#0073 🎶 It's Alright To Cry 🎶
Go ahead and feel the feels
After racing through speedruns (#0067) and defining some of the myriad ways rejections come to us (#0074), this week I want to pause to salute our feelings.
On the 1972 album Free To Be… You and Me, Roosevelt “Rosey” Grier sang “It’s Alright To Cry.” He was already famous from his years as a 6'5" tall nearly 300 lb. nimble-footed defensive tackle at Penn State and in the NFL, first for the Giants (1955–62) and then as part of the LA Rams’s Fearsome Foursome (1963–67).1
Rosey transitioned to acting2 and singing, doing needlepoint3 and macramé, becoming an ordained minister and writing books. He was a bodyguard for Robert Kennedy’s wife the night of Kennedy’s assassination (OMG what a story).4 One of his cousins is actress Pam Grier (or not?5).
You don’t need to bottle up your emotions about rejection:
It’s alright to cry
Crying gets the sad out of you…
Raindrops from your eyes
It's gonna make you feel better
As I’ve written about previously (#0018), our immediate emotional responses are fleeting:
Feelings are such real things
And they change and change and change…
It's alright to know
Feelings come and feelings go…
One of the many amazing things the Free To Be album did was flip societal expectations on its head.6 How many people then (or now, for that matter) would expect a big and tall Black man to sing:
It’s alright to cry, little boy
I know some big boys that cry too
Read all the lyrics7 and watch Rosy perform8 the song. He’s still alive and kicking, so get ready to wish him a happy 93rd birthday in July!
Speedrun Schedule
Create: February 2nd–8th
Revise: February 9th–15th
Submit: February 16th–22nd THIS WEEK
Embrace the Rejection: February 23rd–28th
Winter Speedrun Schedule
Create: February 2nd–15th
Revise: February 16th–March 1st START THIS WEEK*
Submit: March 2nd–15th
Embrace the Rejection: March 16th–31st
*Remember to research places to submit (if you didn’t in the first half of February) and revise to follow the guidelines.
Next time: How editors approach prose vs poetry (a two-parter)
Stats from Pro Football Reference.
Here’s the needlepoint story; buy it used and check out the cover!!
Rosey Grier in his own words on that night.
Most places say Rosey and Pam are cousins, but one source on her Wikipedia page says she denies it?
Songwriter: Carol Grisham Hall; lyrics © Ms Foundation For Women Inc.
Lipsync? And pretend to strum a guitar? But his smile is authentic!
I used to enjoy needlepoint and remember Grier doing it as a craft. My needlepoint teacher was an ex-Marine with a crew cut.