“I will not teach you, love, or show you anything perfectly, but I will let you see me, and I will always hold sacred the gift of looking at you – really, deeply, seeing you.” ~Bren Brown
The first time my kids saw me actually cry was on Christmas 2021. My oldest child was sixteen years old, and my youngest was twelve years old.
They had just opened their gifts. It was supposed to be a warm, pleasant morning. Instead, I turned to the lobby near the entrance of the house, my back to them because tears threatened to spill. My mother—whose emotional chaos had disrupted a large part of my life—was in a psychiatric hospital again. Her mental health had once again deteriorated, and the grief, the repetition, the helplessness of it all, eventually overwhelmed me.
I spent years trying to hide my pain out of sight. I thought I could hide it again. But this time, I couldn’t.
Both of my kids asked, “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” I whispered, even as the tears flowed.
Then something unexpected happened. Both of them came towards me and hugged me. No fear. No confusion. Just love. Pure and stable.
That moment began to reveal something inside me. What I got was tenderness. My children were not overwhelmed by my grief. He simply replied to it. In that moment, something old began to break down: the belief that my pain was dangerous to the people I loved most.
I spent a very long time trying not to be like my mother. I always felt responsible for her feelings and well-being, and I never wanted my own children to feel burdened like I did. But trying very hard not to repeat the past, I kept my emotional interior very protected when I was sad.
I thought I was protecting them.
What I didn’t understand then was that my children didn’t need protection from my humanity. They needed some connection to this.
In late 2023, my little self made an observation that showed me that my hiding wasn’t really working.
“You’re sad,” she said, “and Daddy’s mad.”
The truth hurt, but I knew he wasn’t cruel. He was just saying what he saw.
And he was not wrong.
After that Christmas, I started trying to keep things to myself and not show my sadness too much. But even without the tears, my son was still witnessing my grief over the years—through everything my mother was going through, through the losses I silently carried, through the burdens I thought I was keeping to myself.
Of course he realized it. Perhaps it was in my demeanor or my energy, in the heaviness on my face, the way I would sometimes stare blankly, or in those moments when she would have to call my name several times before I came back. He would often ask, “Are you okay, Mom?” He knew there was something there.
That was the moment I realized there was no point hiding my inner world if my children could already feel it without words.
Children are incredibly intuitive. Even when they don’t have language they can feel what’s going on. They understand stress, sadness, distance and tension long before anyone can explain it to them. Even when we pretend everything is fine, they still feel something is wrong.
What I began to understand was that, without context, they were left to make sense of what they felt. They could believe that my sadness had something to do with them, or that it was something they needed to fix.
But when I started giving them enough truth — without trauma dumping, without forcing me to carry what was mine — they were able to not personalize what they were feeling. They could understand that I had feelings, that those feelings were real and human, and that those feelings were not their fault.
I began to see something even more clearly: My children had always seen me as strong, independent, and capable, who managed things and handled what needed to be handled. Because I didn’t let them see what I considered weak, I never gave them the chance to know: I had feelings. My feelings matter too. Not just theirs.
As I began to share my inner world in age-appropriate ways, my children became more thoughtful and considerate. Not because they were responsible for me, but because they could understand me completely.
What struck me most was the realization that what I had felt as a child – being invisible – was something I was repeating to my own children without even realizing it. Not in the same form, in the same emotional pattern.
How will they really be able to see me if I never let them know anything about what’s going on inside me? How can we have a true relationship if I hide the deeper parts of my inner world and allow them to relate only to my strength, ability, and composure?
By 2026, something had begun to change, but not quickly and not by accident. This came after many years of therapy, reflection, and slowly learning how often I still suppressed what I felt — pushing it down, swallowing hard, going to my bedroom to hide it, trying to regain composure before anyone saw. Gradually, I stopped doing this. I cried more openly. I let myself see more.
My youngest son, who is autistic and deeply attached to me, didn’t know what to do at first when I started showing my tears again and again. A few months ago, as I was crying, he said, “I want to make you feel better, but I don’t know how.”
I told her, “You don’t have to fix anything. Just let me be me, and I’ll let you be you. It’s the best gift we can give each other.”
After that, I felt her awkwardness soften into acceptance.
A little while later, as we were landing in Houston after a trip to Canada, the tears started falling again. I didn’t want to come back. That place doesn’t feel like home to me anymore. Without saying a word, my son took me in his arms and held me as I cried.
After a few minutes, I exhaled and said, “Thank you. I feel better now.”
But it was that moment in the car that stayed with me most.
About a month later, I was crying again as we were driving. A song came on the radio that reminded me of someone I missed, and the sadness quickly increased. He was sitting next to me, and I said, “I’m fine, honey. The song just reminds me of someone and makes me sad. I just need to get it out, and then I’ll be fine.”
Yet, I still felt self-conscious. Some part of me still worries that maybe he’s judging me.
Instead, he said something that left me completely stunned.
“I wish I could cry like that,” he said. “You are strong.”
I laughed a little and said, “I understand, honey. Eventually we’ll make you cry again.”
I said it gently, but at that moment I also realized that he had learned some of the same lessons that many boys learn early – that tears flow, emotions get stuck, crying becomes a thing to resist. And I knew she learned something from what her father and I had modeled. It will take time to learn this.
That moment stayed with me because it showed me how differently he saw my tears than I had always seen.
For most of my life, I equated crying with weakness. I thought being strong meant holding it all in, staying composed, moving forward, and keeping the hard parts hidden. But through my son’s eyes I saw something different. He didn’t see my tears as a failure. He saw courage in him.
That moment sparked another conversation between us. He told me he couldn’t cry anymore. He said it always felt stuck in his throat. He could feel it, but it wouldn’t come out. He told me the last time he cried was when he was thirteen years old.
I then thought about how much energy many of us spend trying not to realize what already exists.
For years I thought being a good parent meant being firm. I thought strength meant preventing my children from seeing my sadness, my overwhelm, my tenderness, and my breaking points.
Now I feel that children need honesty more than performance. They need to know that difficult emotions can be felt without becoming dangerous, sadness can roam the room without becoming their responsibility, and love doesn’t disappear when life gets tough.
I thought my tears would make my children feel less safe.
What I know now is that when those tears are tended to with honesty and care, they can teach something powerful: that being fully human is not a weakness, and that connection often deepens the moment we stop pretending we have nothing to feel.
About Allison Briggs
Alison Janet Briggs is a therapist, author, and speaker who specializes in helping women recover from codependency, childhood trauma, and emotional neglect. She blends psychological insight with spiritual depth to guide clients and readers toward self-confidence, boundaries, and authentic connection. Alison is the author of the upcoming memoir On Being Real: Healing the Codependent Heart of a Woman and shares thoughts on healing, resilience, and inner freedom. on-being-real.com.
