I am a crier. I tear up when I’m happy. I cry when I’m sad. I get misty-eyed over beautiful music. Any strong emotion brings tears to my eyes. Don’t show me puppies with sad eyes and expect anything less than at least a few tears. Crying was not allowed in my family. So, as a child, I was obsessed with not looking or sounding like I was crying. I tried to never give into crying in any form, for any reason. Shedding a tear was forbidden except when being punished. Ironically the punishment would sometimes continue until tears flowed. I still get uncomfortable if someone notices my eyes welling. Apparently giving punishment is a societal tradition, although unhealthy,in response to children crying. The phrase “don’t begin crying, don’t, or I’ll give you something to cry for” was first recorded in 1800 in a British novel titled “Fitzmaurice” written by William Frederick Williams.* I heard a simplified version of it nearly two centuries later, “Want me to give you something to cry about?”. The implied threat of physical violence in 1800 was exactly the same threat offered to me in the middle of the 20th century.
This obsession with never shedding a tear was and is unhealthy. Tears are one of the least damaging ways of expressing negative, and large, emotions.** Since my upbringing included disallowing tears for any occasion it led to my learning to visibly hide all emotion. Having just some of the emotions, but not all of the emotions, is pretty much impossible. My obsession with never shedding a tear grew to include anything that might signal that I was having an emotion. By middle school I had mastered not showing any emotions and had gone far, too far, in the opposite direction. When I got angry and as my anger grew I would move more and more in utter silence. I was downright scary at times, at least to me. When in pain, if I said ‘ouch’ it meant that it was a minor injury. For serious injuries the only sound would be a harsh intake of a single breath. The second breath would be delayed until absolutely necessary. I still do that. It’s probably so settled into my lizard brain by now that it will most likely remain until I die delaying that second breath. The stomach flutters and knots of fear were not treated as warning signs of danger but as something to defy. This led to some very interesting life experiences that I would hesitate to recommend.
Not crying, not screaming in pain, limiting audible and physical expressions of fear, are all survival instincts. Anyone who has been vulnerable to a predator had some inherent options in the reaction category: fight, flight, freeze & fawn. As a child the option of actually fighting my parent wasn’t considered, while flight, though possible, wasn’t much better. Fawning had already been shown to elicit contempt or violence. That left freezing but I couldn’t look like I was freezing so I tried to be as uninteresting and unreactive as the wall. Later, I would repeat the use of that tactic when leaving an abusive marriage. ***
Using silence for survival can lead to unexpected results though. We teach our own children unintended lessons both good and bad. We can cause harm to ourselves and others. A story that brings home that idea for me is the situation a Jim Butcher character called Agatha Hagglethorn experienced that haunted her beyond her own death. She accidentally smothered her own child during an attempt to hide her and her child from her abusive husband because she was afraid the child’s cries would give them away. That trauma led to her ghost taking the lives of newborns in a hospital maternity ward. ****
We can end up causing harm when we confuse our trauma distorted intentions with real solutions that benefit those around us.
Although I was obsessed with hiding my emotions they would surface and in the worst ways by my teenage years. The only emotion that was respected in my parents’ household, even if still counted as unacceptable for me to exhibit, was anger. That left it as the only form my emotions could be allowed to take. I would be outwardly fine until I wasn’t. I would explode at those who could least harm me in retaliation. I would have taken on the pattern of my family’s toxicity without the universe intervening with some pretty deep traumatic experiences. But most of the learning of new ways to be emotional can be laid at the feet of my first child. She had colic. *****
She screamed and cried for hours on end every day. This lasted for weeks within the first few months after her birth. I was alone with her for a majority of the day and had no friends or family nearby. There was no soothing her beyond walking with her. We walked, she and I, for miles within the house. I paced with her in my arms as she cried inconsolably and as tears ran down my own face. My childhood experiences said to: be angry, be mean, and threaten her. My brain said that threatening an infant was stupid and that logically if one wanted a child to stop crying that the last thing one did was to give that child something more to cry about. They already had something that was making them cry, adding more was counter productive. I couldn’t let myself be lazy and be angry. I couldn’t fix whatever was making her cry. Even the doctors didn’t know why she was crying. I chose to cry with her. And so we cried. I have been able to cry ever since. I am not comfortable crying to this day and I tend to cry only where I feel safe but I also now cry over everything.
Being obsessed over not showing my emotions in any outward way as a child could have kept me walking the path my family line had worn deep over the generations. Looking back, it’s probably why they also didn’t show emotion. Except for my father’s rage and my mother’s depression-based self isolation, emotions were to be borne silently and left for another, more convenient, time. But that convenient time never came and that was the part that was never said out loud. So show me sad-eyed puppies and happy endings. I will cry in joy. Bring me that box of tissues as I will need it if your tale is well-written. Sometimes I lose my voice when I sing Christmas songs because I get choked up with emotion and that’s all okay. Not just for me but for everyone.
The Generosity Project 
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