So tired of crying and suffering with the grief inflicted by her son, a woman decided to make her pain into something concrete.

She purchased a wooden heart, stuck as many nails as she could into it and hung it in her doorway.

After noticing the strange decoration, her son asked, “Why is that ugly heart full of nails hanging in the doorway?” She replied, “That heart represents my heart. The nails are all of the bitterness and sadness you’ve caused me.”

Speechless and deeply saddened, the son left determined to change his behaviour.

A couple of weeks later, he noticed that some of the nails had been removed from the heart and asked, “Why did you take out some of the nails?” To which his mother replied, “Just as your attitude has changed, the bitterness and sadness has also begun to subside, so I removed the nails that represented them.”

The boy was relieved to know that he was no longer causing his mother so much emotional pain. But as he examined the wooden heart, he noticed that even though the nails were gone, marks were left behind that would be there forever.