I’m a crybaby. It’s a big one. And my 6-year-old daughter, Josie, knows it.
She had to endure watching me sulk while giving a speech thanking a group of volunteers who helped me get the nonprofit I started off the ground. . During one playdate, I cried four times when Josie and her best friend Zaza sang the song “I Think You’re Great” over and over to strangers in the park. Once, during a parade at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis the day before my father-in-law’s funeral, I completely fainted. I held Josie’s hand as we danced with an employee dressed as a dinosaur, tears streaming down my face.
I can tell that sometimes it’s a little awkward for her to manage my outbursts of emotion. Her reactions ranged from joking about it to outwardly demanding that I stop crying in public. That might make me feel uncomfortable too. To be honest, that’s always the case.
Growing up in the 80s and 90s, being a guy who cries a lot wasn’t easy for me. Picture this: My first date. Sitting in a movie theater, watching the coming-of-age comedy Angus, I was stressing that putting my arm around my date was too forward. After being torn between not knowing what to do with my arm and the plot of the movie, something terrible happened. Grandpa Ivan, a close friend of Angus who has suffered for many years, has passed away. I tried and failed to hide my lead performance in a crying session in the bathroom at Mann’s Cinema 8, and I couldn’t get another date for three years. When I was a freshman, I spent my brother’s high school graduation crying, surrounded by the awkward members of the hardcore punk band I was in.
It’s still difficult and uncomfortable to accept that your emotions are outward. At the airport in Portland, holding back tears as I write another story that makes me think about how important family (chosen or otherwise) is, I sit in a radius with no one around me. We created a 9-foot space.
I am aware of the social impact of my natural ability to shed tears, and I am glad that Josie understands that. Knowing your parents’ weaknesses is powerful. Research shows that. Research published by the National Library of Medicine suggests that emotional regulation is socialized through processes such as how parents model emotional responses in child-rearing, marital relationships, and the household in general. In other words, a healthy emotional atmosphere in a child’s home life helps give the child the tools to control his or her emotions. This will lead to better outcomes throughout your life and allow you to establish more stable relationships and work environments over time.
Children imitate their parents’ actions more than what their parents say. The magic is in the modeling. I told her it was okay to cry when emotions were high.
“It’s important to be a strong father. You can be a strong father who can cry.”
When I was a child, I was modeled that crying in public was embarrassing. I have never seen my father cry. I knew of two instances where he allegedly cried, but never once did I see tears in his eyes. I was so scared of crying in my home life that I felt I had no choice but to cry in public. And the embarrassment I felt when I cried had nowhere to go, and I was always teased for it. I taught myself to be humorous and self-deprecating about it. It has changed over time, but now I think it can even show strength to show the world one’s weakness.
According to experts, crying is definitely good for your health, despite what our own family relationships may have taught us early in life. “I wish more men would cry,” says Dr. Judith Orloff, New York Times bestselling author of The Genius of Empathy (with a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama). This is what he said when talking about his tendency to cry. “As a psychiatrist, I love crying. It’s essential and helps the healing process.” Tears themselves have health benefits, and the act of crying reduces stress hormones and releases endorphins. increase. “After you cry, you feel healthier,” Orlov added.
However, there are subtleties to this, and Orlov checked how I cried in front of Josie before acknowledging its positive effect. Constantly crying in front of your child or asking your child (consciously or unconsciously) to see a therapist can have a negative impact because your child may believe that you are out of control. The important thing, Orlov said, is to let her know I’m still solid and create balance. “You can be empathetic and sensitive, but you can also be strong. Let her feel your strength. Hold her as she cries. Being a strong father is… It’s important. I can be a strong father who can cry.”I found that achieving this balance led to the health and happiness of our family and our daughter.
I think we’ve gotten there. But it’s bittersweet.
Josie is the only child in her kindergarten class without a sibling. She brings this up to us regularly and she always cries when it happens. She wants a brother or sister, it’s really bad. She plays with her dolls as if they were siblings, and I often stand in as her “sibling” during imaginative play sessions. We understand that she feels lonely, a stranger, and sad when she sees her friends and schoolmates have siblings, but she doesn’t. That makes Sarah and me sad. We tried to realize that brother. One tragic pregnancy loss after another led us to the decision not to have another child. So when Josie finally brought up the fact that she wanted a sibling, I wasn’t ashamed to admit that I was struggling with it myself. I told her that both her mother and I were really sad that she didn’t have any brothers or sisters. Then we gave each other a big hug and cried together.
At times like these, I am encouraged by knowing that I can be a strong father who can show her a solid foundation and sometimes let her tears flow. Having a healthy relationship with your emotions means knowing what you’re feeling and how to express it. It doesn’t matter if that means crying. Josie is learning what this means to her. And I’m still learning what that means to me. “I think it’s important for my daughter to be true to herself,” Orlov said. “So she has a father to cry to. Let her choose whether she wants to cry or not. That’s her strength.”
I have never seen my father cry, and I only know of two instances in which he is said to have cried.
I’m seeing that lesson happening in real time right now.
When Josie’s elementary school asked us to stop making her kindergarteners walk to class to help them gain independence in preparation for first grade, Josie asked Sarah and me to I approached him very easily. “I’m okay with that,” she said.
But it became clear that I wasn’t “okay” yet. When I had to say goodbye to her from the sidewalk the first morning, she asked, “Are you going to cry with joy?”
When I parked the car and helped her out of the back seat, I was already overwhelmed with the idea of letting her walk on her own. And then she left. I ducked behind a storage container in the elementary school parking lot and peered around the corner. I ugly cried as I watched her walk across the playground with her head held high in a shiny pink hoodie. Josie didn’t look back.
This article appears in the October 2024 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.
