The familiar family question can become painful after circumstances change privately.

The questions families ask each other are usually harmless and repeated out of habit. But a person’s circumstances can change without announcement, and then the same routine enquiry lands somewhere it did not before: a job that has gone, a treatment that is not working, a relationship that ended, a hope that has been given up. The asker means nothing by it, which is why it is so hard to deflect.

So ask more openly and let people choose what to answer. Something like how has your year been leaves room for whatever is true, and if someone gives you a short reply, take it and move on warmly.