See a Grown Man Cry

People are making fun of U.S. House Speaker John Boehner because of his penchant for crying. He did it yesterday during Pope Francis’ visit, and today when he announced plans to retire. But I think his public displays of emotion are courageous.

A lot of guys suck at crying. I’m no exception. I’ve always envied men who can do it in public.

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I’ve never been the weepy type. To do so, in my mind, meant being weak. Tears meant embarrassment. Tears are for girls, I always told myself. I opted for the stiff upper lip during times of pain and trauma.

To this day I can be an emotionally closed-off person. I probably get it from my father. He was one of the most loving guys I knew, but he always had a tough time showing his emotion. I saw him cry once in the last 45 years: when my brother died.

When my brother died, I pretended to cry. Crying was expected in a situation like that. I made the crying noises. I made myself tremble. But it was an act. I felt the same degree of pain as everyone else over what happened, but the storm swirled deep inside me instead of on the surface.

It was the same when my best friend died. That one hit me like a bullet to the chest and fueled some of my most self-destructive, angry behavior in the years to come. But I never actually cried. That’s probably part of the reason I acted out in those other, uglier ways. The day he died, I remember going to his parents’ house, two doors down from where I grew up. I sat at their dining room table, wide eyed. I was trying to make myself cry. But it didn’t happen.

I have been able to let the tears loose a couple times. Both times, it was because I had done something to hurt my wife. Only she got to see it, though, and I walked around embarrassed for days after.

One year, I was on team for a men’s Cursillo weekend. I won’t tell you what was said there, but when people start exploring their faith and where they have been in life, a lot of sobbing results. I saw a lot of tough guys cry.

Twice that weekend I came close. But it didn’t come.

The idea of it still strikes me as too unmanly.

But I think the inability to cry has helped fuel some of my worst moments as a human being. I took my pain out on other people and I tried very hard to destroy myself.

Luckily, I had people around me who loved me enough to put up with it and, ultimately, give me the help I needed.

So one of the things on my to-do list is learning to let the tears out.

When I have a breakthrough, I’ll let you know.

Or, maybe I won’t.

Meantime, cut Mr. Speaker some slack.

John Boehner Crying

The Only Way Out Of The Fog Is Through It

We all go through it: Something upsets us so much that we go into a fog; unable to function when we’re still required to do so. It rises up like a brick wall.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/-9aPRQdidO4

We smash into it a few too many times and go through the rest of the day dazed and confused. It’s a natural reaction to life’s more stressful and traumatic moments.

If a loved one is sick or dead, or you get into a huge fight with your spouse, or you just discover you’ve been robbed, the feeling hits you.

But what do you do when that feeling clings to you every day like a wet, filthy rag?

I’ve been there many times. It used to cripple me every day. It’s no longer a daily thing, but it still gets me on occasion.

Monday was one of those days; let’s just say it was driven by guilt.

But here’s the difference between now and the old days:

It didn’t incapacitate me and leave me lying half dead on the couch like it used to. I didn’t check out of the hotel of reality. I may have wanted to, but I didn’t.

I felt every bad feeling and it did stick in my brain all day like a splinter. But somehow, I was able to make it through the day. I got my work done, I got chores done and I was even able to focus on the not-always-easy task of helping Duncan do his homework.

I can point to a lot of things that make the difference today:

Medication to control my OCD, ADD and the depression that comes with it;

–Regular visits to the therapist to get things off my chest; and

–An eating program devoid of flour and sugar. When I’m not sinking under the weight of a food binge, my thinking is clearer.

I don’t think it’s possible to avoid the fog altogether. Life is too unpredictable and dramatic for that. Sometimes the stresses get the better of you and you lose sight of everything around you. It’s a very shitty place to be.

But there is a positive in this: If you never felt the fog, it would mean you didn’t care about anything or anyone.

You would see clearly and keep walking, but the destination would always be some selfish pursuit.

Some of this may sound a bit hyperbolic. I use some fancy language along the way to explain it.

But that’s how my brain rolls this morning.

Heartsign,” by EddieTheYeti

Heartsign_by_EddieTheYeti

God Bless Cousin Melanie

I’ve always looked up to my cousin Melanie Segal. She’s been through a medical grind that would make a lot of people understandably bitter. But that’s not how she operates.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/MhtednkzJl4

Through kidney and liver problems, she has lived her life with smiles, grace and good humor. Not once have I heard her complain about her medical difficulties. You never see her on Facebook complaining about her lot in life, either. In fact, I’ve seen her on there telling others to work harder at seeing the rainbows through the clouds.

She’s a rock in a family that’s been through a lot. You want to see courage? Look her way. And when you’re having a shitty day and feel like telling the world how much life sucks, think of her and you’ll realize just how petty you can be.

Sunday, she got a new kidney. The transplant procedure was a success, but she has a long road of recovery ahead. I know she’ll meet the challenge with the same grit and grace we all love and admire about her.

