i once accidentally made my grandma cry

family trees & remembering feelings aren't scary

welcome to brb crying, a weekly newsletter where two thirty-something teenagers talk about what made them cry. laugh along as we dive into what moves us to tears (movies! books! personal stories! tbh anything is fair game!) and why crying helps us connect with ourselves and each other. check out the pod for more.

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💌 dear diary reader: a love note from arns

the year is 2017, and i am overcome with a sudden urge to construct a family tree.

it’s 9:00pm on a weeknight, and in my frantic state, i do the only thing that makes sense: text my weirdly tech-savvy grandmother and pepper her with question after question about our lineage.

overwhelmed (annoyed?) by my onslaught of questions at such an ungodly hour, she calls me instead…and from there, she delivers an oral history via phone that i frantically jot down in my notes app.

my grandma gives me all the details. some disappointing (so many accountants), some standard (why did everyone have 13 kids????), some mysterious (an anting anting—or magical amulet—once ran in our family, never to be seen again).

then i ask about her mother, whom she’d lost at a young age.

at this point, my grandma is nearly 80 years old…but her voice catches as she whispers, “i miss her so much.”

there’s something disarming about hearing an elderly person weep, especially as they anguish over someone who’s been gone for 60 years. do we ever stop missing our loved ones? or do our chests forevermore harbor that familiar ache, and we just learn to live alongside it?

i’d never heard her cry before then, and i haven’t heard her cry since. i think in that moment—even after all those years—the pain was just so acute. she was awash in grief, fourteen and fresh-faced once more while she cried and cried and cried to me over the phone…first loudly, then softly, softly, softly.

did i ever construct that family tree? of course not. but that late night phone call was a moment i will hold in my heart for the rest of my life. my lola irene was there with us that evening, too—my mother’s mother’s mother.

this halloween and day of the dead, may we give ourselves space—not only to honor those who have left this plane of existence, but also to honor the grief we still feel, the ache in our chest, when we call upon them.

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🍯 short n sweet

📺 WATCH: “Halmeoni” by Kevin Kim
in this short film, a korean child forgets her mother tongue and, upon her return home, struggles to tell her grandmother how much she missed her. when words fail us, we must trust that our love shines through.

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🔥 slow burn

🎸 SING ALONG: Coco
honestly…………need we say more?

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👹 MERCH MERCH MERCH

👕 SHIRTS
our kurated kultura x brb crying crying is self-care shirts are almost sold out :’) get yours before we never ever ever have them in stock ever again (ever!!).

🧢 HATS
these are sold out, too—but never fear, the reorder is almost here. if you’re on the hat waitlist, you’ll hear as soon as they’re live on the site.

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🎧 pod drop

for this week’s halloween special, not only did we get spoOoOoky…we did it in costume.

some highlights from ep 017: moth bawls / casper the lonely ghost…

✨ NINS REMINDS US: KIDS CAN HANDLE MORE THAN WE THINK
do kids really struggle with death? or are we just “protecting” them from what we ourselves can’t handle? nins listens to “the house of mourning” by kate braestrup on the moth and reminds us of some hard truths.

“we cradle children so carefully, and we try to protect them from all these things that we adults are so scared of. ‘oh, they can’t handle that.’ ‘oh, that’s too much.’ newsflash, babe: that’s called projection.”

✨ ARNS UGLY CRIES OVER CASPER
casper: ”kat?”
kat: “mhmm…”
casper: “…can I keep you?”

GOODBYE.

that’s it. that’s all we got. we can’t wait to hear from you. ok bye love you!!!

in shambles,
nins & arns

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