When you’re in the heat of the fight or the stinging aftermath of a disagreement, it’s difficult to see things as they are. You may start to see the person as “all bad” and that every action he or she takes is somehow an act of defiance against you. However, with some distance, you can start to see the situation (and the person) more clearly. Take a couple steps back and allow yourself to gain some perspective. You may realize you are being critical or harsh, or not taking responsibility for what you contribute. Reflect more on yourself than the other person. Are there things within you that you’re unable to examine, such as guilt, shame, or fear?  How do your shadows or demons contribute to your relationship? Without jumping back into the fight, talk about what feelings, situations, and other factors led to the poor communication. Specifically, talk about your feelings. What were you feeling before the fight? What about during the fight? Ask these questions to this person and discuss your feelings clearly and openly.  You may have felt tired, lonely, hungry, or overwhelmed before the fight. Perhaps you were feeling stressed from work or school and carried the stress home with you. During the fight, you may have felt ignored, defensive, criticized, misunderstood, fearful, overwhelmed, ashamed, or unloved. Together with the person, ask what went missing in the fight. Was there a misunderstanding? Misperception? Poor communication? How did a discussion turn into a fight, or how did it stay a fight? Identify what set things off course. Think about how to communicate more clearly in the future, or not to jump to conclusions so quickly. What can you learn from the misdirection of this fight? Take a moment away from the specific subject of the fight and focus on validating each other’s feelings. Listen intently when the person speaks. Avoid interrupting or jumping in with your opinion or perspective and instead, allow the person to complete each thought. Lower your defenses and open your heart. Talk about each of your perspectives of the situation, keeping in mind that there is no “wrong” perspective. For instance, the fight may have been about finances, but this person may have been triggered by a fear of not having enough money and lashed out. Instead of fighting about money, acknowledge your partner’s fear and validate those feelings. Take ownership for what you contributed to the fight. Admit that you accused your partner, said something mean, or spoke before having all of the information. Admit if you’ve been emotionally closed off, running on empty, taking your stress out on this person, or taking the person for granted. Take responsibility for your words and actions without blaming. Say, “I know I contributed heavily to this fight. I’ve been working overtime at work which has caused me a lot of stress, and I’ve been taking out this stress on you. I haven’t slept well in weeks, so I feel overly sensitive and irritable, and these feelings definitely contributed to the fight.” Forgiveness is about freeing yourself and letting go of any resentments or hard feelings. When you hold onto resentment, it can have physical and emotional impacts that negatively impact your life. Forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting or pretending that the situation didn’t happen, it just means you’re willing to let it go and move on.
++++++++++
One-sentence summary -- Take some distance. Talk about the feelings involved. Identify the missing pieces. Validate each other. Accept responsibility. Forgive.

Article: A Perkins braillewriter is a device much like a standard typewriter, except for it has only six keys. Purchase heavy paper to feed into the top of the device. Braillewriters start at approximately $700 and come in a variety of shapes and sizes.  Some are designed to be used with a single hand or only require a soft touch. There are also a variety of high tech braillewriters, to be discussed shortly. The large key in the center of the braillewriter is the space bar. Three keys to each side of the space bar represent the six dots alignments in braille. To type a cell, you will need to hold down the keys for all of the necessary dots at the same time. The slightly raised key to the far left is the line down key and the key parallel to it on the far right is the back space key.  There will also be a large curved piece of plastic on the top of the machine that serves as a cartage return as well as grey nobs on the side that are used to roll the paper into the machine. In braille the dots are sometimes signified with numbers, where the upper left hand dot is 1, the middle left dot is 2 and the bottom left hand dot is 3. The right column similarly descends from 4-6. If we represent the dots this way, the braillewriter keyboard is arranged: 321 (space) 456. Typewriters, of course, are fairly cumbersome by modern standards. Luckily, there are now electric braillewriters that work on similar principles. Devices like the Mountbatten Brailler and the Perkins Smart Brailler allow you to store documents electronically. They also have audio support and training exercises. Recent Macintosh computers allow you to program a keyboard or even the touch screen of your iPad to serve as a braille typewriter. In this case keys on a typical QWERTY keyboard can be reprogrammed to have the same functions they would on a brailler.
Question: What is a summary of what this article is about?
Get a braillewriter. Learn the keys. Go high tech.