yesterday evening my baby girl was supposed to spend the night with her dad and stepmom. when she told me about her best friend's mom dying, she didn't want to go.

no problem. her stepmom works at her mom's restaurant, practically next door to where we live, so i swung by there to tell her what was going on.

again, no problem. she totally understood.

however, we were obviously in a great deal of tears about the death. her stepmom kept telling me i had to be strong for baby girl, i had to stop crying and pull myself together.

i WAS together, i was just heartbroken and crying, and i still am. to me, it's perfectly natural to cry about such a thing. BG and i talked about how that was so, and about how, if you didn't cry about such a thing, that something would be kind of wrong.

why did stepmom keep telling me to stop crying? i don't see crying as a sign of weakness. i love to cry, and i do it a lot. it's a release, and to my way of thinking, a sign of strength that you can be brave enough to shed the tears and not care what anyone thinks of it.

a guy friend and i were talking about tears, and he said he couldn't remember the last time he cried. i said how sad, and he said how his dad told him that "men don't cry". bullshit. i think crying for someone else's joy or pain is a very giving thing, like giving away a part of yourself. a very honest emotion, one that is very difficult for me to contain. then again, maybe i'm just an emotional person in general. i know i am, and i don't have a problem with that. the laughter and giggles come as easily as the tears.

but maybe i'm in the minority here?