Learning to cry to heal the heart

Emotional 𖤓

"The body long remembers what the mind soon forgets."

Jacob Levy Moreno

I've finally learned to cry. Until a few years ago, I didn't know I didn't cry, or I guess I thought my ability to suck back the tears and figure things without them out them resulted in some kind of Medal of Honor. What I found out is my ability to move forward on the changes I’m trying to make in my life was arrested by old stuff lodged in my heart.

There are books written about sensitive kids and people. Looking back I was one. My hypersensitivity was exacerbated by the death of my father when I was five, and the expectation from the adults in my life that one moves on. But I cried. A lot. I cried when the kids ran too fast, and I cried when I couldn't play in the grass because of allergies. I cried when kids made fun of me because my dad was dead. I cried when there was no apparent reason.

My ill-equipped elders—a mom and aunt and uncle that called me “Cry Baby”— didn't understand that you can’t cajole a kid out of being overly sensitive. I even remember their exasperation when they finally got to the I’ll-give-you-something-to-cry-about end of their rope. They inadvertently sent me underground. This is not blame. It is just the story of a kid who became an expert at holding back or minimizing tears, and lodging that trauma in her heart.

Then I practiced for decades. I held up through two marriages, raising two kids by myself, and leaving corporate America to start my own business. I was the guardian for my declining Mom for eight years. Who had time to cry?

As I watched Mom's demise from Alzheimer’s disease, when someone asked, “How do you feel about all this?” I was known to say, “No sense crying about it, you just figure it out.”

We have all heard about the benefits of laughing. Turns out so goes crying. Decades ago, tear expert Dr. William Frey, discovered that stress hormones and other toxins are released, “feel-good” hormones are produced and the heart is healed by emotional tears. What Dr. Frey doesn’t talk about is the emotions (and actions) that get stuck when we lack outlet for what is released by crying.

Over the years, things added up.

I started hyperventilating when I was a kid, under certain kinds of stress. One can only imagine it began when I learned how to stuff sadness and anger early on. Of course later on, it showed up during time I reserved to write. My heart would feel heavy and I struggled to catch my breath.

I had an amazing massage therapist for years that taught Hakomi, a body-mind practice that helps patients connect physical ailments with psychological disturbances. When he inserted a bit of Hakomi in my massage and had me envision connections between body parts to help me fully integrate (most specifically my head and my heart), I struggled to make a connection, like there was an impenetrable wall around my heart.

Add the time the herbalist/healer talked with me about what felt like a lack of clarity and direction for my writing. When I mentioned the pain in my shoulder, he suggested we pause long enough to sit with it and ask about its origin. Sure enough it only took a split second of sitting with that pain to be struck by the sadness and anger lodged there by the demise of my mother, and the responsibility it incurred. Seven tissues later the shoulder pain was gone. My breathing had cleared and my heart felt lighter.

Once I tasted the sweet salt of tears, there was no going back. As I revealed my experiences and my Sweetie asked questions, I cried on his shoulder. I cried when I told my best friends my story. I cried when an eagle showed up in the green way that surrounds my house. And I cried when I walked out on the deck and saw the violets my more able Mom planted in pots years ago.

It wasn't a surprise that almost immediately a poem rolled out of my gel point pen like the tears rolling down my face. Look out world, Cry Baby is back.

Have you stuffed things that are holding you back from making the change you desire? Are they showing up as body quirks or little ailments? What might you accomplish if you were to let them go?

Emotional 𖤓