When it is Not Safe to Cry

Amrum Island Summer Solstice Sunset

Disclaimer: This reflection is based on a deeply personal experience. I understand that grief is unique to each person, shaped by family history, culture, circumstance, and the many selves we carry within us. I do not offer this as a universal experience of grief, but rather as one story among many.

I grew up in a family that did not express grief. I didn’t understand it fully until adulthood. Looking back, I see that emotional expression, especially around loss, was never allowed. No one said, “Don’t cry,” but grief remained hidden, unspoken, and buried beneath survival.

I think much of this comes from my family history. For instance, my mother is Native American, and I often think about the grief she carried in her body. She was the first in her immediate family to leave Indigenous land and enter a world that required her to navigate whiteness in order to survive. There are losses embedded in that experience that I can only begin to imagine. The grief of leaving home, the grief of assimilation, the grief of masking parts of oneself. Much of it was never expressed outwardly. Instead, it seemed to settle into the body.

My father’s story carries a different but related thread. Similar to my mother's experience of loss, he was a first-generation American whose family came from Sicily. Love in his family was often expressed through physical abuse. There, too, was a story of displacement, migration, and survival. Looking back, I can see how both sides of my family carried grief that had very few places to go.

Throughout my life, grief was channeled through my art. Art became the container for emotions with nowhere else to go. At the same time, I became adept at supporting others through trauma and loss, often being present for grief when it wasn’t my own.

My own grief was another story.

As I’ve grown, I’ve slowly learned to process my own experiences, not just support others—especially after the accident that led to my traumatic brain injury.

A traumatic brain injury affects more than the brain—it alters your whole life. My experience was made harder by being in a foreign country, where I was unfamiliar with the medical system and culture. Vulnerability intensified amid the unknown.

What I remember most clearly is the realization that I was not safe.

I remember realizing I was not safe almost as soon as I woke from brain surgery. At first, crying was the only language I had. Tears showed fear, pain, confusion, and overwhelm. Yet I sensed my vulnerability was not being met with care. Whether true or not, my nervous system understood the situation as unsafe.

Quickly, I realized that tears were not a way to survive.

Writing this fills me with sadness. Crying is a natural response, but during that period, I focused only on surviving each day. I spent over two months in the hospital and took two and a half years after discharge to find a truly helpful doctor.

During those years, tears became complicated—sometimes useful, sometimes harmful. I constantly assessed the safety of expressing my feelings, so grief remained unexpressed, accumulating inside me.

This weekend, I am on the island of Amrum. There is something about being surrounded by water that makes me feel far away from everything. Although I am still in Germany, the island feels separate from the Germany I have come to know over the past seven years. It feels spacious. Quiet. Safe.

I don’t credit the island alone. Years of work—rebuilding, advocacy, and adapting to an altered body—have built my sense of safety gradually. Being here simply allowed something within me to open.

Yesterday, I cried for nearly seven hours—not quietly, but in uncontrollable, body-shaking sobs. Emotions flooded through me: grief for my former life, an unpredictable body, chronic pain, lost opportunities, vanished friendships, and the distance from Red Hook, Brooklyn, my truest home.

The strongest realization was this: I grieved not just my losses, but also the inability to grieve. My body chose survival, postponing grief until safety finally allowed it to surface.

As the world changes and more systems fail to care for us, I suspect grief will be more common. The question is not if, but when grief comes. Can we create the conditions that let it move through us?

This experience showed grief is not just an emotional response to loss. It’s deeply linked to safety. My body didn’t withhold grief because it was absent, but because it tried to protect me. Only when safety came could I feel what was waiting inside.

I know I’m not alone. Many cannot grieve safely. Some navigate failing medical systems. Others live in families that cannot hold emotional truth. Some carry the weight of displacement, poverty, discrimination, violence, illness, or caregiving. Many of us are just trying to survive.

If grief is a natural expression of our connection to life, love, and loss, then perhaps the deeper question is not how we grieve, but what makes grief possible. What does it mean to create conditions where grief is safe?