Please keep her in your prayers.

Melanie Segal

Homeless Veterans and American Hypocrisy

The band Five Finger Death Punch has a new video for the song “Wrong Side of Heaven,” which focuses on the plight of homeless veterans. It struck a chord with me.

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I’m not a veteran, but I have scores of friends and colleagues who are. They are respected and thriving. But there are many who aren’t so lucky.

The plight of homeless veterans is an old story, and it highlights American hypocrisy. We have holidays honoring our vets, and when we see veterans we thank them for their service — especially those who served in the second World War.

But when we see homeless people — many of whom fought in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan — we treat them like vermin.

We let so many of them live on the streets, without proper shelter or medication for the mental illnesses they caught from watching comrades get ripped apart on the battlefield.

We look down at these vets every day as lazy, crazy, smelly vermin who prowl the streets scaring our children. We have no idea of what they’ve been through to get so scarred, and a lot of us don’t really care, even if we say we do.

This video nails that reality.

We can do better.

Worn and torn American flag

9/11 Lessons: We Rise Again

As we take time to remember those we lost on Sept. 11, 2001, let’s also remember what we’ve held onto.

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As the years have passed, I’ve found myself comparing the terrorist attacks to the personal demons we all deal with at various points in our lives.

Many of us have fears, regrets, dreams and nightmares. Like terrorists who threaten to blow up buildings and people, our personal demons threaten to destroy us. But as I’ve learned from my own experiences, we don’t have to let the evil win.

One thing that has inspired me since 9/11 is the way New Yorkers have gone on with their lives. I’ve been to Lower Manhattan many times and seen people doing so even as they walk past what we used to call Ground Zero. The first time I saw that I was angry, because people seemed to be passing hallowed ground without a care in the world. I’ve since come to see it as a sign of strength.

Terrorists can destroy buildings and take lives. But they can’t keep us down for long.

The WTC site now includes a museum commemorating that terrible day, as well as a memorial built around the footprints of the Twin Towers. There’s also 1 WTC, which is now the tallest building in America. I’ve seen it at various stages of construction.

Bill Brenner at 1 World Trade Center

I see it as a symbol of how we manage to face our adversity and rise up.

For years after 9/11, I was terrified of flying. I eventually got back on planes, and today I love to fly. A couple years ago, I even took a flight on 9/11.

I rose.

Before my current job, I worked for Akamai, a company co-founded by Danny Lewin, who died that day aboard American Airlines Flight 11, the plane that struck the North Tower of the WTC. The company was struggling at the time of his death, caught up in the dot-com bust of the early 2000s. He always said the company would make it because its people are “tenacious as hell.”

He was right. His company ultimately rose from the depths and is a powerhouse today. Many entities and individuals have risen in similar fashion.

We rise after awful events like 9/11. We rise after sickness, loss and the mental-physical maladies that threaten to ruin us. Not everyone makes it. But enough do to fill me with a hope that will never dim.

Take time to remember the dead today. Watch some of the 9/11 documentaries on YouTube, because they’ll remind you that people who didn’t make it that day conducted themselves with honor and saved others.

Then rise up and carry on.

one world trade center aerial shot

5 Things I’ve Done That Scare Me

A while back I wrote a post celebrating Eleanor Roosevelt’s call to “do something every day that scares you.” Rereading that post recently, I realized I forgot something important.

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I forgot to mention how I’m living that advice and not simply parroting it to be cool. If this blog is to mean anything, I have to lead by example, though not in the ways you may be thinking of.

I’m not about to skydive from an airplane, though some day I just might. I’m not going to ride a wild horse, though that might be a neat exercise in facing fear. But not today.

Instead, I’ve been doing the more mundane things that scare me all the same. To some people they may seem like trivial accomplishments. But to me they’re significant, because I faced down fear.

  1. During DEF CON last month, I waited in big lines and walked with big crowds despite both being major OCD triggers. I managed just fine.
  2. Despite swearing I’d never take Prednisone again, I took a leap of faith and accepted the prescription to cool a battered back.
  3. Despite that back pain, I managed to drive a hitched trailer home from an already painful camping trip. I’m always nervous driving the truck when the camper is attached. Doing it in pain was a rougher deal. But I couldn’t think of a reason not to. I was going to be in pain anyway.
  4. Despite huge fears of not measuring up at work, I postponed an important video shoot so I could put my health back in order. That was scary as hell, because I had thrown a lot of time and energy into meeting a deadline.
  5. I agreed to be a trustee for my father’s realty trust, opening me up to financial tasks and decision making that are way outside my comfort zone.

Again, seemingly small actions. But these are the things that scare me, and I didn’t run away.

Tarantula walking in man's hands

Support for Janessa Gordon

I’ve been following the story of 18-year-old Janessa Gordon’s hospitalization after a car wreck. I don’t know her personally, though I am acquainted with her mom, Kimberly Lepito, via Facebook.

