Stop Trying to Fix Me. Just Sit With Me.
Let’s just cry together until we both laugh, ok?
When I was 7, my grandma died. The adults around me? They panicked. They tried to "fix" my grief like a broken toy. They wanted me to be quiet, to be hidden, to be *okay*.
They failed because they thought love meant preventing pain. It doesn’t.
I remember sitting in the car with my dad, sobbing uncontrollably because my crying was too "much" for the funeral home.
He didn’t tell me to hush. He didn’t try to logic me out of my feelings.
Instead, he started making car engine noises—*pitt putt putt putt, aha aha*—teasing me about how I sounded just like his old, beat-up van that kept breaking down on the side of the road.
It wasn't mean. It was his way of saying, *I see you, and this is a mess, and we’re in this clunker of a life together.*
For the first time in days, I laughed.
To this day, some 37 years later, as soon as I hear myself making that car noise when I’m crying, I start to laugh.
I always laugh when I cry.
This memory of my Dad - a happy one during a sad time - is why I always laugh when I cry—there’s something about humor as a coping mechanism that my family taught me, even when we’re all a bit crazy.
Doctors and therapists think this is me being “manic” when it happens at the psych ward, but it’s really just my natural baseline of self soothing and coping. Not one therapist has ever asked my “why are you laughing?” It’s always the other patients locked up there with me that “get it”.
Some of the best times of my life have been those moments: crying uncontrollably with someone else until we’re both laughing at the end. That transition from total collapse to shared, hysterical relief is pure connection.
True love is just showing up when the world is burning. It’s sitting in the dirt with a kid who is crying and saying, "I’m here. This is awful. You don’t have to be anything but exactly what you are right now."
That’s why I’m a S.O.F.U. member. We’re done with the "fix-it" culture. We’re here for the real, the messy, and the beautifully human—this is why I look for something funny anytime it hurts.
#SocietyOfTheFuckUps #RadicalAcceptance #BeRealNotPerfect