A while back, I stumbled across an article that professed to teach parents all the reasons why babies cry. It was a fine article and provided lots of great information for the beginning parent as to the whys of infant wailing. But the other night, as my eldest daughter and I took turns talking and crying while sitting on the floor surrounded by the unaffected cats, I realized I could really use an article about crying for the rest of us—those of us who think we’re old enough to know better!
My eldest and I do not have very much in common—we are very different people. I realize now that she is nearly grown and very focused on “flying the coop” that there are a lot of missed opportunities and shared history that we both work to process. The one thing we do share is a great capacity for absorbing chaos and stress and expectations—we both tend to just take things on and continue functioning—tamping things down until they eventually bubble up and boil over. This is an emotional place where we can sometimes meet and a little nugget of understanding from which we are able to appreciate each other more deeply than in the every day.
She has always cried much more easily than I, however, and I confess I’ve been a bit envious over the years. We were raised in different families and different worlds so her ability to feel and process emotions through tears was allowed more room than in the world I grew up in. But, I’ve learned a lot from my kids—and learning to cry as therapy and processing emotions in a safe, vulnerable place is one of the big life lessons motherhood has taught me.
All those years ago, I set out to be such a strong, reliable, devoted mom—little did I know that as they grew up I would also learn to be soft and authentic and human at the same time. So, I would definitely like to read an article on all the reasons we non-babies cry—sometimes I think for some of us, it’s just because we finally discover we can.