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I feel some connection with the young woman because she attended Northeast Metropolitan Technical High School in Wakefield, which I graduated from 25 years ago. Unfortunately, she was unable to attend her graduation last week because of injuries she sustained during the accident in Rangeley, Maine.

She was in Maine with about 20 classmates attending a pre-graduation celebration and was a front-seat passenger in a car that crashed. According to news reports, the driver lost control while trying to pass another vehicle at 90 miles per hour.

My prayers go out to Janessa and her family during this difficult time. If you’re a praying person, please add your prayers too.

Medical costs will surely be crushing. You can help by donating to an account at gofundme.com, set up by family friend Darla Casey-Smith a couple days after the accident. Updates on Janessa’s condition are posted regularly. Donations can also be sent to Blessings for Janessa Gordon, c/o Eastern Bank, 72 Loring Ave. Salem, MA 01970.

Janessa Gordon

To the Coward with the Cell Phone

In Tuesday’s post, I criticized a mother for giving in to her child’s spoiled tirade and whining about the legal ramifications. But there’s another irritant in this story: the anonymous bystander who video recorded the mother leaving her child in the car with a cell phone and then sent it to police.

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Yeah, Kim Brook’s essay irritated me. The worst wasn’t her leaving the kid in the car or her failure to lay down the law. It was her defensive drivel, which lacked any kind of lesson readers could benefit from.

But I don’t blame her one bit for wishing that bystander had approached her instead of quietly recording her failure and dropping a dime. Maybe that person thought they were being a responsible citizen. But the act was cowardly.

To stand in the shadows recording someone is pathetic at best. It would be understandable if the bystander were recording a mob hit or an act of political corruption. Getting caught could lead to bodily harm in those circumstances. But in this case the bystander was recording an unarmed woman. If leaving the kid in the car was such a reprehensible act in this person’s opinion, the better, more courageous thing to do would have been to get in Brook’s face and tell her she was an idiot for endangering her child that way.

Chances are Brooks would have been mortified by her own behavior and I doubt she’d ever leave her son in the car again after that.

It would have been the best possible outcome.

Whoever the bystander is, I hope they feel like shit for:

  • Being too much of a chicken shit to confront Brooks directly.
  • Setting a legal process in motion that cost a lot of people time, money and emotional well-being. Brooks was stupid, but the punishment was way over the top. She caved and had a moment of bad judgement, but she’s not a child abuser by all outward appearances.
  • Bringing Brooks to a state of mind where she felt the need to defend herself in a column that was torture for the reader.

This whole affair illustrates how outrageously unreasonable our society has become.

Cell phone screen that says Big Brother is watching you

Eleanor Roosevelt Was a Badass

I’ve always admired Eleanor Roosevelt. She defied the society of her day and forged a new path for women. She was a tireless fighter for the disadvantaged. During WWII, she traveled to the front to visit the troops, despite the danger. She was an early fighter for civil rights. One of her most famous quotes was to do something every day that scares you.

The older she got, the more badass she became.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/ede2_tuZJp8

In the 1950s, when she was in her late 60s and early 70s, she insisted on driving around the country to promote her various causes. The Secret Service freaked. A former First Lady was a tempting target, especially given her support of civil rights. That made driving around the South particularly perilous.

As a compromise, she agreed to pack a pistol.

I remember learning about that during a visit to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, N.Y. But I had forgotten about it until Slate published a picture of her firearms license.

She didn’t let danger stop her, and she certainly didn’t let her age or sex stop her.

Have a look, and be inspired.

Eleanor Roosevelt's pistol license

Cancer: Faces of Bravery, Faces of Fear

The photos tell the tale clearly. Beth Whaanga, mother of four, has been through hell. She has the scars to prove it. And when she decided to show the world, people on Facebook unfriended her.

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Whaanga has been in a long and brutal battle against cancer. Multiple surgeries have left her body mangled, though when fully clothed, the scars are hidden. She chose to reveal those scars in a photo series called “Under the Red Dress.” According to The Huffington Post, she lost 103 Facebook friends over it.

“When Beth posted these images on Facebook, 103 of them UNFRIENDED her immediately,” columnist Rebecca Sparrow wrote. “Some felt the images were inappropriate or even pornographic.”

Some say the people who did so are jerks, uptight prudes who prefer that life’s unfair twists remain hidden from view.

I prefer to think that they just acted on fear. They see the danger to their own lives and those of their loved ones in the photos. The first thing most people do in the face of fear is turn and run away. We’ve all done that. I certainly have. The hope is that over time we learn to turn back and face the fear. In time, I think at least some of them will.

What Whaanga did was brave and beautiful. She shows us that despite the damage she suffered, life goes on. She continues to live and love.

I know too many people with cancer. Some are distant friends, some are in my immediate family. They’ve shown bravery in the face of cancer in their own ways, but I hope Whaanga’s photos offer them additional inspiration and hope.

red dress