IT'S OKAY TO CRY...
It's Okay Not To Cry
It's okay to cry. It’s okay not to cry. It’s alright to take your time and wait for the primary emotion to surface and allow the immediate response to hold the space.
Whatever is coming up for you in the moment works or whatever slowly makes its way out after awhile is valid, too. Because emotional responses can be raw, mixed, complex or have their own method of being known.
You may have been in situations where your feelings had to be set aside because your instincts needed to be in the forefront for preservation.
Maybe you had to be in denial about something or quickly freeze in order to postpone or insulate the intensity of shocking news. Later, you’ll thaw and the ways in which it affected you will discern when it’s safe to come out and be processed.
Maybe it’s hard for you to own your feelings and there’s an entire life story attached to the reason why. In the meantime, having outside validation to go ahead and claim your personal innermost experiences has a meaningful impact on your emotional recovery process.
ARE YOU WAITING FOR PERMISSION TO FEEL WHAT YOU’RE FEELING?
Before letting themselves own and experience an emotive response fully, some people look for permission. Somewhere in life, their personal feelings were denied, invalidated, or had to be put away. So now they need to know it’s safe to feel badly about something legit— or even feel positive about themselves. Or that it’s alright to feel courage, it’s human to have grief, and they’re allowed to not be strong, act bold, or let go or hold on. And that feeling let-down or angry is natural, or feeling really good about a success without any guilt is appropriate. Until they’re confident about their emotional autonomy, sometimes validation to go ahead and feel what’s true for them is the special support they’re asking for.
TEARS OF LOSS
Crying is such a natural response to stress and pain. We are able to heal and decompress by releasing emotionally through crying. At the same time, emotional expression varies from person to person and some cry more easily than others for different reasons.
Weeping and wailing as a grief-stricken response is how some cultures openly mourn. Lamenting, holding vigil, rending garments, and other active means are ways people express their primal shared and individual loss.
But when someone dies and you don’t cry or you cannot cry, don’t judge or condemn yourself.
You may not have the same experiences with the departed as those around you. You may not want to demonstrate or act out your thoughts through visible tears. You may not have shared an emotional resonance with the person who passed away, and that, too, is justified. You may be disconcerted or perhaps you’ve not known deep loss— or you very much do know great loss and approaching each passing uniquely is how you’re organized internally, and you’ve found it to be a much healthier process for you.
You may have your own way of confronting the essence of death, voicing sadness or processing internal pain. You may mourn in ways no one understands or recognizes.
Rather than searching your soul for a trace of something to help you exhibit a cultural or group-accepted form of sorrow, be with what feels real for you right now. Your vulnerability is not in question and your being is enough.
And if you are concerned you’re not able to cry and want to explore the possibilities as to why, there may be a medical, psychological, or specific reason which can offer more understanding. Over-exposure to trauma or chronic stress can interfere or block our bodily responses like crying and in its place present an alternate response, reflecting an act of self-preservation.
I often look at it this way, some people shed invisible tears. Sometimes the quiet ones cry silently. In the end, however we’re uniquely, individually wired to respond to sorrow, sometimes palpable tears fail to express the immensity of our grief.
Dear Reader,
Thank you for taking the time to visit and leaving a heart or comment. I hope my words find ways to comfort or reassure you. If you think someone might find this free newsletter validating, please share.
With love, care and kindness,
Susan
I’ve been needing to read your words about grief for a long time. They help a lot.
I was writing a comment on Facebook about forgiveness and mentioned that it is a process of grieving and what psychologist Matt Licata calls "metabolizing" an experience by feeling it deeply and assimilating the psyche "nutrients" into our energy field. Perhaps our tears are a vital part of that ingestion process providing a medium where our sensory "ingredients" can be dissolved forming a single solution (in both meanings of the term).
I mentioned a conversation with a friend suffering from depression who said: "I fear if I start to cry that I could never stop." I mentioned that I really did not have any rebuttal for her remark. Someone challenged me saying that was ridiculous and there is always an end to crying. I pointed out that we can cry in many ways and the tears may be stifled and transformed into "internal tears" - depression, addiction, and diseases of despair. Many of us have public "smiley faces" yet are actively crying on the inside.
As you point out, in our culture there is much shame around weeping and we have abandoned our public rituals of grief and communal wailing giving voice to our sensations of loss and confusion. What I have learned about grieving is that it is a subconscious and intricate dismantling and reforming of the energies of the psyche - a "birth" requiring a place of sanctuary and security. Your soul knows when the conditions are optimal before embarking on such a delicate sacred process waiting until the "nursery" is prepared. Tears may have to wait until the time is right.
Someone once said: "Life is wet." My experience is there is a certain "juiciness" to fully being alive. We generally think of this as being lustful but it is also about embracing the dying part of being fully alive. The woman who imagined herself infinitely crying could be describing a "baptism" of life cleansing away our dashed hopes, dreams, and relationships so we can embrace fully new ones. As I age, I find myself constantly on the edge of tears washing away the debris of expectations and keeping myself "juicy" in my senior years. I find tears of sorrow fully expressed transform into tears of joy. Or, as someone said: "All feelings fully felt become love."