Better out than in…

Better out than in…It’s ok to cry.

If you’re feeling lonely at Christmas, and dealing with grief, I hope it helps in some small way to know that you’re not alone. I remember last Christmas, my first one with grief at the table, all too well. I recall being flooded with it - memories, the physical heartache, lump in the throat, trouble focusing, forced smiles, quiet, withdrawn, somber and not my usual self, not up for the small talk, feeling like telling someone to get lost, to put it nicely. And that I couldn’t fathom how people could just go around all happy and sh*t. It was incomprehensible to me last year. It does get better. Or at least we learn to cope better, over time. But I didn’t believe that or want to hear it at the time. I went through it as though it was just another day, just to survive. 

Since then, I’ve learned that tears are not a sign of weakness. I’m here to remind you that it’s a release for your soul that works by forcing your physical body to make room for the positive vibes. Some days for me, it was like an uncontrollable waterfall and other days I felt like I was the cold-hearted stone being squeezed for water that never came. But I’ve learned that all we’re doing by not crying is stuffing the emotion down, down, down, deeper into our hearts, and it’s still there. It has to come out.

You know how they say that grief “always finds a way”, that you can’t ignore it or escape it forever, and that it always comes out? I used to hate those words. Insert venom and poison here lol. My attitude towards crying used to be, Oh yeah? I’ll show them. My goal was to become the master escape artist.

Turns out they were right, whoever “they” were, and that’s because we are like a vessel of emotion, a container, with only so much room in our energetic field. Emotions are supposed to flow, to be acknowledged, felt, “processed” and then released. All of them, even the good ones. It’s an ever-changing emotional state of being that makes us up. 

BUT We’re conditioned by society to think crying tears are a sign of not coping and being incapable of having a solid grip (aka control) which is just an illusion anyway. Think about it, how we have held back tears since grade school lest we look weak or fragile or not able to cope. Now, as adults, we unconsciously still hold onto that belief system, it’s been ingrained at our core and if we let the tears flow, sometimes we feel like a failure, as though we let it get the better of us, like it beat us. At least that’s how I used to feel. 

And in my experience, I’ve learned that if we go through the days holding onto the tears, keeping them in our hearts, tucking them away to deal with “later” it leaves no room for the good stuff to make its way into our hearts. So then we end up having a good cry or a “meltdown” which is just because our container for the tears is full and they have nowhere else to go but out. Funny how after the cry, we sometimes still feel heavy hearted and sadness, usually for the rest of the day, but also a little lighter, taking a deep breath is slightly easier. Then we usually sleep hard, and that’s our bodies welcoming in that good healing rest, and we usually feel better the next day.

Think about it - we can’t possibly hold space for every single emotion that we feel through our lives, imagine if we tried! That’s just ridiculous! Just considering how silly that idea sounds proves that we all intuitively know that we are not designed to keep every single feeling inside forever. 

So WHY do we fight so hard to not cry?? Because it hurts to feel the sadness? It’s like the one emotion we’re not ready to share. And it’s because we think it makes us look weak. That’s absurd and we all know it. We’ve all been strong, we made it this far, but we don’t have to display strength every millisecond of every day, that’s what makes us human.

So let the tears go. Release the sadness, and accept that you are allowed to feel lighter, give yourself permission to be something other than pure iron-man strength for just a moment and in time you’ll see that you were healing yourself.