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.