Cry first, then keep a stiff upper lip

Chris and I were talking about someone we both love and admire.  She can come across as stoic.  She's had many great misfortunes in her life.  But in every case, people don't see her grieve much.  She pulls herself together quickly, puts on a stiff upper lip, and gets back to fulfilling her duties to friends and family.  She's quick to say, "I need to move on, put one foot in front of the other, and get back to doing what I was meant to do in life."  She also would challenge her loved ones, when they experienced misfortune, "Get yourself together because your kids (or friends or others) need you."

The popular notion is that being stoic like this is not healthy.  All too often, people who are stoic move on too quickly from grief.  They don't process their feelings.  They "move on" to "move away"--away from their intense feelings, afraid of their intensity, unwilling to face them.  And, in doing so, they leave issues unresolved.  Ironically, by "moving on" too quickly, they can never leave.

But is this woman Chris and I admire really like that?  In our hearts, we know she is not.  We know that she feels deeply and faces her grief with courage.  She has the best kind of stoicism, the best kind of "stiff upper lip".  We feel that she has mastered the art of facing her grief honestly, deeply, and quickly so that she can pull herself together quickly and get back to serving her mission in life.  She cries first, then puts on a stiff upper lip.

I'm reminded of my favorite passage from Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson.  Morrie Schwartz was the author's professor back in college.  Morrie was dying of Lou Gehrig's disease.  The author, Mitch Albom, spent fourteen Tuesdays with Morrie before Morrie died.  In this time, Morrie taught Mitch how to live.  My favorite passage in the book describes how a person can fully experience grief or any other intense feeling, and by fully letting themselves go with it, they can then detach themselves.  They can then move on with a stiff upper lip.  On the sixth Tuesday, Morrie says:

"Take any emotion--love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I'm going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness.  If you hold back on the emotions--if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them--you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief.  You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.

 But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head, you experience them fully and completely.  You know what pain is.  You know what love is.  You know what grief is.  And only then can you say, 'All right.  I have experienced that emotion.  I recognize that emotion.  Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment."

This is the secret.  This is how the woman that Chris and I love and admire manages to move on quickly.  This is how she can have a huge heart and be stoic at the same time, how she can move on quickly and get back to living.