fetting and a big Yeah, exactly, exactly. I think that's that's a perfect example. What some people need it. and again, some people get confident from something outside. And some people don't need any outside feedback. They are pretty complete inside. So for them it doesn't matter what they're doing. Which is you can tell about a lot of things around. What brands are they wearing? What car are they driving? What you know what back are they having? Like it's it's a big work to get to be to feel absolutely complete and absolutely enough inside without any feeling any extra this balance. And I think any relationship starts with your own relationship with yourself. As soon as you feel complete, balanced enough, your relationship with people starts feeling the same way because people also feel more balanced around you. They also feel more complete around you. On the wrong, people just wouldn't fit. So if that's the right person, if that's a complete person inside, they wouldn't need. It doesn't matter if they have the big event or small event. They may have a big event with like the huge amount of money they spent on it for the guests because they want a guest have so much fun. And this is great. But for some people, that's the way to prove something. Like you see, I can afford it, or you see I'm wealthy, or that's my wedding. I want everybody to talk about my wedding. I want to see about it in the magazines or something. It's a different story. Yeah, I think it's all about that external recognition and not necessarily the true moment and how you're feeling within that moment and how it's gonna perhaps benefit you or how you'll have the memory of it long term. Yes. What would you say then I suppose is the difference between chasing beauty and chasing perfection? I think perfection is like horizon. You can never you can never achieve you can never get it. You can like as long as you go to that, you cannot get it. Beauty is different, but the beauty about beauty is everybody has their own understanding of what beauty is. What's beauty for you and what's beauty for me can be different things. So I can achieve something and I can think, my god, this is so beautiful. And for somebody it can be, hmm, okay. But it doesn't matter because this is beautiful for me. Well, perfection, it's actually what stops a lot of great artists. And I'm telling that to you as person who know my market, for example, it there are very few of us in a whole country, paper florists, it's maybe like twenty of us in a whole country. And some of them are great and I collaborate with most of them. But they are chasing perfectionism for themselves. It's not even the perfectionism what client wants, that's something what they see. So they ended up running behind something What's not even important for the client and losing something what's important for client. For example, client cares about the time a lot. Artist can miss a deadline because she wants it to look perfect for her or for him. So this is not a perfection of what client expected. This is your own perfection. And talking about what people want to create about themselves. It's a way for her, for him, to feel inside that she's making something beautiful, something right. I cannot make it not perfect saying them, telling them, I cannot hire somebody because they're not going to make it perfect. Perfect for who? That's right. And I think it's the same within a relationship. I think people are constantly chasing perfection. And sometimes I do blame social media for that. We want to be just like the couple we're seeing on the Instagram grid. When really we're just What we're needing to do is make something beautiful within the home, within our own relationship, but that might just be spending more time together or communicating together, really being there for one another as opposed to what looks picture perfect from the outside. And I really do think that also comes down to gestures. I mean big gestures, small gestures, the effort we put into the relationship. And I really do think that ties into your work as well, because part of what you create is that gesture. Do you think that part of what keeps people feen feeling loved, feeling appreciated, is the gesture, grand or small? I think s ki you know, small gestures keeps things alive. And do you think people lose that and that's when resentment starts to set in? I think it's depend on the people's lan love language. Hmm. I think everybody are different and it's beauty of it. It's it's your own beauty what you can found in relationship with With s with the way, with understanding the way what is your what is your partner's love language and trying to speak this language for the person for for for the for your person. that's definitely something what I think can help any relationships get better. I love that. I love the idea of the love languages themselves and how different and unique we are all are. And I think there's something really poetic in what you do in making flowers from paper. you know, it's delicate, it's long lasting, it is forever, and it outlasts perhaps that idea of the perfect event or occasion. What does it mean to you, your work? For me, it's mean to help other people to find the jobs. I love to create jobs for people. I think the market is very, very tough right now, especially for women, for