Pressing through tears

To share my personal story

Occasionally, the time, place, and situation align in a way that I just can’t stay silent—even if it means risking tears to share my thoughts.

Last week, the annual Management Communication Association conference was just such a moment. NYU hosted the event for the first time since 1987. The closing banquet was held in the Gardner Commons at the Stern School of Business. This room and the adjoining lobby have a special meaning for me, as both were dedicated to those lost during 9/11.

Further, that day I had just signed my new-hire paperwork to rejoin Stern as an adjunct. This meant returning to my MBA alma mater and the place where I started my career. Back in this setting, I found myself considering whether to share a particular story of mine. For a day, I hesitated but finally reached out to my colleagues who’d organized the event and asked if I could offer a few thoughts. They agreed.

We’d begun our meetings with an inspiring talk by Dolly Chugh, author of A More Just Future, inviting us to share our personal stories and bravely look back at our past as we work toward the future. With that as a backdrop, I led off the evening’s program as dessert was served.

I began by acknowledging the unique intersection of circumstances that placed me in the Gardner Commons that warm May evening. I then shared what it was like as a part-time MBA student and teaching assistant the moment the two planes crashed into the World Trade Center, less than a mile away, while we were unaware, two stories beneath the building. I spoke of how we came out of our class around 9:15 and began to piece together, as everybody did, the horror taking place in NYC, DC, and Pennsylvania. I recalled how I simply could not believe the provost’s email that afternoon announcing, “All students are safe.”

In the days that followed, my fellow MBAs and I organized a phone campaign to reach each of the 2,000 part-time students. It was then we learned that indeed not all students were safe—two of our peers who’d been in class Monday night were at their desks in the twin towers Tuesday morning and never made it out. These two students are the first names on the brass plaque in the lobby, along with fifty other recent alumni, friends, and family of our student body who perished that morning.

I choked back tears as I retold the story that brought us to the place where we gathered. But this story, my story, goes further. By Friday of that week, my employer at the time, a struggling startup providing e-learning to firms on Wall Street, had let me go. However, my unemployment turned into an opportunity when Stern allowed me to add two more classes that semester, allowing me to finish by December.

It was during that fall semester that I fell in love with being on a college campus and being at NYU. Through the work of my mentors, I was offered the chance to be an adjunct professor in the spring and ultimately accepted a full faculty appointment the following year. By the time I ended my origin story, my tears were gone and I was able to acknowledge some of the mentors who brought me into this career.

We may find ourselves in a similar situation, where the message we wish to share has
such an emotional charge that we’re just not sure we can make it through.
But we can.

Here are a few simple strategies to hold in mind if you face the opportunity to press through the tears:

1. Keep breathing—not just getting air, but breathing slowly and deeply from your diaphragm, to fuel yourself with deep, rich oxygen.

2. Pause and collect yourself—perhaps even stepping back from the mic for a moment. Your audience will provide you with the space you need to continue.

3. Don’t apologize—there’s nothing wrong with your tears. Neither try to underplay nor overplay them. Just let them become part of your narrative.

4. Trust yourself and your audience—tears are an authentic part of our lives, and your audience may very well lean in, despite your discomfort, to be with your journey.

5. Anchor your story—especially in how you begin and how you end, so the audience is not left with your tears but with your message.

I do want to acknowledge there is a gender bias that can make it more difficult for women to embrace the tears than I was able to do. I rewatched Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign event where she “welled up with tears” and found those tears to be nearly imperceptible—yet it was in the news for months (okay, now years) afterward. Many of us don’t believe a male politician, then or now, would have been so critiqued for the same “outburst.” If you’re concerned with the advice I offered above, explore Nina Bahadur’s piece in The New York Times, “How to Stop Yourself From Crying.” One tip she offers, that my husband Ken learned in the theatre, is to simply press your tongue against the roof of your mouth.

Countless times in the past, I’ve let my fear of “losing it” prevent me from
sharing something that might have made a difference for others.
Pressing through is a risk worth taking.

What have you not yet shared? Watch for the time, place, and situation where you can do so and see what unfolds for you and others.

JD’s Recommendations: what I’m reading, hearing, and seeing:

• Reading: I’m barely into Dolly Chugh’s book noted above but can recommend her monthly newsletter, Dear Good People, for tips on how to be the inclusive person you mean to be.

• Hearing: Doug Hattaway’s podcast, Achieve Great Things, NEVER disappoints. Recently, he interviewed Jessica Blank on the power of “documentary theatre.”

• Seeing: Since today’s topic was a bit heavy, lighten it up by watching Rener Gracie’s Shark Tank pitch for his patented Quickflip clothing line.

Thanks for enjoying my newsletter. I welcome your feedback and view it as a gift.

As always, jds

P.S. I’m delighted that we’ve begun to see registrations in our course through MEA, The Roadmap to Your Soul’s Expression. MEA provides full and partial scholarships to their programs, so come join me and Ken in Baja next month for a week you won’t soon forget.