My husband and I are going through covid right now which makes us a lot more difficult to hold the normally already challenging equilibrium between caring for and dealing with our three teens. Yesterday evening my husband got really upset and argued with one of them (16).
Later I went to my kid’s room to check out how he was doing. I didn’t want him to end the day feeling miserable and alone.
“I know this all sucks and it must be difficult for you to have both your parents feeling so cranky and being so demanding on you and your brothers. I’m sorry you had an argument with dad.”, I said.
He looked at me, overflowed eyes, and almost desperate said: “Mom that’s right on the spot and thank you for caring but please get out right now, don’t see me cry. Get out! Get out!”
It shocked me. We’ve raised them being so open about emotions, so eager to validate them, so non judgemental about crying and still there he was, my adored young man, feeling endangered and encrypted in his need to shed some very well earned tears.
We are experiencing a very rare collective transformation. Many say we’re giving birth to an integral consciousness. It’s evolutionary, it’s universal and it follows the bonding pattern of love, integrating and transcending parts into a wider whole. To manage this we need a very specific skill set in all our lines of development. Up to here, K. Wilber guided me. From here onwards…
In my understanding women are in a key position right now. Why is it everybody seems to be saying, “the change we need to see in the world is upon women’s shoulders”? Even the Dalai Lama says that the world will be saved by women.
I think this is because we women, at least western women but probably it applies globally too, have been raised in cultures that carefully trained us through family settings and educational systems to be caring, collaborative, forgiving and loving and, at the same time, we were highly discouraged to take roles or attitudes regarding leading positions since early childhood.
While little boys were similarly intensely trained to be individualistic, control masters, competitive, fast and tough (please note I don’t say men are this and women that way or the other. I’m saying we were trained that way conscious or unconsciously, there’s lots of scientific evidence here: girl is praised and rewarded for being caring, boy for outstanding his peers. A strong willed girl is identified as bossy and the boy as holding leadership skills. Such strong stereotypes on both sides).
Now it turns out we’re birthing a new consciousness because survival depends upon it and this integral consciousness requires above all the skill to cope with collective uncertainty. For this we have to connect with each other in unknown ways in order to be able to reach massive creativity and resilience levels capable of turning the increasingly perplexing major challenges into fertile fields for a bright future. This requires cooperation, ambiguity tolerance and team work.
Guess who’s standing better on her two feet to surf the gigantic wave? You’re right. Women.
It’s on our side. Which doesn’t mean that we’re better or anything in the like. It just means we were handed (and neuro-crafted) with the essential tools to adequately respond to the actual state of affairs. We were trained to be vulnerable, we were told we cry, we were shown in how many ways we’re the soft gender. Whether we accredited or fought against the mandate, it was there. That’s why our men count on us now. They need us to open dialogues around “how the hell you stay physiologically regulated when you are crying”. Gosh if there were a University teaching this I could lecture on the subject for hours. I hold a master in crying.
We’ve practiced a lot as girls. Many of us still do. I mean if I don’t cry in a full lunar month I start worrying. That’s how we learned to be able to cry and feel safe at the same time. We know how to stay connected inwards and with our surroundings not only while crying but by it.
Boys were not given the chance. They had to push their precious natural gift of vulnerability deep deep down out of their own reach. Now is the time for men to take their deepest breath, dive till the ground bottom and recover their tears trapped in a seashell. They’ll discover they’ve turned into pearls. And we women will know it because we’ll be there as their midwives. It’s on our shoulders but not in the heavy sense of bearing the weight. It’s offering ourselves just to listen and connect instead of fixing, a paused hand to caress his heavy head, a calm chest for his unsettled heart.
Come men of our world, come no matter your age, let’s cry together.
And then laugh together.
And then be silent all on our own.
And don’t worry.
Claim your tearful heritage of vulnerability. ‘Cause you still will be allowed to enjoy the competition, but knowing your belonging and worthiness are not cast by the results. Come, cry, experience the difference between game and free play maybe for the first time. And enjoy both; it’s integrating and transcending, remember.
Above all, come. Let your cascading river be with us. Come and understand. Get it first hand. Your tears are safe on this side of your eyes. Crying does not define who you are. You won’t lose your sense of self ever again.
You belong to us and we need you whole.
You are worth and lovable, no matter what.
You may ask me, “ok, I cry, then what?”
Cause you and I know this is not the end of the line, of course it’s not. But this might be the drop that fills the Holy Grail, the first step guiding you right to the entrance where your Self abides.
For now, I’ll wait and be sad.
‘Cause I couldn’t listen to my child’s cry, I couldn’t hold, my hand fell empty, my shoulder light. My child wouldn’t… But I trust him, he’ll find a path. May my writing be an open portal for my young man to be safe. Be safe my baby and please oh please and please come and cry.
Ah, Literature! A round trip to the heart.
amararama, the spirited u-turn 