Sometimes you just need to cry… and it’s ok.

In today’s world we often mistake crying for weakness. We can’t be strong all the time, it’s unnatural. We were built with feelings for a reason, we are not supposed to behave like Spock. When we have a young kid we realize how deep we’ve buried our feelings as adults. I remember when I had my babies, it would happen that I would get overwhelmed by their neediness and I would just burst into tears with the baby. All the feelings we manage to control during our daily routines have to come out at some point. And I’m talking about crying but it could also very well be frustration, sadness, anger. Being serious or  happy have become the two acceptable emotions to show in public. They have become the mask we have to wear in public.

The other day, I was feeling crushed and overwhelmed by the day ahead of me and all the little things that have accumulated lately in my life. Of course, if I think about the terrible things that happen in the world every day, my problems seem so little and ridiculous. But to me they aren’t little and they aren’t ridiculous and that day they seemed particularly terrible. I have a job that I don’t like but I need to pay the bills; I have to take care of my health that keeps faltering no matter how hard I’m trying to stay healthy; I have to keep my house clean and organized for my family, but somehow it’s always untidy and dusty; I want to write and publish my book, but I’m not writing and making the progress I want; I keep getting frustrated in my relationship with my partner because things are still difficult with his family; and I’m hot and my clothes don’t fit as well because I put on some weight even though I’m trying to lose it… Needless to say I ended up crying. But what strikes me is that I felt I had to give myself permission to cry. And that’s when I realized that we feel bad for crying. It is not an acceptable display of feeling in public and when we do it in private, it feels wrong. Everybody talks about breastfeeding in public, for or against it, but nobody talks about crying in public. Because it never happens. And if you pay attention, as soon as a kid starts crying, we tell them: don’t cry! as if it was embarassing. My older kid is very emotional and can’t help but showing exactly how she feels. So not so long ago, she was being bullied for being a ‘cry baby’! How awful is that? Even kids in elementary school make fun of other kids that cry? We definitely need to revisit our standards for public display of emotions and reinstate all feelings in it! Seriously, just crying from time to time is no big deal, it’s normal healthy behaviour that should be acceptable and even encouraged for adults. Maybe we would have a lot less people thinking about suicide and depression if we were able to get the support we need when we cry, or scream in frustration.