mums and for immigrants. And I've been there and I remember how hard it is to found to try to find a job with a little child without enough experience with something, then your hourly hourly payment can only pay food, not even rent, not even daycare. It's a very tough spot. And then I found paper and flowers idea, and I realized that this is a a very beautiful idea. People love it. I have a lot of amazing brands who I'm working with. So right now I have a twelve team of twelve amazing women who is working for me. All of them women, some of them moms, some of them immigrants. And we can work with their schedule because a lot of our projects it doesn't have to be done like from nine to five. It has to be done within like two weeks. So if your child has off in school, that's perfectly fine with me. As long as you can make the project within the deadline. And all these women who start working with me, they are blooming. They like I see how they create something, they love it, they appreciate the environment. I'm trying to make the environment more, you know, help you know, more the better for people, more motivate them more and help them grow more no on on a good way. So my goal is by 2030, employee 1,000 women. Wow. Okay. Which is it's a very ambitious goal. It's such a unique niche and I don't have to fight within other companies. I don't have to hunter somebody and somebody else from their companies. I can just create the whole new niche and employee and give give the job to that amount of people who may not have it because this job wasn't created. So for me as a business owner, it's an opportunity to create something beautiful, get fill this gap in the market and employee people who need it. Well, I think you will do that because quite clearly when you set your mind to something, if you started off the way you did, I can see by twenty thirty that you will get there. I think there is something so beautiful in what you do. What are some of the small ways that you think people can create beauty in everyday family life? So not just big events, but just ordinary everyday life. Mm-hmm. some people creative, some people not. I think for creative people it's easier because they can make something with their hands. It's it's such a pleasure to make something with your hands, especially if you can place it somewhere in your home and make it more cozy. or more elegant wherever you feel. So but somebody just like to cook. Somebody like to create like a nice, nice dish. I think the beauty, it's a small moments what you can create in a lot of ways, in every single small detail of your day, of your life. If you make in a dinner, serve it nice. Put a few candles around. Buy some flowers and a Whole Foods. They cost ten dollars. Not a big deal, but you can make a nice, nice set. You don't have to have a special day or guests over to have the beautiful set. Hire the cleaning people. Let them make your apartment beautiful without you feeling extremely tired. the way how you dress, the way how you look, you will feel much better if you will not wear your crocs. Absolutely. I think it's it's about putting that. Effort in, isn't it? And often the small gestures as opposed to the bigger ones. But we do all get busy, you would know. Being a working woman is hard and the juggle is hard. Yes. But I think in relationships what often happens is people stop making the effort. They say they don't have enough time. They can't juggle. Do you think that rituals and celebrations are still a way though of keeping that connection alive? Yes. Yes, celebrations are definitely helps. And I think not giving up helps as well. Celebrations should start with small things. It doesn't have to be something big. We used to celebrate something important. You know, large anniversary, it's a special day. And what if in our anniversary we got fight? You know, we something happened. but celebrate small moments of the life. Like one of the great tool I'm using in my life is telling my husband not every night unfortunately but I should do it more often tell before we go to bed tell what I appreciate for this day. I love that. What great happened today with me. Why I love him more this day. Even if I don't feel so but after me saying that I start feeling that. So those little moments. and date nights. Yeah it's a big one. We have three kids in between us. We both open businesses. we have a lot going on. We both work out a lot. and making the time for dates that's very important because that's weekly celebration of us, just two of us as a man and woman, as a wife and husband. Yeah, not as a parents, not as a partners, not as roommates, us as two people. Who choose a charger. Was there a reason why we choose a charger? Absolutely. I think it is. It's those rituals that comes down to that, whether it's having the chat, you know, when you go to bed at night and just telling each other something simple like what you appreciate about your day. Yeah. you know, asking that person actually how are they? And really listening. And and the date night I think is a very big one. But you seem to do everything and with three kids in between you both. How do you balance everything? I mean a founder, you're being a creative, a mother, a wife, how do you do it all? I'm not chasing perfection. I think that is the perfect answer. That's I believe, you