A day or two after my dad told me he was getting divorced, I found him in the basement on the couch. It was obvious that he had been crying, but when I saw him, he appeared his regular self. We had a conversation about how he wasn’t going to take any time off work. “Until the bank accepts sadness as a form of payment, you’ll find me at work.”
He always used humor to deal with everything. Unfortunately, during the course of that conversation, something troubling happened inside of me. My father convinced me that it wasn’t okay to express sadness.
On that day in 7th grade, I died a little inside. Even to this day, I struggle to find a defibrillator and revive my humanity.
For some reason, my dad decided that was in his (and inadvertently mine) best interest to not exhibit all traits from the spectrum of humanity. Essentially, he wanted to rob himself of emotion so that he didn’t appear weak in front of his coworkers and peers.
From that day, I equated emotion to weakness and weakness must be eradicated immediately. This has made it harder to connect with people on a deeper level and all too easy to not fight for friendships worth saving. I carried this idea into adulthood and I’m still paying the price.
Now, I am open to acting within the entire context of humanity, but finding what I lost has proven difficult. I welcome the day I become myself again.
Do your children struggle with acting outside of their gender norm? How do you show your kids it’s okay to act outside of their gender norms?