Even Strong Women Cry
Author: Sara Delgado, PhD
One of the main ideas underlying Marc Brackett’s book Permission to Feel is that in order to be truly in tune with your own emotions, often someone in your life has to grant you that permission. He calls it the “permission to feel.” I attended a webinar with Brackett where he told a story about his Uncle Marvin, the person who had given him permission to feel during childhood. Brackett recounted a time when his uncle asked him a very simple question, but one that he had rarely heard coming from an adult before. He asked him “How are you feeling?” Brackett remembered, however, that it wasn’t the question alone that felt different to him, but the way that his uncle said it. He could tell that he truly wanted to hear his answer. And when Brackett began to speak, Uncle Marvin just listened. Through that small, seemingly insignificant act, he had given his nephew permission to explore his feelings and how they were affecting his daily life. He had given him permission to feel.
Brackett then asked the participants in the webinar to take a moment and think about who in our lives had given us that same permission. We were asked to type that person’s name in the chat bar. As names scrolled up the screen, I sat there stumped. Who was it for me? Who in my life had given me permission to truly and wholly feel and experience my emotions, whether good or bad? I had been taught to stand up for myself. I had been taught to have grit and be strong. I could easily rattle off the names of multiple people who had taught me those lessons. But, when asked to identify someone who had given me permission to feel when the emotions were difficult, scary, and vulnerable; I could not think of one person who had done that.
Don’t get me wrong, my life has been filled with amazing role models, both male and female, who empowered me to be the person I am today. They modeled strength, standing up for your beliefs, grit, loyalty, and high moral standards. I had a blessed childhood and never wanted for anything. Throughout my life I was surrounded by strong, empowered people, many of them women. I have written a lot about my grandmother’s influence in my life, but in addition to her, my mother, sister, aunts, teachers, colleagues, and professors were also examples of women who had strong opinions and ideals and stood up for them. Yet, when I think about each of these strong women, I can count on one hand the number of times I saw any of them cry or lean into pain and suffering. Ever.
At the same time, I can remember multiple times in my childhood being given the message that strong women didn’t cry. In fact, it is a famous line from an iconic movie, A League of Their Own. Tom Hanks’s character belittled one of the women players uttering the now-famous phrase “There’s no crying in baseball.” For me, however, baseball is a metaphor for life, for leadership. Strong women are allowed to show emotion, but only if that emotion doesn’t reveal weakness.
Once when I was at the movie theater where I worked with my grandmother in high school, I remember coming into work in tears. I cannot remember why I was crying. I was a teenage girl, so it could have been a myriad of things that caused it to happen. What I do remember though was what my grandmother told me to do. “Go outside until you are done crying. Then you can come back in when you're composed and ready to work.” I mean, she had a point. You can't be at work bawling behind the concession stand and continue to fulfill your job responsibilities effectively. That was a great lesson for me to learn. But, at the same time, another lesson I took away from that was that strong women shouldn’t cry. And if they did, they should do it privately, in hiding until they are finished and ready to rejoin society. Whether that was the intention of her statement or not, that lesson was tucked away into my psyche and is still there today. Upon reflection, I realized that I have uttered the same phrase to my children, “Go into the other room until you’re done crying.” I was unintentionally passing along to my children the message that weakness was something to hide.
During childhood, I also took dance lessons. Our dance teacher was tough. We knew that she didn’t mess around and she expected us to be focused and serious during her lessons. Similar to my grandma, she would tell us to toughen up while at the dance studio and save our tears for our pillows at night. Throughout life, the strong female influences I had encountered had repeated the message, whether intentionally or unintentionally that strong women shouldn’t cry. That crying was something to be hidden and ashamed of.
It is not surprising then, that when Marc Brackett asked us to identify who had given us permission to feel in our own lives, it was such a struggle for me. No one had ever explicitly said I should hide my emotions. I also knew that I should display them proudly when they modeled strength and tenacity. At the same time, no one had ever said that it was ok to show weakness. That crying and showing vulnerability could actually help build relationships with others, connect you with your own emotional landscape more closely, and produce a stronger sense of self in the long run. At age 40, when I was asked this question and came up blank, that was the moment that it hit me. I had not been formally given that permission yet in life, so it was time to give it to myself.
Essentially, granting myself permission to feel without it affecting my sense of self, or making me feel weak was a defining moment in my adult life. After our move to Mexico when I left my career and became a “trailing spouse” I had cried and felt lost more than I ever had in my adult life. Yet, when I really sat down to reflect on how it affected me as a person, I did not feel weaker for it. I did not feel less capable. Around that same time was when I started to do more reading and research around vulnerability and emotions. It was also what allowed me to realize that truly feeling every type of emotion, even when it required vulnerability versus tenacity, actually created a stronger, more empathic, and more trustworthy human being.
In his book Permission To Feel, Brackett also stated that in the United States, there is a natural bias for displaying positive emotions. This often creates the sentiment that we should strive to be happy all the time. In reality, perpetual happiness is unrealistic and should not be anyone’s goal. If someone is feeling sad, however, we try to cheer them up. If they are frustrated, we try to placate them. The biggest take away from his work for me was that negative emotions are still emotions. They are valid and we can learn from them. Essentially by pushing them aside we are actually creating an unhealthy situation that might implode on us later. That day in his webinar was a defining moment for me. It was the day that I gave myself permission to feel, and not just when the feelings required strength and grit, but also when I was feeling vulnerable and in need of support.
Just a couple of short months after attending that webinar, I received confirmation from one of the most important female role models in my life that I was on the right track. When visiting my grandmother, who had recently suffered a stroke, my husband took the time to read to her an article that I had written. The article focused on her influence in my life, concluding through multiple examples that she is the strongest woman I know. Her stroke recovery was still in its early phases and her attention span was not always great, so while he was reading, he continued to ask her after each paragraph or two if he should continue. She would nod each time and say “Keep reading.” When he finished the article, I saw her eyes tear up a bit. This was surprising and touching to me, as I’m not sure that I had ever seen my grandmother cry.
She looked at me and said, “I don’t deserve all those accolades.”
“Of course you do,” I replied, “and more.”
The next day, I wasn’t sure if she would remember that he had read her the article. When I asked her, she replied that yes she remembered and insisted that she wasn’t deserving of the praise. After a minute or so she said something else that hit me like a punch in the gut. Her next statement confirmed that giving myself the permission to feel ALL emotions, even the ones that made me vulnerable, was not going to make me appear weak, it was only going to make me stronger. She said, “The problem with being strong all the time is that everyone will always expect you to be. It’s ok to ask for help.” I sat there in stunned silence. After our first 8 months of living abroad, where everything was an emotional struggle, where I felt lost and unsure of my self worth and my place in our family, this was the exact message I needed to hear - and it meant even more coming from her.
Due to that pivotal realization during the webinar, I know that I still have so much to explore emotionally. Giving myself permission to feel on that day in my kitchen in Mexico, however, was only going to help make my journey more honest and truthful. I have always had a vision in my mind, based on my life experiences, of the qualities that strong women embody. Strong women stand up for their beliefs. Strong women lead. Strong women aren’t afraid of a challenge and show grit in tough situations. Strong women claim their seat at the table. But, what I had recently realized and would commit to my core beliefs for the rest of my life was that women who can truly feel every emotion without shame are the strongest women of all.
Marc Brackett, PhD, is a research psychologist and the Founding Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and Professor in the Child Study Center at Yale University. He is the author of the book ¨Permission to Feel.¨