Boys Don’t Cry

When I was a little girl, I remember when I would cry, my mother would tell me not to. She’d say, “stop it, don’t cry, you are fine!”

When you’re an empath, that’s almost impossible to do. I tried not to, but I would cry anyway privately.

My mother was unknowingly saying those words and making me feel embarrassed that I was expressing my emotions. I thought I had to be strong and not show my feelings or let people know how I felt. So I always plastered a smile on my face and pretended that I was fine.

Being a parent, you can choose to raise your kids differently than how you grew up, and because wolves raised me, that’s what I decided to do. I knew I didn’t want to raise my child to feel he was wrong in showing his emotions.

A few years back, when my son was about eight, we were visiting my mom, and she bumped her head. Being an overly dramatic person, she acted like she was going to die. My son thought she was severely hurt, started to cry, and got very emotional. She was surprised by his outburst and told him not to cry.

He said, mommy said I could cry, and it’s okay for me to be sad or scared. He was right; I did tell him that. I did not want to raise a boy that was ashamed because he was crying, afraid, or experiencing pain and sadness.

If we tell our boys not to confront their emotions, we cannot expect them to comprehend empathy.

I didn’t want my son to believe that he had to be strong all the time and suck it up because that is what I was made to think when I was his age. We need to let our boys know that crying doesn’t mean you are weak and that it is alright to feel your emotions and be vulnerable.

It allows them to understand that it’s okay to be human. It’s acceptable not to be tough all the time, and it takes the pressure off men to believe they need to take care of everyone around them and not face their own afflictions.

In many cultures, males are taught that expressing anger is fine, but their other feelings they need to be disconnected from. They are told that being emotional means, they are inadequate and not manly enough.

We are living in a society where empathy is lacking, and toxic masculinity is still a problem. If we allow our boys to be sensitive and not just tough, we can raise a new generation of men who don’t feel they have to adhere to antiquated cultural constructs.

“Some men turn away from all this cheap emotion with a kind of heroic despair…But this too can be an error. For if our emotions really die in the desert, our humanity dies with them.” – Thomas Merton

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Previously Published on medium

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