When I was a kid, I had big emotions which I struggled to control. Like many of us, I did not have parents who had the capacity to help me regulate my emotions. Instead, my mother would tell me I needed to toughen up. She saw my despair as inherently dangerous to my survival and so tried to stifle it the only way she knew how. Of course, with time and perspective, I understood her aggressive stance to be her way of showing she loves me by trying to prevent me from feeling the inevitable pain that comes with living. However, I was passionate. I raged and I hollered on about not wanting to live like her. I know I must have hurt her sometimes by directly rejecting the “help” she offered and therefore rejecting her. To her, she was offering me an oar in an ocean. To me, I felt her attempt to hammer a nail into my coffin.

I could not imagine a world where I closed myself off to everything to mitigate the possibility of pain. To this day, I see a deep strength in me and all of us who choose to remain soft. There is only isolation and loneliness in the path suggested by my mother. So many people see softness, tears, and vulnerability as a weakness. I see it as constant little acts of courage and rebellion. The same broken systems we are trapped in thrive when we close ourselves off to each other and even worse, ourselves. When we deny ourselves the opportunities to be vulnerable with the people we like and come into contact with; we are in turn depriving ourselves of true intimacy and connection. I do think there’s an inherent beauty in allowing yourself to “crashout” and close in on yourself when the eventuality is that you turn around and once again open up and smile at someone.

I watched Where the Wild Things Are (2009) recently with one of my nephews. We both connected deeply with the film, meaning we were both lying in bed crying at the end, probably for similar reasons of seeing ourselves (or my younger self) in the protagonist. Later, he confessed he sometimes feels lonely and depressed like Max does. I told him, I understand, I often felt that way when I was a kid too. Sometimes speaking to him is so hard because when I see him vulnerable and hurting, I hurt too. Except, in those moments, I can’t just lose myself and cry it out because I need to be the adult that I needed when I was going through the same thing.

I told him films like the one we watched were very important to me as a child. I often read books or watched movies where I connected very deeply to the characters. I told him that seeing characters experience the same emotions made me feel less alone because I knew that meant I wasn’t alone at all. I knew when I saw these characters struggle and feel out of place that I wasn’t alone in how I felt. I knew other people felt this way too. I knew we were all connected by this.

Art and its parallel existence to defining our humanity is something that saved me growing up. Literature, film, and music were the true oars in a vast ocean.

“I think that’s whats wrong with the world. No one says what they feel, they always hold it inside. They’re sad, but they don’t cry. They’re happy, but they don’t dance or sing. They’re angry, but they don’t scream. Because if they do, they feel ashamed. And that’s the worst feeling in the world. So everyone walks with their heads down and no one sees how beautiful the sky is.”

Louise Fitzhugh (Author of Harriet the Spy)

When I was a kid, I had big emotions. Now, I’m an adult and I still have big emotions. I accept and love this about myself. What my mother tried, with good intentions (maybe), to weed out of me is one of the things I now find most beautiful about myself. I experience big and UGLY emotions, ones that most of my life made me want to hide myself away so as not to be rejected for being “too much.” Except, by consistently allowing myself to experience this, I have also taught myself the many necessary tools of self-regulation. These are tools I discuss with my friends, my sister, and my nephew on a regular basis.

If I had not given myself the gift of experiencing something I once deemed so ugly and unattractive about myself; I would not be able, now, to turn around and share that gift with the people I love and cherish. Experiencing, regulating, and not suppressing my emotions has opened the door to sharing with my friends and family in true community. If I had never allowed myself to be hurt. If I had shut myself off from things that once scared me. I would never have had these beautiful moments of true connection in mutual humanity with my loved ones.

I am so grateful to feel so strongly. I am so proud of myself for being brave and facing myself day in and day out. When I was a kid, a teenager, a young adult, I would look in the mirror and struggle to find my value because I felt broken. The truth is though, I have shown myself time and time again, true resilience is moving forward knowing there’s a storm ahead and knowing it will be hard to weather it but that it is worth it to get where I am going.