It seems an almost universal response. The person is asked about something negative that has happened, “how is your mother doing?” or “what do you remember about the accident?” or “Was she your only sister?” Next, as the person begins to talk about the situation, their voice may begin to quiver or they may begin to tear up, all examples of “losing their composure.” It only takes a few seconds for the person to look embarrassed and begin apologizing, “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
I’ve experienced this response in reverse. When my sister-in-law asked me about my son who was in the hospital, I began describing his situation and I teared up a bit. This prompted an immediate apologetic response from her. “I’m so sorry. Now I’ve made you cry.”
Standing back a bit from these common reactions we can conclude that western culture’s rules for human conduct in adverse situations, though perhaps unstated, are versions of “Keep calm and carry on,” and “whatever you do, don’t become emotional.”
From the perspective of processing our life experiences and grieving our losses, these cultural “rules” are the direct opposite of what we need in order to grieve. On the path of good grieving, we must be able to recognize, accept, and express our emotions. And to be good companions to our loved ones as they grieve, we must be able to allow them to have and express their feelings in our presence.
There are multiple reasons why we have trouble with grief, our own and other people’s. First, emotional literacy is not a given in western culture for people of any age. Classroom teachers attempt to teach it by asking children, “How are you feeling today?” while displaying a chart of emoji faces with specific emotions labeled. But feelings are the interpretation we make of bodily sensations. For grieving to be the art we need it to be we must be in our body to know what we are experiencing, to have our feelings rather than our feelings having us. In the resilience literature, this is called “emotional regulation.”
Secondly, western culture has provided much misinformation. Two of the most critical emotions related to grieving, out of the 87 possible ones that research has identified, sadness and sorrow, are not even offered as possibilities in the often-quoted Kubler -Ross five stages model of grieving. Add to this the supreme value of independence and self-reliance, and sharing feelings would not be on the list of desired actions to take. A person is more likely to shut down emotions through a particularly challenging time, yet living a life in a state of numbness is not living at all.
The third challenge to grieving well in western culture is that tears, the expression of sadness and sorrow, have been shamed. Most everyone is familiar with the restrictions on tears that boys and men are raised with but for most everybody of any age, tears are for “crybabies,” and people are admonished for “just feeling sorry for yourself.” Tears, if considered appropriate at all are to happen only in the privacy of one’s own home.
My parents, when they were raising six kids in the 1940’s and 50’s took this one step further. There was only one appropriate crying space in our house, and it was the bathroom. If we began to cry, we would be sent there to remove ourselves from the company of other family members and to remain there until we had composed ourselves and could return calm and collected to the family spaces.
Perhaps we should not be surprised that it has become a common community practice to apologize for expressing our sorrow.
But children sometimes can get it right and teach us what tears are for. My six-year-old son Kenny taught me this after we had moved as a family away from the town where the woman who had been his nanny for his whole life still lived. It was the hardest part of the move, especially for Kenny, and his teachers had noted that he seemed to have some trouble engaging in the school’s group activities. When he was with our family, he seemed fine, but at school the teachers wondered if he were depressed.
We made arrangements for Margaret to visit several months after we got settled in our new home. The visit lasted a week, and we all had a great time showing her our new surroundings. The day she left, I had an early morning meeting, so my husband and the kids took Margaret to the bus stop.
When I returned home in the evening, Kenny ran to greet me. He jumped into my arms and with tears in his eyes he told me, “I’ve been crying and crying, and I can’t stop crying.”
I asked him,” What are the tears saying?” Without hesitation he said, “They are saying, “Margaret, Margaret, Margaret!”
Sheila
