Being More Emo

"Oh I get so emotional baby
Every time I think of you
I get so emotional baby
Ain't it shocking what love can do..."

–Whitney Houston, So Emotional

"You know, Bryce, he's so emo," Beatrice said to her sister.

"I know, so emo," Bryce echoed. 

"Who are you talking about and what does that mean?" I asked. "What's the context? Does it mean that the person is too emotional?"

"I don't know," Bryce said. Beatrice didn't answer.

"What do you mean you don't know? You say it all the time."

"Not all the time," Bea said.

Well, maybe not all the time, I thought. But many times a week I hear our girls, now 12 and 14, use that expression.

Most of the time they're using it in a light, self-deprecating way. At least, that's what Bryce ended up telling me. When I told my wife Amy, her Kidpower training popped open and she said we need to talk with them about minimizing other people's emotions using that term. Then she laughed at herself, although still serious.

The term emo literally means "a person who is overly sensitive or emotional." And the term is used to make fun of people who do show their emotions more than others. It can also mean someone who is shy, brooding, and dark and who listens to Emo music, which is a rock music genre, post-hardcore and hardcore punk, characterized by emotional, often confessional lyrics. Not quite Whitney Houston, that's for sure. God, I'm getting old. I had no idea what all this meant when I started looking for answers online. 

Based on what I learned, I've always been emo. Never the toughest guy in the toolshed, I was always sensitive and emotional, although I struggled early on with managing my feelings, expressing myself, asking for help when I needed it. I learned over time that it's empowering being vulnerable, to be able to express my feelings and relate to other's feelings.

When I think about the broader implications of living in a society that does not embrace sharing one's feelings, especially for boys and men, I agree with my wife. We shouldn't minimize other's emotions when they're vulnerable enough to share them, because they most likely need support; we have to meet people where they are. It's much healthier to express how we feel and to be given empathic understanding in kind. Unfortunately, misogynistic societies have always denigrated others for being emotional and caring and why women are the weaker gender and are less than effective leaders than men. 

Of course, that's not true. I've got a household of effective female leaders and am proud that we talk about how we feel, how we manage our emotions, and how we provide love and support to one another and to others. So proud of our BhivePower! Our teen girls know that being more emo is the way to go and to not minimize others who are, or who aren't. 

A Well of Strength

"Right to the heart of the matter
Right to the beautiful part
Illusions are painfully shattered
Right where discovery starts
In the secret wells of emotion
Buried deep in our hearts..."

–Rush, Emotion Detector

In the good ol' days, we never wore helmets while riding our bikes down the street, to the oak grove we called Little Forest, to school, to anywhere for that matter. We even rode our bikes to a convenience store nearly a mile away and back, which included crossing a couple of major intersections and going under a highway overpass. Not only that, we had more freedom than we knew what to do with. We'd play for hours outside until dusk, rain or shine, riding our bikes forever.

Decades later, and now hundreds of Gen X memes on social media later, we proudly reminisce how tough we were back then and how whiny and weak the Millennials and Gen Z are today. Back then, we'd fall off our bikes and get right back up on them again and ride off into the sunset with blood, guts and glory threading the needles of life before us.

And yet, for many of us, we could never talk about our feelings. Weren't encouraged to talk about our feelings. Were afraid to talk about our feelings. And if we did talk about them, we were told abruptly we were okay and to toughen up. To just deal with them and get a move on.

My sister and I were fortunate that we had a mother who did her best to listen to us, to give us permission to feel and express those feelings, to try and heal and grow from their acknowledgement. We grew up with domestic violence and sexual abuse and there were many dark moments in our lives back then. However, with the exception of a few good friends and even fewer accessible adults, it took decades for me to express all the feelings I had growing up. Feelings that manifested into anxiety, addiction, anger and depression.

Today, there's so much loss everywhere because of the coronavirus impact. Our youngest daughter Bryce calls it the bad history. Our oldest daughter Beatrice struggles to go to sleep nearly every night. My wife Amy and I encourage our two daughters to talk about their feelings. Not just at our weekly family meetings where we share compliments, gratitude, appreciation and talk about managing our emotions -- we check in with each other every single day. Amy and I empathize and share our feelings as well and talk about different ideas on how to deal with them. How do we get past them and thrive. Drawing, painting, outdoor activities and exercise, breathing exercises, meditation and even yoga have also been helpful coping strategies for our family. And I loved the recent Brené Brown podcast with Dr. Marc Brackett on "Permission to Feel"!

