Nobody Tells Us What To Do When Women Cry

When a woman cries, she bleeds

Photo by Kingsley Osei-Abrah on Unsplash

I remember when I first saw my sister cry.

Viraj Court, Old Race Course. It was a tall building with a rooftop overlooking Nairobi from Pangani to the heart of Nairobi CBD. It was the same rooftop where I saw the billowing smoke of Nakumatt Downtown after its announcement as breaking news cut short an episode of Skunk Fu. Anything that interrupted my cartoons got no love from me. This time around, it was a sad incident. Many lives were lost inside the supermarket, but that’s not what brought tears to my sister’s eyes.

It was my small brother.

He was barely three, the male fraternal twin. When I walked into my mother’s bedroom, the same space where I too slept, I saw blood-stained clothes, floor, and bedsheets. Blood stained our evening.

It was my first incident with real blood. Not the cut you get when you scratch your finger across a loose end of a barbed wire fence. Not even the knife cut when cutting a pile of collard greens. It was frank, fresh, and crimson.

You could smell it.

I felt helpless. I hate feeling helpless. From early childhood, it was a feeling I detested in silence.

He coughed once again. I saw it jet from his nostrils and spill out of his mouth. It came out in clots. He looked lifeless occasionally being brought back to the world with every productive cough.

My mother called a taxi. I don’t remember who she left with. I don’t recall moving from the bedroom to the sitting room on the dining table's edge. I only recall my big sister holding her daughter and crying. Now I want to cry.

Teeming with a teenager's naivete, I barely knew how to react.

Nobody tells us what to do when women cry

Wrong reactions

It will be fine.

Will it? Is it some memorized comforting set of words we picked from Hollywood or will it genuinely be alright?

You know that off-the-tongue response you give when someone greets you ‘Hi’ and you reply with the same word? Or the persistent, conscious reminder to yourself not to respond ‘Happy birthday to you too’ when someone wishes you a merry one on your date of birth? The knee-jerk response to a woman crying is:

It will all be fine.

Worse:

Don’t cry.

Chased with the magic word — please. Please don’t cry.

Never in the history of humans being urged not to cry has anyone ever stopped crying.

Or maybe it’s because Bob Marley’s song is eternal. The same line, different tone, evoking different emotions:

Everything’s going to be alright

So we continue to sing:

No woman, no cry.

I used to think it was a warning to men not to find a woman. The older I grew, the more the meaning crystallized. Still, we never found a way to console a crying woman.

Do they need consolation?

Is there something Bob took to the grave that we don’t know? He didn’t simply tell women it would be fine. He wrote a song. A whole song. A classic song.

We’re not Bob Marley. How can we sing when a lady is in distress?

Jesus, the social maverick might have known how to respond. He allowed Mary Magdalene to wash his feet with her tears. She was bleeding. When a woman cries, she bleeds.

Too many tears I’ve seen. Too many times I’ve not found a way to respond to a crying woman when I am around one. I know what to do when a patient bleeds, but I am stumped when a woman cries.

All my reactions seem inefficient. They leave me feeling there’s more I could do but it ends there — a mere feeling.

A breakup. A father passes. A grandmother. A dog. Persistent hatred from a parent. Jobless after a million applications. Life.

You can’t dumb down the moment with a mere ‘everything will be alright’.

I’m no stranger to difficult conversations. Countless times in the ICU, I have had to break down bad news to families. Yet, every time, the conversation can be crushing. Like the dam waiting to break, they listen intently. Neither of them rests their backs on the bench. They are always on the edge of the seat. Your next choice of words is the final blow that cracks the dam open. Then the tears overflow in a harrowing cry. Wails can be heard across the hospital’s corridors.

After hearing about the death of their son or daughter, a mother forgets herself. She forgets where she is. Yet, her immediate reaction confirms it. She mourns the fruits of her womb.

Men can try to maintain a straight face. Some would want to hide their tears, but a woman…a woman gets to you. Her tears are like the teeth of a chainsaw ripping open emotions you never carried with you into the conference room.

Voices are hushed. Tears cloud the eyes and clouds cover the sun when a woman cries.

When a woman cries, the signal is crisp. When the cramps gnaw at her pelvis, tears make her question God. When Mary saw her son crucified before a multitude, her tears barely reflected the deep sadness she carried to her son’s feet. When you see your supervisor, mentor, and pillar of strength break down, you know you’re not invincible. You thought she was invincible until tears forged cracks on her face.

The almighty Thanos shed a tear when he dropped her daughter off the cliff for a rock. Tears streamed down her daughter, Gamora, as she tried to kill herself, but Thanos outwitted her. He was cursed with intelligence, yet he didn’t know how to respond.

I wish nobody ever gets to see their mother cry. I wish I never get to see my mother cry.

A woman’s tears are the unseen hands that tore the veil in two when Christ died. When a woman cries, she bleeds.

What I’m trying to say is…

The physics is baffling. When a woman cries her weight changes. So does yours. The heaviness sits squarely behind your sternum.

No matter how much you bench press, this weight can pull you down.

In the raised voice of a woman, there’s frustration with the occasional bitterness. In a woman’s fury, there’s hell. But from the tears of a woman, lies an abyss we’ll never fully comprehend. It’s as palpable as the thickness of a blackout in a city. It consumes as ravenously as a flesh-eating infection. It buries you in layers of untold pain and suffering.

Nobody tells us what to do when women cry.

Neither will I.

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This song inspired some of the lines used in this article. Source — YouTube