“If you have crying eyes, bring them along.”—JD Souther
Ms. Burt, are you about to cry?” I hear these words at least a few times a month, and the answer is usually yes. I cry when they sing “God Bless America,” I cry when I receive their handmade gifts, drawings and dandelions from recess. I cry when we listen to certain pieces of music, and I cry when former students come back to visit. I cry on the last day of school. I am a crier, and I couldn’t be happier about it.
To understand this, you must know I didn’t cry for a long, long time. For years, I just couldn’t do it. I remembered what it felt like. I wanted to cry. Not crying felt awful. I sat through tragedies and celebrations alike without shedding a single tear. I cannot tell you exactly when I stopped crying, but I can tell you exactly when I started crying again.
We all had reasons to cry in March 2020, but this particular story is not pandemic-related. On March 14 of that year, my parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. We had a lovely dinner, and then went back to their house for more time together. I can’t recall whose idea it was to pull out the boxes of old photos, but it was a good one. As we shuffled through the stacks of memories—some black-and-white, some loose and others in albums, some from my childhood, many from before I was born—I wept and laughed simultaneously. I will never know exactly why, for whom or what I was weeping, but it was happening, and I let it happen.
Perhaps it was a lot of things. Lives well-lived. Love freely given. Regrettable haircuts and fashion choices of the past alongside beloved family members now gone from this world. The strain and self-doubt of having begun a new career just months earlier. The innocence, hope and silliness in my own eyes as a child. The realization that I was teaching children just like the little girl in those photos, and the wave of remembering what it felt like to be her. My awkward phase, which lasted about 19 years, give or take a day. My parents as children, and then as newlyweds. My sister holding me for the first time. Me holding her precious son who made me an aunt. Photos in which it was genuinely difficult to tell whether it was my sweet and sassy niece or my younger self. The idea that two people could share their lives for FIFTY years, and an immense gratitude that I belonged to them. All of this life spread out right there on the kitchen counter. I couldn’t have known this would be the last time for several months we would all be together in this way. Maybe I had a feeling, if you believe in that sort of thing. I’m not sure I do, but I like the way it sounds.
Maybe it was the fact that I had begun seeing a therapist just a month prior, maybe it was growing older and more sentimental, or maybe I just reached a breaking point. Probably it was some combination of all these things.
I still see that same therapist periodically, and the tools she has given me changed my life. Just ask anyone I’ve ever met. You know those jokes about how it only takes a vegan eight seconds to mention they’re vegan? I think that’s even more true about people in therapy. We love to tell you what our therapist said.
I know now there are many mental health challenges that can prevent us from crying. Anxiety, depression, chronic stress and dissociation are among the most common. Whatever the cause, suppressing, avoiding or holding our emotions too tightly has repercussions beyond the mental and emotional, as it can also contribute to a less dependable immune system and various cardiovascular conditions.
Crying is a healthy, beneficial, natural and beautiful human experience. Research has shown that emotional tears can release endorphins, the feel-good chemicals in our brains, while reducing cortisol, a stress hormone that is associated with all manner of unpleasant symptoms. Crying can slow heart rate and breathing, resulting in a calmer nervous system, and an improved ability to rest. I’ve never met a person who couldn’t use more rest.
In the nearly five years since that evening in my parents’ kitchen, I have cried many times. I have cried at weddings and funerals, on coffee dates and road trips, during movies and songs, in greetings and see-you-laters, reading great books, writing in my journal, hugging my loved ones, and simply cuddling with my dog. I cry in public and in private. I cry tears of joy, sorrow, empathy and excitement. I cried while writing this. Recently, I cried in the middle of a choir rehearsal during an especially meaningful piece of music. Several of us cried, actually. Singing is every bit as healthy and universal as crying, but that’s another column entirely. Singing and crying are certainly preferable to my other favorite coping mechanism: eating a full pint of ice cream in one sitting. Some days require all three in tandem, and that’s OK, too.
Songs, movies and cliches have told us time and time again that crying is embarrassing, weak, annoying or even shameful. The Four Seasons harmonized “Big Girls Don’t Cry” while Marvin Gaye wailed, “I know a man ain’t supposed to cry.” I’ll take the JD Souther philosophy, “If you have crying eyes, bring them along.”
I am thankful we live in a time when mental healthcare is increasingly available and vulnerability is on the rise. The road to tenderness can be long and winding, but I encourage you to try. And I encourage you to cry.
