“I will not teach you, love you, or show you anything, but I will let you see me, and I will always hold sacred the gift of seeing you—truly, deeply, seeing you.” ~Brene Brown
My children saw me cry for the first time on Christmas 2021. My oldest was sixteen, my youngest was twelve.
They have just opened their presents. It should have been a warm, joyful morning. Instead, I turned to face the hall by the entrance of the house, my back to them as the tears welled up. My mother—whose emotional turmoil had disrupted most of my life—was once again in a psychiatric hospital. Him mental health it unfolded once more, and the whole grief, the repetition, the helplessness finally caught up with me.
I spent years trying to make my pain go away. I thought I could hide it again. But this time I couldn’t.
Both of my kids asked, “Are you okay?”
I whispered, “I’m fine,” even as tears fell.
Then something unexpected happened. They both came towards me and wrapped me in a hug. There is no fear. No confusion. Just love. Clean and stable.
This moment started to unfold something in me. What met me was tenderness. My children were not overwhelmed by my sadness. They simply reacted to it. In that moment, something old began to crack: the belief that my pain was dangerous to the people I loved the most.
For a long time I tried not to be like my mother. I’ve always felt responsible for his feelings and well-being, and I never wanted my own children to feel burdened like I did. But because I tried so hard not to repeat the past, I kept my emotional insides very private when I was sad.
I thought I was protecting them.
What I didn’t understand at the time was that my children didn’t need protection from my humanity. They needed some kind of connection.
At the end of 2023, my youngest child made a comment that showed that my hiding wasn’t really working.
“You’re the sad one,” he said, “and Dad’s the crazy one.”
The truth hurt, but I knew it wasn’t cruel. He just said what he saw.
And he wasn’t wrong.
Then after Christmas I went back to keeping everything to myself and trying not to let in too much sadness. But even without tears, my son has seen my sadness for years—through what happened to my mom, through the losses I suffered in silence, through the burdens I thought I kept to myself.
Of course he felt it. Maybe in my demeanor or my energy, the heaviness of my face, the way I sometimes stared blankly, or the moments when he had to call my name several times before I came back. He often asked, “Are you okay, Mommy?” He knew there was something there.
This was the moment when I realized that there is no point in hiding my inner world if my children can already feel it without words.
Children are incredibly intuitive. Even if they don’t speak the language, they can feel what’s going on. They pick up on tension, sadness, distance, and tension long before anyone can explain it. When we act like everything is fine, they still sense that something is wrong.
What I began to understand was that they were left without context to make sense of what they were feeling. They might have assumed that my sadness had something to do with them or that they needed to fix something.
But when I started to give them enough truth – without injury dumping without carrying what was mine—they were better at not personalizing what they perceived. They understood that I had feelings, that those feelings were real and human, and that those feelings were not their fault.
I also began to see something else more clearly: my children have always seen me as strong, independent and capable, someone who gets things done and handles what needs to be handled. Because I didn’t let them see what I felt was weak, I never gave them the chance to know that I had feelings. My feelings matter too. Not just theirs.
As I began to share more and more of my inner world in age-appropriate ways, my children became more thoughtful and attentive. Not because they were responsible for me, but because they could understand me better.
What struck me the most was that I realized that what I felt as a child – that I was invisible – I repeated with my own children without knowing it. Not in the same form, but in a similar emotional pattern.
How could they really see me if I never let them know what was going on inside me? How could we have a real relationship if I just let them relate to my strength, competence, and composure while hiding the deeper parts of my inner world?
By 2026, something started to change, but not quickly and not by accident. It came after years of therapy and reflection, and I slowly learned how often I still repressed what I was feeling—suppressing it, swallowing it down, going into my bedroom to hide it, trying to regain my composure before anyone saw it. I gradually stopped this activity. I cried more freely. I let him see more.
My youngest son who autistic and they clung deeply to me, at first I did not know what to do, when I began to cry more often. A few months ago, as I was crying, he said, “I want you to feel better, but I don’t know how.”
I told her, “You don’t need to fix anything. Let me be me and let you be you. That’s the best gift we can give each other.”
After that, I felt that his clumsiness began to soften into acceptance.
A little later, when we landed in Houston after a trip to Canada, the tears started to fall again. I didn’t want to come back. I no longer feel that place as my home. My son put his arms around me and hugged me without saying a word as I cried.
After a few minutes I blew it out and said, “Thank you. I feel better now.”
But the moment I spent in the car stayed with me the most.
About a month later I he cried again while driving. A song came on the radio that reminded me of someone I missed and the sadness quickly lifted. She sat 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 take it out and I’ll be fine.”
Even then, I felt self-conscious. Part of me still fears that you might judge me.
Instead, he said something that completely shocked me.
“I wish I could cry like that,” she said. “You are strong.”
I laughed a little and said, “I understand, honey. We’ll end up crying again.”
I thought gently, but in that moment I also realized that he had learned the same lessons that so many boys learn at an early age—that tears are suppressed, feelings are bottled up, and crying is resisted. And I knew that he learned some of that from what his father and I modeled. It would take time to learn.
That moment stayed with me because it showed how differently he sees my tears than I see myself.
For most of my life, I equated crying with weakness. I thought being strong meant holding it all in, staying balanced, breaking through, and hiding the hard parts. But through my son’s eyes, I saw something else. He didn’t see my tears as a failure. He saw courage in them.
This moment opened another conversation between us. She said she couldn’t cry anymore. He said it always got stuck in his throat. He felt it, but it didn’t come out. She said the last time she really cried was when she was thirteen.
Then I thought about how much energy we put into not feeling what is already there.
For years, I thought being a good parent meant being steadfast. I thought it meant strength to prevent my children from seeing my grief, my sadness, my tenderness and my breaking points.
Now I think kids need honesty more than performance. They need to know that hard feelings can be felt without becoming dangerous, that sadness can permeate a room without becoming their responsibility, and that love doesn’t disappear when life gets hard.
I used to think that my tears made my children feel less safe.
What I know now is that if those tears are held back with honesty and care, they can teach us something powerful: that being fully human is not a weakness, and that connection often deepens the moment we stop pretending we don’t feel anything.
About Allison Briggs
Allison Jeanette Briggs is a therapist, author, and speaker who specializes in helping women recover from codependency, childhood trauma, and emotional neglect. She combines psychological insight with spiritual depth to guide clients and readers toward confidence, boundaries, and authentic connection. Allison is the author of the forthcoming memoir, On Being Real: Healing the Codependent Heart of a Woman, and shares her thoughts on healing, resilience, and inner freedom. on-being-real.com.
