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."
Thank you sooooooo much for this. I experienced profound grief last year and I was introduced to how uncomfortable people are with grief. How they don't know how to hold space for those of us moving through the grief process. How they say things they think are helpful but really are not, and how you then withdraw from family and friends and try and ride this wave of grief on your own. Our society our culture really truly lacks the skills in how to navigate grief. This has been the most challenging path I've ever had to navigate in my adult life. Also as I began to give myself permission to surrender to the grief I saw for the first time in my adult life all the grief that I held in tightly never knowing how to release. So I've been swimming in a tsunami of grief through all of 2023. I think I've bobbled back up to the surface for some air. Completely wearing on the new shores of my life. I'm out of the water but laying exhausted on the sand. 🙏 Your beautiful poetic words seem to always find me when I need them the most 🙏
As Jeff knows I “…have been in situations where my feelings had to be set aside…” primarily because I was silenced, under threat, and prohibited to speak about ANY of what I had been forced to carry when certain non-dual teachers deliberately foisted their own karma on these shoulders to ensure their lies would never become public knowledge.
It's not my job to embrace the darkness and pain that those teachers have projected upon me….that darkness that belongs to them…and is for *them* to process.
It was not until many years later…and beginning with Jeff’s ‘Writing Our Way Home’…that I began the very slow-unwind of telling my story and unearthing feelings that actually belonged to me. It was only then that I began to cry over what had been described as being ‘buried alive’…an accurate description.
Telling the story…in as much detail as I can put on a public platform…has turned out to be the most profound aspect of healing. The part I cannot express publicly concerns my family, especially my 2 kids but including 4-generations of my family. Yet…the controls over my family were one of 3 main reasons for reporting…the other 2 being my own self-respect and The Truth.
I’ve never been a crier but these days I notice when crying comes most naturally it’s almost always with regard to the 10+ years that were, literally, taken and that I now find myself at 72…with my family deliberately separated to ensure those lies would remain buried.
This is lovely. Thank you for your validating insights. One thing I think is important to mention is that tears is one of the ways the human body rids itself of excess cortisol. It's not only natural, but also healthy to cry as part of our fight/flight/freeze/fawn & JOY responses. Other mammals don't need this mechanism because they function from instinct instead of intellect (their tears do not contain cortisol - just lubricant). Humans would be much healthier if we allowed our instinct to guide us more than our intellect in times of stress (trauma, grief...). It's certainly "ok" not to cry, but we heal more effectively if we are able to allow the tears to flow freely as Mother Nature intended.
Dear Susan, thank you so much for writing and sharing this. Really helped me validate my feelings and accept myself on my recovery journey to connect with them again
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."
Thank you sooooooo much for this. I experienced profound grief last year and I was introduced to how uncomfortable people are with grief. How they don't know how to hold space for those of us moving through the grief process. How they say things they think are helpful but really are not, and how you then withdraw from family and friends and try and ride this wave of grief on your own. Our society our culture really truly lacks the skills in how to navigate grief. This has been the most challenging path I've ever had to navigate in my adult life. Also as I began to give myself permission to surrender to the grief I saw for the first time in my adult life all the grief that I held in tightly never knowing how to release. So I've been swimming in a tsunami of grief through all of 2023. I think I've bobbled back up to the surface for some air. Completely wearing on the new shores of my life. I'm out of the water but laying exhausted on the sand. 🙏 Your beautiful poetic words seem to always find me when I need them the most 🙏
Hi Susan and Jeff,
As Jeff knows I “…have been in situations where my feelings had to be set aside…” primarily because I was silenced, under threat, and prohibited to speak about ANY of what I had been forced to carry when certain non-dual teachers deliberately foisted their own karma on these shoulders to ensure their lies would never become public knowledge.
It's not my job to embrace the darkness and pain that those teachers have projected upon me….that darkness that belongs to them…and is for *them* to process.
It was not until many years later…and beginning with Jeff’s ‘Writing Our Way Home’…that I began the very slow-unwind of telling my story and unearthing feelings that actually belonged to me. It was only then that I began to cry over what had been described as being ‘buried alive’…an accurate description.
Telling the story…in as much detail as I can put on a public platform…has turned out to be the most profound aspect of healing. The part I cannot express publicly concerns my family, especially my 2 kids but including 4-generations of my family. Yet…the controls over my family were one of 3 main reasons for reporting…the other 2 being my own self-respect and The Truth.
I’ve never been a crier but these days I notice when crying comes most naturally it’s almost always with regard to the 10+ years that were, literally, taken and that I now find myself at 72…with my family deliberately separated to ensure those lies would remain buried.
Warmly,
-Leslie Read@ integrityintruth.com
This is lovely. Thank you for your validating insights. One thing I think is important to mention is that tears is one of the ways the human body rids itself of excess cortisol. It's not only natural, but also healthy to cry as part of our fight/flight/freeze/fawn & JOY responses. Other mammals don't need this mechanism because they function from instinct instead of intellect (their tears do not contain cortisol - just lubricant). Humans would be much healthier if we allowed our instinct to guide us more than our intellect in times of stress (trauma, grief...). It's certainly "ok" not to cry, but we heal more effectively if we are able to allow the tears to flow freely as Mother Nature intended.
Dear Susan, thank you so much for writing and sharing this. Really helped me validate my feelings and accept myself on my recovery journey to connect with them again
Wow..so relevant
We’ll said John. I enjoyed reading your comment and gained a bit more insight about this particular human trait. 🪷