‘Cause I’m a real tough kid, I can handle my shit
They said, “Babe, you gotta fake it ’til you make it” and I did
Lights, camera, bitch smile, even when you wanna die…
He said he’d love me all his life
But that life was too short, breaking down, I hit the floor
All the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was chanting, “More!”
I was grinning like I’m winning, I was hitting my marks
‘Cause I can do it with a broken heart.
~Taylor Swift, I Can Do It With a Broken Heart
With I Can Do It With a Broken Heart, Taylor Swift has written the greatest female anthem since Whitney Houston’s I’m Every Woman. It’s a dance bop filled with painful relatability, begging us to get up and cry-dance along.
I recently rewatched the Eras Tour movie (closest I’m gonna get to seeing it after our Tennessee Tornado experience, waaaaaaah). The mother in me wants to hug that sweet girl on stage, now that we know she was performing through heartbreak after two messy break-ups. “I’m so depressed I act like it’s my birthday! Every day!” she sings. “I’m miserable! And no one even knows!”
As my readers now know, my daughter has OCD, GAD, and ADHD, a truly fun alphabet soup of mental health diagnoses. During what my family calls the Dark Time, she was put on a medication that made her violent and suicidal. She eventually had to be hospitalized for her own safety. For a week, she lived in a locked psych ward, hours of endless therapy, meds, and screaming. It was as terrifying as it sounds.
And no one other than my closest friends and family had any idea. The week she was gone, I taught 17 yoga classes. If you attended one of those classes, you might have thought I looked more tired than usual. But you certainly didn’t know what I was dealing with. I smiled and joked, and my students left relaxed and happy. My job is mainly being a cheerleader for others, and I do it well.
Once I actually started talking about the Dark Time, I was inundated with stories from other women about their own proverbial dark night of the soul. Every woman I personally know has played through debilitating pain of some sort, all of us carrying weight that few others see. We all have crazy families, grief, or money issues. We’ve had miscarriages and abortions and divorces and menopausal rage and bankruptcies and addictions, have all been touched in some by death or trauma.
And even the most astute of us rarely see all the ways our fellow sisters are drowning.
Because, as women, we are so, so good at smiling through the sadness.
I grew up in a time where boys were told it’s not masculine to show emotions. While women might be societally portrayed as the “more emotional ones,” it’s been my experience that they are also the ones generally carrying the heaviest physical and emotional loads. As Taylor croons,“I cry a lot but I am so productive … it’s an art,” the lyrics in juxtaposition to the fun, upbeat tempo.
Women cry a lot, but we do so privately, in the shower, or on the couch with our most trusted girlfriends.
Then we dust ourselves off and drive the kids to soccer.
We dry our tears and cook dinner.
We take a long, deep breath and send that email.
We throw down some antibiotics and go to work anyway.
We hurt, but we get shit done.
Yet I have never felt more seen and less alone than when my fellow sisters shared their own stories of heartbreak. Me Too is powerful medicine. If we have to play through the pain anyway, we may as well start being more honest with all the ways it’s hard.