I respect men who cry. For many years I never saw my father cry. He grew up in a society where real men didn’t cry – ever. I resented him for it. No, let’s be honest, I hated him for it.

Unable or unwilling to accept the vulnerability of expressing healthy emotion through tears made him an angry tyrant. He raged, snorted, and slammed around like a bull in a delicate china shop of two little girls and a scared wife.

“You’re too emotional,” he coldly said as tears streamed down my face at the cruel and horrific scenes of baby harp seals being beaten to death and the close up, slow motion images of prairie dogs being blown to smithereens in the documentaries my father watched on television in the 1960s.

Our big golden lab, Caesar, was terrified during a storm. He threw himself against the garage door or cowered in his doghouse and made pitiful sounds. It broke my heart to see him afraid. I understand how it felt to be frightened, with nowhere to hide and no one to comfort him. But my father threatened the belt if I let the pitiful dog into the garage or even went outside to be with him.

Once my father dragged me out of the shower because my mother had breakfast on the table and he thought I was taking too long. Later that day picking me up from school where I spent the entire day crying, “You’re too emotional” again felt like daggers into my heart.

My father stormed through life not giving a damn about the emotions of other living things. His temper tantrums, sarcastic remarks, and drunken hecklings at my youth softball games further confirmed he was a cold, cruel, uncontrolled, and unfeeling man.

Then one beautiful crisp autumn day all that changed – for good.  My father was hunting and knew he had fatally wounded a deer but could not find it.  Regardless of what an asshole he was to me, my sister, our mother, harp seals, prairie dogs, and our dog, he was a responsible hunter always using what he took from the natural world. It went against his values to just leave the deer so he searched for hours and hours without success. My father was so exhausted and upset he sat down on a log, buried his head in his hands and sobbed. I believe for the first time ever, or at least in many, many years.

We never know what life-event holds the potential to shake us to the core of our being.  The frustration and helplessness of killing that poor deer and not being able to find it cracked my father’s heart wide open. Years of stuffed emotion came pouring out and through the deer’s death my father was reborn.

From that day forward my dad has been a new man – one who does not hold back tears of sadness, joy or pain. He has a new-found respect and kindness for the natural world and all that call it home. My father is no longer concerned with what “real men” are supposed to do. He knows it takes Super-Men to accept that being gentle enough to express healthy emotion through tears is one of the strongest things they do.