Emotional Generosity

This is a new term for me. I want to be emotionally generous and I want to be around emotionally generous people. I want to fall in love with someone who is emotionally generous.

But, what does this phrase mean?

Someone who is emotionally generous shares their feelings, with friends, family, and individuals. When you have hurt their feelings or offended them; they tell you. When you have made them angry; you know it. They are not afraid to compliment, acknowledge, listen, and empathize.

This is so different from the home I grew up in. This term is completely nonsensical in the context of my childhood. One was generous with tangible things. If you were rich, then maybe you were generous with money, clothing, or food. If you had running water, then maybe you were generous with it; giving beggars ice, or lemonade, or bathing your neighbor’s children. But emotions?


Praise was earned. If you got no praise, then you didn’t deserve it. Isn’t that simple? Love was an obligation and an entitlement. I had to love my father, mother, and brother; no matter what they did to me.


Of course I loved my father, even though he made me cry, beat my mother & brother, and terrified me. He took me to school everyday and berated my mother everyday. How could I do anything but love my mother, who spent most of her waking hours, during week and weekends, saving people’s lives and providing me with money. I got to spend that same time isolated in a house with my brother and father who rarely spoke to me and never to each other. I was in college before she got an eight hour work schedule and a junior in high school before she stopped working weekends.

Anger, that’s another topic entirely. Anger was always under the surface. It’s amazing I can’t ice skate because I certainly know what its like to be on thin ice. I walked on thin ice all the time and did not know the confidence and relief of being myself without someone exploding in rage, until I moved out of my parent’s home. To this day, I over apologize to all strangers and am the first to apologize to all friends.


How Do I see this playing out in society as a whole?
I listened to friends as they justified the following hypothesis: Teenagers and young people have been over praised. Teachers and coaches (not parents mind you in this example) are so eager to build confidence that they praise small if not insignificant achievements. This leads them to expect recognition and praise in the work world and how terrible is that! (lol)

I take the opposite position: my generation, particularly adults who were abused as children, were raised with emotionally withholding or emotionally repressed parents. My parents were not that in touch with their emotions. More powerfully, my grandparents and parents alike all encouraged me to suppress or dismiss my emotions. If I cried, I would be threatened with a beating. When my Dad made me cry, he then bought me candy or pastries. (Now I credit this to him as a loving act.) When I got angry with my Mom or tried to hold her accountable, she would become hysterical: making me feel guilty for feeling anything but pity or unconditional love. So I became overweight and was not conscious of any anger towards my Mom until I was 28; heavily medicated and in intensive therapy. (ohyeah.)