Crying
I've been thinking about crying a lot recently. I'm generally in favor of crying. There are some obvious caveats: crying as deliberate manipulation and the white women's tears phenomenon are shitty behaviors we shouldn't engage in, and if you're crying so much it's having a distinctively negative impact on your life, it's time to seek some professional help. But as a personal, individual release of emotion, I'm all for it.
I signed up for Danielle LaPorte's free Fire Starter Sessions audio course. I think one of Danielle's greatest strengths is that she writes really great self-inquiry questions, and that's true of the Fire Starter Sessions worksheets. Any time you go deep with self-inquiry, it brings stuff up, and I've spent some time crying about some of the stuff doing these worksheets is bringing up. It's not really surprising; I'm a crier. I cry at nearly every Grey's Anatomy episode. I sob my way through the endings of really emotional books. I like going to movies that require kleenex.
Going by the publication dates, I was most likely junior high aged when I read Jerry Spinelli's School Daze books. I don't remember much about the plot, but there are a few things I remember clearly. One of them is this bit of wisdom from Salem Brownmiller, who was the mental template Hermione Granger later fit into:
"Hollered at you? That's even worse. Feelings hurt more than bones. You have to let it out, don't you know that? You boys are so dumb. Listen, you know how you feel better after you throw up?"
Raymond nodded. "Uh-huh."
"Well, crying is like that. Tears are like your feelings throwing up. You'll feel better. Come on now, I'll cry with you. Let it out."
My yoga teacher tells us that we hold emotion in our bodies, and sometimes doing yoga can release that. "You might feel like laughing or crying," she says. You don't have to know why, or what you were holding on to. The release is what matters. When someone was having trouble with the class because she kept crying, our teacher told her, "I think we should laugh every day and we should cry every day." In the middle of working my way through some of the tougher Fire Starter Sessions worksheets - particularly thinking about your past failures and facing down your fears - I spent a yoga class tearing up.
Last week's PostSecret included an email from a young woman about her experience at The PostSecret Show. At the end of the show, she wrote a secret on a whiteboard about how inspirational her mom is and sent it to her mom:
She was in tears. She called me crying and told me how much that meant to her and how much she loves me. I was crying as well. My mom told me that even my dad was in tears; my dad doesn’t cry often so I considered this an accomplishment. I continued to tell my mom how much I cried because of PostSecret. Her response was this: "You are a rock most of the time. Sometimes it’s okay to be the river."
It's good advice. Cry. Let go. Be the river.
I signed up for Danielle LaPorte's free Fire Starter Sessions audio course. I think one of Danielle's greatest strengths is that she writes really great self-inquiry questions, and that's true of the Fire Starter Sessions worksheets. Any time you go deep with self-inquiry, it brings stuff up, and I've spent some time crying about some of the stuff doing these worksheets is bringing up. It's not really surprising; I'm a crier. I cry at nearly every Grey's Anatomy episode. I sob my way through the endings of really emotional books. I like going to movies that require kleenex.
Going by the publication dates, I was most likely junior high aged when I read Jerry Spinelli's School Daze books. I don't remember much about the plot, but there are a few things I remember clearly. One of them is this bit of wisdom from Salem Brownmiller, who was the mental template Hermione Granger later fit into:
"Hollered at you? That's even worse. Feelings hurt more than bones. You have to let it out, don't you know that? You boys are so dumb. Listen, you know how you feel better after you throw up?"
Raymond nodded. "Uh-huh."
"Well, crying is like that. Tears are like your feelings throwing up. You'll feel better. Come on now, I'll cry with you. Let it out."
My yoga teacher tells us that we hold emotion in our bodies, and sometimes doing yoga can release that. "You might feel like laughing or crying," she says. You don't have to know why, or what you were holding on to. The release is what matters. When someone was having trouble with the class because she kept crying, our teacher told her, "I think we should laugh every day and we should cry every day." In the middle of working my way through some of the tougher Fire Starter Sessions worksheets - particularly thinking about your past failures and facing down your fears - I spent a yoga class tearing up.
Last week's PostSecret included an email from a young woman about her experience at The PostSecret Show. At the end of the show, she wrote a secret on a whiteboard about how inspirational her mom is and sent it to her mom:
She was in tears. She called me crying and told me how much that meant to her and how much she loves me. I was crying as well. My mom told me that even my dad was in tears; my dad doesn’t cry often so I considered this an accomplishment. I continued to tell my mom how much I cried because of PostSecret. Her response was this: "You are a rock most of the time. Sometimes it’s okay to be the river."
It's good advice. Cry. Let go. Be the river.