That must be really hard
Unraveling toxic masculinity
A couple years ago, my 7-year-old son and I sat on a couch on the back porch at his grandparents' home in Florida. A breeze ruffled the palm trees and stingrays floated down the canal.
He looked over at me and said, “I hate being the smallest one in the family."
His eyes welled up with tears.
I had a choice in that heartbreaking moment. I could launch into a litany of reasons being the smallest was fun and okay or why he must have misunderstood something.
But I was on vacation and feeling extra present to the slow pace of the day. I took a deep breath and looked at him. Really looked at him.
I echoed his statement, "You hate being the smallest one in the family." He nodded.
"That must be really hard," I said.
He nodded and tears trickled down his cheeks.
That moment felt like holy ground. In not rushing to explain, justify or fix, I was given a moment we so often miss. His pain existed out in the open. His hurt. His anger.
It took patience and compassion to be willing to see his pain and imagine how he felt. He felt seen and validated. The emotion rose up in him, was acknowledged, and then passed. A few minutes later, he grinned about something and ran off to play.
A little while later we circled back to talk about it and why that felt true. I affirmed his presence in our family and all the ways he is loved.
I'm grateful for these moments where we learn how to sit with our pain. He practiced feeling it instead of watching his mom try to offload it for him. I don’t want him to bypass those big feelings. Especially as he gets older and moves in a world of toxic masculinity that screams at him to shove the feelings away.
Speaking of toxic masculinity, you should know it's far easier for me to sit with my daughter in her emotions than it is for me to slow down with my son. This conditioning is real and we're invited to show up and pay attention to it in our relationships.
Just yesterday I walked this now nine-year-old child up to the front doors of his new school. I felt the familiar lean as his body tried to disappear into mine. He pulled me down to his level and whispered, “I’ve been distracted from my feelings. I don’t want to be away from you all day.” Tears trickled down his cheeks as other kids raced into the front doors, feeling comfortable in this familiar-to-them place.
We stepped off to the side and I leaned down and said, “We’ve got time. It’s okay to cry.” He crumbled and let it flow, right there on the sidewalk. A long time ago, I would have felt embarrassed and thought it best to suck it up and bury those challenging emotions. Never again. It may not be a full on meltdown in public, but we’re learning to honor the emotions running through our bodies in big and small ways. We try not to disassociate or numb them away. Emotions are information. They’re meant to be noticed, believed, felt, and released.
A few minutes later he said, “I feel ready to go but then I take a step and the tears come up again.” We talked about how hard it was for his sister to take her first step toward the door of her new middle school the day before. She wanted to wait until she felt comfortable and confident. She said to her little brother, “It didn’t get better until I decided to go in. Then it was okay.”
He took a deep breath, gave us hugs and turned to go.
“I love you, son.” He gave a weak smile and headed down the hallway.
Here's to opening our hands wide to bear witness to the pain of our people, without fixing, explaining and offloading. The pain itself is beautiful. May your choice to bear witness create space for others to heal.
Here’s to noticing, believing, feeling, and releasing our own emotions that rise up. We won’t drown in them. It feels like we might but they’re here to offer us something important. May we love ourselves bravely and beautifully in these days, my dear readers.
I’m thinking of those of you honoring anniversaries of the ones you miss. Here’s a poem from Still Here: A Poetry Memoir of Grief & Love.
marking time
each day i cross
off another
box on the calendar
pretending i’m marking
dance practices
flu shots
meetings
but secretly
each line pushes
me closer to the moment
the unspoken expectations
whisper about
one year
somewhere i picked up
that i’m supposed to
be magically over this
by then
i won’t be
and i’ve decided
that’s okay
You were so incredibly wise, Jenny, to sit with your son's difficult emotions instead of trying to smother them, ignore them, tell him to suck it up or get over it. He will be a remarkable man with your help.
Last week a family on my street lost their 11-year-old daughter to a brain tumor. She had an operation last year that gave everyone so much hope for her permanent recovery; but a few cells of the tumor remained and grew again. The only coherent thing I could think of to write the inconsolable family was, "We walk with you in your sorrow." And that's it, right there: In our shared humanity, we must walk with one another. That's what you did with your boy.
Jenny, this is such a beautiful piece. Thank you for sharing your wise experience with us.