Why your best year may start with tears.

"I have a thought for you," the participant said, wiping her eyes, "though you probably shouldn't trust advice from someone who was just crying."

I was in the middle of facilitating my monthly Power Circle and we were talking about what our lives might look like were we to start "playing big". The participant offering insight to another circle member had just finished sharing how the messaging she received as a child negatively impacted her self perception, thus making "playing big" a challenge. It was a huge act of vulnerability and insight for her. One that, understandably, brought intense emotion and tears.

I was struck by her preface to giving support, the immediate discrediting of herself because she had cried.

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This happens all the time in my practice. My clients and I address a particularly charged topic, or hit upon a previously unacknowledged truth, and suddenly tears spring to their eyes and they exclaim, "I don't know what's wrong with me. I never cry!" 

My immediate question is always, "Why don't you cry?"

Why is it so hard for us to cry and, when we finally do, why do we believe there's something WRONG with us?

There are a few reasons. 

We live in a society that elevates logic over emotion, rationality over feeling and denigrates any sign that our inner walls have been breached. In a patriarchy, tears are weak. Childish. Irrepressibly "female." (Heaven forbid we "cry like a girl", "hit like a girl" or be a woman with feelings.) Tears betray us as out of control. When we cry we're no longer mature, professional adults. We're blubbering babies who can't get ahold of themselves. 

My clients do not see themselves as cryers or complainers but rather as doers and achievers.  So on that rare occasion when they do cry, when there's a break in the dam and water flows forth, with the tears flow feelings of shame. Shame for not being strong enough. Shame for showing vulnerability. Shame that the protective, isolating wall within that's never supposed to crumble has started to crack.

We learn early and often that crying isn't safe. Subsequently, the act seems not only foolish and intolerable, but terrifying. 

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Okay, back to my Power Circle. I knew I couldn't let the circle continue without pointing out the significance of the crying participant's language. It's a circle about female leadership and empowerment, after all.

"Before you continue," I said, "It's important to say that I don't believe crying discredits you or makes the wisdom you're about to share any less valuable. In fact, to let ourselves access emotions to the point of water popping from our eyes is a MIRACLE.  It's a fucking miracle that in the face of a culture that says crying is weak, you have the strength to feel. Crying isn't weak...it's an act of agency, resistance and bravery."

Ali, if you, too, have a tough time crying and/or beat yourself up when you do, consider this.

What if, in our world, crying were a venerated sign of wisdom?
What if tears were a courageous symbol of your willingness to show your humanity under a system that shuns it?
What if crying were our body's way of saying she'd had enough?
What if tears were the prerequisite release for insight and life-altering change?

As you think about the year to come and how you want to experience it, think about this... How might you need to act towards yourself and others to have the year you desire? What kind of a person do you need to become?

Perhaps you'll need more self-compassion and empathy. Maybe you'll need more focus and boundary-setting. Maybe you'll need to hold yourself tenderly through a tough transition or brave new goal.  

No matter what you want your 2020 to look like, what's guaranteed to be needed is your ability to feel, cry and voice your experience.

In other words, your humanity will be required. 

Accessing that humanity is no easy thing. For many of us, it takes a tremendous confluence of events and emotions to be shaken enough to cry. My invitation and challenge to you is, when the miracle hits and the tears finally come, care for yourself enough to let them flow. Let yourself feel all that comes up, knowing that no feeling lasts forever and on the other side of that emotional wave is clarity and action, just waiting for you. 

Have a wonderful new year filled with tender tears, clarifying ah-has and big, big change.

All my love and take care of you.

If you enjoyed this post, please keep reading!

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