Who the hell plans for a pandemic anyway? Not everyday people, that's for sure. The stress that COVID-19 has wrought on society is unlike anything any of us have experienced in our lifetimes. Millions are out of work, out of school, out of all sorts, while hundreds of thousands continue to die from a deadly mutating virus that is still over a year away from having a vaccine.

This is why we have to be emotionally available to each other, especially our children. According to Kidpower, emotional safety for our kids and ourselves include the following recommendations:

Talk with family members and check in often. This is important for yourself and also for your kids. Provide many opportunities to listen to children no matter how small their concerns may seem.

Kids may need your help to actually find the names for feelings they are experiencing. There are many helpful, printable charts that you can find online of people’s faces matched up with emotions to help young children identify feelings. Drawing, painting, writing, and music can all be excellent ways to express feelings.

When big feelings come up, try to respond to kids in a calm, consistent, and nurturing way. Kids are emotionally safest if they believe their adults are calm and in control.

I'm tired of the tough. Of people thinking need to go it alone. Of doing it themselves. Of not letting themselves cry. Of the toxic masculinity that continues to surge again and again. Physical toughness may help in some situations, but not at the expense of emotional safety and a lifetime of anger and despair. That's not resilience. Resilience is the ability to recover more quickly when things go awry in our lives, and the capacity to identify and express our feelings is what builds our resilience. Acknowledging vulnerability and the fact that we're fallible beings who should be accessible to each other with empathy and love, and how resilient we are in dealing with it all, are all key to balanced life.

We're now letting our girls spend more time alone and venture off a little more on their own, and that includes riding their bikes without us. Our oldest Beatrice rode home ahead of us on one occasion recently. She opened the garage door, put the bike away, and went inside the house, where her sister had been waiting for us, alone. We were only a minutes behind, and not without safety plans for all, of course, with us as the calm and controlled adults "inside and outside" the room. We're working on a healthy independence dependent on the interdependence of our family. (Say that five times fast and put it into practice!)

We all deserve to be physically and emotionally safe, to be able to express how we feel and why we feel. That's not weakness either. That's a well of strength buried deep in our hearts we fill with love.

Always Be the Titter to Our Totter

SPOILER ALERT: I'm giving away the Big Hero 6 climax, so read on at your own risk...

The part where Baymax sacrifices himself to save Hiro and the daughter of the misguided bad guy. That's the part that hit her so hard and fast that every fiber of her little being ached with sadness and burned with free-flowing tears.

So much so we had to stop the Big Hero 6 movie for a bit. Bryce cried and cried, struggling to breathe and regain the composure she had prior to that point. Over 15 minutes later we finally resumed and finished the movie.

Yes, we know it was a PG-rated movie and there was violence and death and dark action and loss and sadness and why in God's name were we letting our four-year-old watch this thing. But we've been melting our children's brains since we inadvertently let them watch The Incredibles two years ago thinking it was G, when it was actually PG, so there's that proud parenting milestone.

But hey, they're both Disney movies with heart-felt familial themes and the girls had been really wanting to see Big Hero 6, so we did, and they loved it.

When Bryce cried you could see the loss on in her wet, bleary red eyes and puffy ashen face. It was palatable, visceral and it glowed with the degenerative density of a white hot dwarf star. Her life experience may be very little to date, but mercy me does life move this little fireball. The Mama held her close and both Beatrice and me consoled her as well.

After the movie Bryce wanted us to make a Baymax for her to play with, but not the real one. She was very clear about it not being real, her emotional response still raw loss. I made one, although I'm not sure if it ended up more like a ghostly E.T. than a short-armed Baymax.

Anyway, Bryce is like me this way, the intense deep feeler who's up and down and up and down and all heart smeared all over her sleeves and every other inch of her, light years from impulse control. Even when I finally overcame the impulse drive, I still cry at almost anything laced with sentimentality, loss and redeeming hope. The Mama loves that about her man for those of you keeping score at home.

And conversely like me (something the Mama doesn't care for), Bryce can be a Daddy Goat Gruff when she's "all done" with whatever she's doing and not afraid to let you know that. The bark without a bite doesn't make it right, but dammit, when we're all done we're all done.

Up and down and up and down -- cry, snap, sniff.

Ah, my baby girl feeler -- unlike her sister and mother, both of whom respond with uncomfortable (but heartfelt) inappropriate tittering laughter when faced with sadness and tragedy. We love them, but c'mon. It's just weird.

Anyway, I hope in 40 years Bryce will feel just as deeply as she does today, that she'll cry at the sticky sweet and the sad -- and that Beatrice and the Mama will always be the titter to our totter.