Thinking About Free to Be You and Me and It's Alright to Cry

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Kate Shields Stenzinger, I'm her husband, recently shared with me that Free to Be You and Me wasn't really a thing in her elementary school and my jaw dropped. Songs like William Wants a Doll, the title song Free to Be You and Me, and the big one that stuck with me is Rosy Grier's It's Alright to Cry all stand out so much in my memory of elementary school.

I totally giggled watching Rosy Grier singing about crying. But inside I knew he was on to something. I knew crying made me feel better. "Crying gets the sad out of you" he'd say and so many of the boys especially would push back. No way. Their words reminded me of many of the older boys and adult men in my life. Crying means you have some kind of weakness they'd insist with harsh words or worse. It helped to hear that song and know it was this big tough football player singing it.

Fast forward to my practice of learning and practicing design, human factors, learning bits of psychology. Feelings are a big part of our individual and collective human experience.

But then I still see folks not so into the idea of connecting with feelings. Like they're optional to be purposeful caring and understanding of. People can have different levels of health, privilege, neural circumstance. But overall walling-off and disconnecting from feelings doesn't lead to healthy outcomes personally or professionally. Take this knock-knock joke for example:

A: Knock-knock!

B: Who's There?

A: Feelings!

B: Feelings Who?

A: Never mind, I'll burst out and surprise you later.

I'm so grateful for this song and album and it was very counter to the culture of so much of what I was experiencing as a young kid. Free to Be You and Me was part of our curriculum in a few ways and I feel it made a difference. Even at times when the songs made me giggle due to topics being uncomfortable, that's a wonderful thing.

I wonder what kind of Free to Be You and Me would and could be made now? It was especially about accepting a wider definition of what it means to be a boy, man, girl, and woman. It was 48 years ago and the strong feminist message was progressive for the time. Yet now we're learning more about wider definitions of identity, experience, and inclusion. What kind of joyful accepting musical storytelling would it be?