“I will not teach or love or show you anything perfectly, but I will let you see me, and I will always hold the sacred gift of seeing you — indeed, seeing you.” ~ Brené Brown
The first time my child saw me really cry was Christmas 2021. My oldest child is 16 years old and my youngest is 12 years old.
They have just opened their gifts. It should be a warm and pleasant morning. Instead, I turned to the living room near the entrance and turned my back on him as tears threatened to spill over. My mother – whose mental turmoil has disrupted a large part of my life – is in the psychiatric hospital again. Her Mental health Relieved again, its sadness, its repetition, its despair finally caught me.
I spent years trying to keep my pain out of sight. I think I can hide it again. But this time I could not.
The two children asked, “How are you?”
I whispered, “I’m fine,” and even tears flowed.
Then something unexpected happened. They both came up to me and hugged me. No fear. No confusion. Just love. Pure and stable.
Then something began to unravel in me. What met me was gentleness. My children are not overwhelmed by my grief. They responded simply. That’s when something old started to break: the belief that my pain was dangerous to the people I loved the most.
It took me a long time to try not to be like my mother. I have always been responsible for her feelings and well-being and I have never wanted my children to be as burdened as I am. But in trying so hard not to let the past happen again, I carefully kept my emotions inside when I was sad.
I think I protect them.
What I do not understand is that my children do not need the protection of my humanity. They need some communication with it.
At the end of 2023, my toddler made an observation that my hideout was not really working.
“You’re sad,” he said, and Dad was crazy.
The truth was denied, but I knew he was not cruel. He just said what he saw.
And he was not wrong.
After Christmas, I went back to everything and tried not to let my sadness get too much. But even without tears, my son still sees my grief for years – through what is happening to my mother, through the loss that I have quietly carried, through the burden that I think I am keeping to myself.
Of course he understood. Maybe it was in my attitude or my energy in the heaviness on my face in the way that sometimes I look blank or in when he had to call my name several times before I came back. He always asked, “How are you, Mom?” He knew something was there.
That is when I realized that there was no point in hiding my inner world if my child could feel it without words.
Children are incredibly intuitive. Even when they have no language, they can feel what is happening. They accept stress, sadness, distance and stress long before anyone explains it. When we pretend that everything is fine, they still feel like something is off.
What I began to understand was that without context, they had to leave meaning to their feelings. They may assume that my grief has something to do with them or that it is something they need to fix.
But when I started giving them enough facts – without Injuries Throwing away without making them take what is mine – they better not be able to determine what they are feeling personally. They can understand that I feel those feelings are real and human, and those feelings are not their fault.
I also began to see things more clearly: My children always see me as strong, independent and capable, a person who controls things and manages things. Because I did not let them see what I thought was weak, I never gave them a chance to know this: I felt. My feelings matter Well. Not just theirs.
As I began to share more of my inner world in an age-appropriate way, my children became more thoughtful and considerate. Not because they are responsible for me, but because they can understand me better.
What’s most difficult for me is knowing what I was experiencing as a child – the invisible is what I was talking to my own child without realizing it. Not in the same form, but with a similar emotional pattern.
How can they see me if I never tell them what is going on inside me? How can we have a real relationship if I just let them relate to my strength, ability and serenity while hiding the deepest part of my inner world?
In 2026, something started to change, but not quickly and not by chance. It came after years of treatment, reflection, and gradual learning how often I was still blocking what I was feeling – pushing it down hard, swallowing it into my bedroom to hide it, trying to keep quiet before anyone saw it. Gradually, I stopped doing this. I cried more freely. I let them see more.
My youngest son is Autism And there was a deep connection to me from the beginning, not knowing what to do when I started to shed tears more often. A few months before I was crying, he said, “I want to make you feel better, but I do not know how.”
I told him, “You do not have to fix anything, just keep me as I am and I will let you be that is the best gift we can give each other.”
After that, I felt his awkwardness begin to weaken in acceptance.
Shortly afterwards, as we were landing in Houston after a trip to Canada, the tears began to flow again. I do not want to come back. That place no longer feels like my home. Without saying a word, my son wrapped his arms around me and grabbed me while I was crying.
Minutes later, I took a deep breath and said, “Thank you. I feel relieved.”
But it was the time in the car that was with me the most.
About a month later I Cried Again, while we were driving. A song came to the radio that reminded me of someone and the sadness quickly escalated. He sat next to me and I said, “I’m fine, dude. This song just reminds me of someone and makes me sad. I just take it off and I’m fine.”
Even then, I still felt self-conscious. Some of me still worry that he might judge me.
Instead, he said something that completely shocked me.
“I want to cry like this,” he said.
I laughed a little and said, “I understand and buddy. We’ll make you cry again eventually.”
I mean softly, but I also knew in that moment that he had learned some of the same lessons, so many boys learned from the beginning the tears, the feeling stuck, crying became something to resist. And I learned what he learned from what his father and I emulated. It will take time to learn.
That time was with me because it showed me the difference from him that he was seeing my tears more than I always saw it myself.
All my life I have shed tears of weakness. I think robustness means holding on to everything in makeup, pushing and keeping the hardware hidden. But through my son’s eyes, I saw something different. He did not see my tears as a failure. He saw courage in them.
That opened another conversation between us. He told me he could not cry anymore. “It always felt stuck in my throat,” he said. He may feel it, but it will not come out. He told me that the last time he really cried was when he was 13 years old.
I thought at the time how much energy we spend trying not to feel what is already there.
Over the years, I have come to realize that being a good parent means not being overwhelmed. I thought Strength means Protect my children from seeing my sorrows, my passions, my tenderness, and my breaking points.
Now I think children need honesty more than performance. They need to know that hardships can be felt without danger, sadness can pass through the room irresponsibly, and that love does not disappear when life is difficult.
I used to think that my tears would make my baby feel insecure.
What I do know now is that when those tears are held with sincerity and care, they can teach something powerful: Being full is not a weakness, and the connection is often deeper when we stop pretending we have nothing to feel.
About Allison Briggs
Allison Jeanette Briggs is a therapist, author and speaker who specializes in helping women recover from code dependence, childhood trauma and emotional neglect. She mixes emotional insights with spiritual depth to guide clients and readers towards self-confidence, boundaries and true connection. Allison is the author of Future Memories On Being Real: Healing the Codependent Heart of a Woman and shares reflections on healing, resilience and inner freedom at on-being-real.com.
