Trusting Our Tears

on pretending and letting

Last night, I overheard my daughter crying in the shower. She is about to turn 11. So, she’s bathing in big emotions lately.

When she walked out of the bathroom, she looked over at me teary and I asked, sweetie, what’s making you cry? Without hesitation, she declared, “I just don’t want Nate to go. I don’t want him to leave for college.”

Her older brother, her only sibling, is in the throes of college applications and all things senior year. She has a front row to all of this and is deep in some grief of what’s to come.

I pulled her to my chest and simply said, “Me too. I am having a hard time thinking about him leaving, too.”

And that was it. She let me hold her a tad longer than typical then went into her bedroom, put on her pjs and settled onto her evening. Steps lighter. Like she felt some weight had been removed. Something heavy had been allowed to wash off of her.

The catharsis of tears, bathing her fears.

It reminded me of all the times I let my tears fall in the shower. I bet you’ve done it, too.  We keep them bottled up in us, then when in the haven of a hot shower, our tears drip down with soap suds. An attempt at washing away any trace of being a fully feeling human. 

It made me think about that first month of life with that beautiful brother of hers she is already missing. I thought back to the days when he was first born - 17 years ago, prematurely.  He had to spend his first four weeks in the NICU. Every morning I would cry in the shower when where I really wanted to cry was in the elevator of the hospital where I would lock eyes and plant a fake smile in the direction of the mom being wheeled to her car, full term baby fully strapped into the car seat, ready to go home when my baby couldn’t.  Minutes later I’d strap myself into the seat of my car. In the privacy of my Honda my eyes would leak, tears staining my face while my breasts leaked the milk. The milk he wasn’t strong enough to drink. The milk staining my shirt, just inches from where my heart lived and ached. 

What I want my daughter to know at the tender age of 11 is - you don’t have to hide your tears in the shower. Or the car (although, full disclaimer: I cry A LOT in my car.  It just happens to be a place where I process stuff. Maybe that’s weird. My own kind of front seat confessional.  I don’t know why or what it means but I just let them fall as they come).

Seeing her tween tears allowed me to recognize just how in sync she and I are. How energetically we are beating the same heart waves. Just a couple days before, as part of Jeannine Ouellette’s Week Two of The Letter Reimagined Intensive, Instructions For Saying Goodbye, I wrote a goodbye letter to Nate. It seems my daughter and I are both processing how to hold the idea of a future in this home without his daily presence.

Here it is. My go at a goodbye that is to come:

Dear Nathan: Please remember where you came from. But also, don’t. Remember to mind your manners. And change your mind; often. Remember to tip servers, hold doors for others, make eye contact, shake a hand firmly. You don’t have to be extra to be extraordinary. Go to class. Make your bed. Go to bed knowing this is all for you. No one else. Remember that "I don’t know" may sometimes be the only answer that is right.

Remember when you had growing pains, and your achy legs woke you up each night? My heart grew in equal measure as every inch of your body grew taller. I fear my own growing pains may have leaked onto you. My shortcomings hanging on your skin.

This is the part of the letter that I won’t give to you. Or maybe I will. The part I’m writing to you for me. For us. The part where I’m asking you to forgive my motherly missteps. The moments I let slip away because my mind was locked into duty, demands, drinking and overthinking. This is the part where I say that all those times I was hard on you for not studying enough to ace the test, for not caring enough to match the clothes, for not showing more strength on the basketball court, that was all about me. Not you. Your way of unforced being is what I’ve always been chasing. A shadow I couldn’t see until now. Your way of knowing your comfort zone was threatening to my persistent quest to please others. Your way of not looking to others for how to take the next step felt like an earthquake to me. Because how can you stay grounded when the rest of the world is incessantly climbing? Where did you learn that? This next season is about you. Not me. I will get out of the way.

You don’t owe me anything on the court, in the classroom, in your 20s, 30s or today.

You have always been the expert of your experience. No college degree will teach you that.

Remember that sometimes you have to write your own eulogy to figure out how to live.

Remember to bring all of you into these next four years. And leave me at home.

As I am writing all of this, I am thinking about how we so easily pretend to be ok. Brave face it. Grin and bear rather than get real and stare. We’re so afraid to look straight on at the feelings stirring us up until we are in a place where we know no one is watching us.

I was out looking for myself for so long. A journey that began in my 20s and after playing parts that really weren’t written for me, I’m here revising the script so that I no longer play the character I constrained myself into being.

And I want to save my kids from this. Save them from decades of feign. And I know that I cannot.

I want to say to both of them, don’t pretend to be someone you are not. Except, maybe this is all part of the human condition.

Maybe we come into this world completely ourselves, then we pretzel into our conditioned parts, seeking safety and belonging, until decades later we finally allow ourselves to truly stretch out and figure out how much we’ve missed ourselves. How much we love ourselves and want to return back home.

Kaitlyn Elizabeth wrote a piece this week that has stayed with me - The Thing(s) I've Pretended to Love which got me in this head space about how we (I should say I) - how I right sized my emotions or reactions to things for so long because I didn’t see the shelf they fit on in the room I sat in. Or how I would often say yes to things I really didn’t want to do and not just because I wanted to please others but more often because I didn’t even KNOW what I wanted. I had pretended to like what others liked for so long that I forgot what I wanted and needed. An amnesia of personal preferences.

Speaking of preferences, I’m feeling a pull for some shifting as I spend more time creating this weekly newsletter. I’m learning to trust when this sort of thing happens. So, I will follow the creative breadcrumbs. I’ll share more next week about what I intend on doing with this space DARE TO BE DRY. I’ve got some ideas ……and I hope you come back to share yours, too.

Until then, here are two recommendations for you:

1. Let this song find you today. It’s one that I can’t get enough of after cringing at it upon my first few listens. Or maybe I just conceded because I can’t hide from even if I wanted to - my daughter plays it CONSTANTLY.

Give it a chance. Give it a go (see what I did there!) It feels like a modern-day Cyndi Lauper jam. Perfect for a Friday.

2. If you are thinking about writing a book or have a book being birthed in your brain or actually wrote a book and need some inspiration and encouragement on how to market this baby of yours to the literary world, I highly recommend you take the upcoming Book Proposal Bootcamp with Tawny Lara. I just completed this course, and she is offering it again later this month. Tawny helps you create a business plan for your book and gives you so much information in organized and digestible chunks that you forget how overwhelming this whole process can be. She helps you feel empowered. And that’s how every author ought to feel.

YOUR TURN:

~Do you cry in the car? In the shower? I’m a leaky person and tears find me easily but maybe you’re not that way. What pulls at your insides even if tears don’t drop?

~Drop a song below that lifts your spirits for a little Friday fun - music is a great entry into the weekend.

If you’re a new Subscriber to DARE TO BE DRY, hello! I’m glad you are here. In the spirit of writing from my motherly heart this week, I thought I would share links to some earlier essays that I wrote about parenting that delivered some resonance to others:

1. Trusting the Mother in Me

2. What my Daughter and March Madness is Teaching me About Being a Woman

3. Preparing to Launch

4. An Open Letter to My Tween Daughter

If you're a writer on Substack and have been enjoying my work, please consider recommending DARE TO BE DRY to your readers for essays from a sober focused woman and mom who is waking up to life here in mid-life, daring to speak up as a woman in recovery who is writing about recovery of self, turning down the noise of the world, reclaiming desire and walking into each day with intentional living.

If you are here visiting, I would be honored to have you as a Subscriber. Please come back for more.

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