know, if I look back in certain things and if I will blame myself for something what I've done not good enough, it will destroy my whole, you know, present and future and feeling about myself. But the idea is I've done As much as I could at this moment without trying to compare it with what if could I make it better? No, I couldn't. At this specific point, that was the best I could do with my mental stage, with my you know, with amount of work I'm having on my plate, with all all the stuff. Do I want to do it better? I do. But I'm not, I appreciate myself. What the actions I've done before. And I think that's that's the best way to be stay health healthy and happy in your life. Trying to do your best, but knowing whatever you do, that's perfect. And that's a mental job. We don't believe that easily. If you just tell it's like it's like some affirmation, you know, then I was I had a different times in my life and I was very poor and my business didn't work and I had a child who had a feet and I wasn't married and I had bills to pay, it was a lot. And I was trying to do affirmations and I would stay in front of mirror and tell them I'm rich and I know I'm not. And it feels awful. Yeah. It makes me feel even more poor. Because I know it's not true. But this is a work. Wherever whatever it takes, but knowing that I did my best. I did my absolutely best and what I've done was perfect. I can I'm focusing on something, what I can do better for future, but I'm happy for what I've done now. And leave yourself alone. Yeah. With it. And just move forward. It's that mindset shift, I think, which is most important. And I think you have a really beautiful way in the way in which you look at things. There's a positivity there, there's a confidence and Confidence really is everything. that's what it comes down to. So I think the last question I really want to ask you on before it breaks, and I ask every guest is this what do you wish that people noticed earlier and before it breaks? I wish they noticed what's wrong with them. Not with a partner, not with a choice they made, but what's right now going on with me and how I can help myself. Like if aeroplane gets crushed the first or go in some problematic zone, the first what you want to do is put the mask on yourself. That's true. Yeah. Not on your child, not on the people around. Help yourself first. So if your relationship is about to crush, help yourself first. Just leave that person alone and focus on yourself as much as you can. I also believe that whatever happened in our life, I will be as I will be able to handle that. If we will stay together, amazing. If not, still amazing. I still will be able to handle that because a lot of pressure in relationship came from us not knowing the future and thinking that in the future something may happen. what may hurt us or we may not be able to deal with. But if I know that waves will come, but wherever waves it is, and I'm a surfer, I know what I'm talking about, I will be able to deal with that, this way or another, and focus on myself. How I can bring myself to the right spot. Am I there right now I can help somebody else? Or if not, what should I do for myself? Yeah, it's looking within and you have such a lovely way at looking at things. And I think people need to hear more from you because it really does and it really sparks some joy in what can be some really difficult conversations and difficult stages within life. And I mean I think we can resonate what we've learned from you in terms of business as well as relationships and love and life because there is such similarity amongst it all. Yes. Where can people find you and learn more about you and paper and flowers? you can find me on my website or Instagram. My website is Paper and Flowers, and my website is paper and flowersnyc.com. So please take a look at our work. And if something inspires you, we're always happy to create something special for your special days. That's beautiful. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you too. It was such a pleasure talking to you today. Thank you again. I love about Kristina's work is that it reminds us that beauty is not frivolous. Beauty can be a way of paying attention, a way of saying, This moment matters. A way of creating memory, a way of bringing people together, a way of making something temporary feel lasting. And I think that that's such a powerful reminder for relationships and families. Because sometimes connection does not only break through conflict, it breaks through neglect, through busyness, through assuming there will always be another birthday or another dinner, another anniversary, another chance to make someone feel special. Through forgetting that love often lives in the details, the effort, the gesture, the ritual, the things someone created because they wanted the moment to mean something. So, for anyone listening, I hope this episode makes you think about the moments you're letting pass without really noticing them. The person that you haven't celebrated, the ritual you've stopped protecting, the memory you still have time to create. Because before something breaks, There is often still time to make it beautiful. Still time to mark it. Still time to say, this matters. Still time to create something that lasts. I'm Gabriella Pomare, and this is Before It Breaks.