Crying is Brave

Bit late on the take here but you ever have one of those 😱😭 🏋️ 🎪 ⛈ ☄️🌪 hellscape in the city kinda days? I’ve also found that in covid times 🦠 idk ... this city hates children and that’s being generous. YMMV.

TLDR; We got the cast off!

It was quite a day! (Spoiler alert: no one did ANY school! Or as Joe texted, is that still happening? Yes Joe Gabriel we are somehow expected to school the children during the apocalypse. I don’t get it either).

But! My sweet amazing children were sweet and amazing. Big Sister was calm and mature and wrapped her arm around Little Brother to comfort and sustain and carry his little arm to X-ray on a pillow and listen to him as much as she could. Broken Arm Boy was Very Brave in the realest and truest meaning of the word. Every doctor and nurse and technician we saw was patient and kind and went at his very slow pace (so unlike the culture of a few years ago where I had to stand so kind and firm for my daughter’s emotional rights and needs) and I’m looking forward to the day where medical professionals at large catch up with the idea that being brave does not mean not crying!

My boy had a horrific double forearm fracture (three breaks in total!) and has already had two casts *sawed* off his arm. So idk, I think adults are out of their damn minds telling a 7 year old child “this is no big deal.” I think what they mean is, “this is no big deal to me.” Or perhaps, this isn’t going to physically hurt you so don’t worry. But, grown ups! This isn’t helping. Denying a child’s reality (much like rushing them or screaming at them) is just gasoline on the fire.

This sawing of something off their body (on a part of themselves that BROKE?!) is a very scary thing happening right here right now. Let’s start being real about that FIRST.

When the nurse asked him if he was nervous he said, “YES. I am going to hold my stuffie and cover my face with my hat.”

She said, “But you’ll be brave right? You won’t cry?”

He looked down and said “No,” very quietly in almost a whisper, then looked at me. I smiled and winked at him.

“Well, maybe,” he said.

“Maybe he’ll be brave AND cry,” I said.

His face cracked into a smile so wide I could see it beaming beneath his mask.

“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe I’ll do that.”

Crying is brave, y’all.

It’s true in the cab and the kitchen, in public and private, with a broken arm or a broken heart.

I’m proud of these kids for showing up for each other when it really mattered. When the rest of the world was so stressful and mean. And I hope we keep finding ways to hold up little pillowy stuffies of comfort for each other’s broken places and let each other know it’s ok to cry.