Most men never saw their fathers cry, which limits their own emotional range.

A narrow emotional range is not natural. It is an inherited script that can be changed.

Crying is energy in motion. Block it, and it leaks as aggression, numbness, or addiction.

Showing your children how to cry is a relational inheritance, not a sign of weakness.

Co-authored by Galit Romanelli

I only remember it once.

I was in middle school in Skokie, Illinois. My dad was talking about his work. He was talking about the immigration of the Ethiopian Jews to Israel, something he was so passionate about that, mid-sentence, he started crying. I remember being so embarrassed. I didn't know what to do with it. That was the only time I remember seeing my father cry.

Years later, I asked him about it. He told me there was another time, when I was a kid, that I had come into the kitchen and seen him crying. He was thinking about his mother. I had asked him what was happening. I don't remember that moment at all. I guess I didn't recognize what that moment actually was.

He told me he had never really seen his own father cry, my grandfather. He thinks he heard him once, from another room, after his grandmother died.

Three generations of men. Almost no tears.

In the clinic, one of the questions I ask every man is the same question.

Did you ever see your father cry?

Did you ever see your father cry?

I ask it because........

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