Crying doesn't make you weak and smiling doesn't mean you're strong. I'll let that sink in for a minute.
I've always been considered a weak link in my family because I'm emotional. I cry when I'm happy, I cry when I'm sad, I cry when I'm angry, shit, sometimes I even cry when I'm hungry and I give no f*cks about how anyone feels about it because I know what happens when I don't.
Like a shaken-up bottle of my favorite carbonated drink, I explode all over everyone and everything around me, and I know I'm not alone in that feeling. It's my general opinion that people who don't cry are stressed TF out, and on the latest episode of Red Table Talk, Jada Pinkett Smith revealed that she can totally relate to the struggle.
As children, we are taught that big girls don't cry and quite frankly, neither do grown-ass women. While in theory, this mantra sounds good, it's unrealistic and problematic AF. On what Jada calls one of the most important episodes in RTT history, she explained that she only came to this realization after having an intimate encounter with her daughter.
"Willow had a moment not too long ago, when you had that upset and you were crying on the couch and I just came to you and held you and I said to myself, 'I wish I had done this more to her.' When you can just hold your little girl, have her tears, have her pain."
Jada explained that her lack of vulnerability as a mother could likely be attributed to her upbringing, which touted a strong belief in self-reliance and a false sense of strength:
"Back in the day if I would be crying or have an upset, the energy was always like, take that somewhere else and deal with it on your own. That's how I was treating myself, I didn't want to be with my own feelings."
The 48-year-old mother of three said that because she believed that a mother's first lesson to her child should be strength, after long, she developed a toxic cycle of avoidance that wound up damaging her relationship with her daughter in the long run. In an intimate moment, Jada took the opportunity to apologize to her daughter for her shortcomings:
"There's this wall, this armor and I was thinking about how it does a disservice to everybody we love, including ourselves. I want to just take a moment and say to you, I'm sorry."
Self-awareness is a superpower, one that can help you to mend even some of the most broken relationships in your life, and Jada agrees that this statement is big facts. Although in the past, Jada saw her daughter's tears as "offensive" she now recognizes that they were necessary.
"There was a time when her tears were so offensive to me, so offensive. I was like, 'Take that over there, we can't afford that here.' Not realizing, 'Bitch, you can afford that here. You're not in Baltimore anymore, okay? You absolutely can afford it here.'"
Check out the full episode below!
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