I don’t cry easily. Sometimes I wish I did.
Conditioned as a child to be stoic (which can come in handy when things are not going well, and I just need to keep walking and do what needs to be done) my inner resistance to tears means they tend to come all at once or not at all.
Conditioned as a child to be stoic (which can come in handy when things are not going well, and I just need to keep walking and do what needs to be done) my inner resistance to tears means they tend to come all at once or not at all.
I’d like to be someone who cries quietly, someone who
could let my eyes brim and spill over without my face getting blotchy and my
nose becoming all red and snotty. I’d like to be able to keep breathing gently and
deeply as tears slip silently down my cheeks instead of desperately gulping air between sobs.
I’d like to be able to cry without howling.
More often my eyes stay mysteriously dry until the sound of grief rises from my gut without warning.
I am in the shower, casually lathering my hair with shampoo when
suddenly a long low wail starts in my belly and rips up through my chest, setting my throat on fire as it is explodes into the small tiled room. It’s the
sound of a wounded animal. My knees buckle. I crouch in the tub, my arms wrapped around my body, a deluge of tears coming as fast as the water from the shower head above
me. Sometime later it ends as abruptly as it began.
Sometimes the grief is personal- today, as I feel the loss of
my father, or when my marriage exploded five years ago. Other times, it is prompted
by the heart-breaking violence of our shared world- young women kidnapped and
raped by Boko Haram; poisonous chemicals forced into the earth by fracking. . . .
Even as I write this I question my stated desire to cry more quietly. Why? Another part of me wants us to be able to cry out and rend our clothing when grief takes us. Perhaps we need to howl more often and more loudly alone in our bathrooms and together in circles sitting on the earth, or gathered on the steps of our local legislature.
Perhaps sorrow unleashed would clear confusions of the mind and help us act on the wisdom of the soul.
Even as I write this I question my stated desire to cry more quietly. Why? Another part of me wants us to be able to cry out and rend our clothing when grief takes us. Perhaps we need to howl more often and more loudly alone in our bathrooms and together in circles sitting on the earth, or gathered on the steps of our local legislature.
Perhaps sorrow unleashed would clear confusions of the mind and help us act on the wisdom of the soul.
And perhaps as tears of sorrow flow, tears of joy will find
us more easily and more often, opening our hearts to the challenge and the gift
of being human.
~Oriah House (c) 2015
Posts
This sent shivers down my spine. I can relate.
ReplyDeleteThanks Sandy. We human beings have so much in common :-)
Delete"Letting out our deep grieving allows our pain to be without edges..." someone wrote on another blog once. I relate too - wailing in the shower a very deep grief, often for nothing in particular - no recent death, no world calamity... This evening I saw a news clip of a woman wailing outside her crumpled home in Nepal because her 6 year old son did not make it out of the rubble. My heart broke open hearing her wail, and I nearly wailed with her - for her. I can't imagine the depth of her pain... "Sorrow unleashed" indeed... May love fill the space of grief in all of us...Blessings....
ReplyDeleteYes, often it is a scene like the one you saw from Nepal that will make me crumble hours later in my car or in the shower. May we wail when we need to- together and alone, for ourselves and for others.
DeleteI can relate, too. Sometimes I simply slide down along the wall as my knees buckle. Wrecking sobs, so much pain that splits my heart open, unbelievable grief. It's 6 years now that my parents died shortly after another and it still feels like yesterday. I KNOW that are not really dead, they are in my heart and around me, as energy and love never die. BUT I can't hug them in person. I can't kiss their cheek. I can't look into their eyes anymore, only on photos. The pain sometimes gets a little less intense, but sometimes it simply hits me when I least expect it, while doing the dishes, a memory pops up from them and I'm wrecked with heaving sobs that make my whole body shudder. Grief is grief and pain is pain and tears are tears, who cares if we cry like a lady. Maybe those "ladies" envy us, because we give in to crying with all of our heart and all of your soul. I read somewhere that when you can't cry with all your heart, you can't love with all your heart either.
ReplyDeleteSending you a huge biiiig hug Oriah and so much love. Know that you are not alone, even though it might feel like it in those moments of utter despair. xox Sabine
Sabine, So sorry for your loss, and thank you for your support. I think Anne Lamott once wrote "the only way through grief is by grieving." It comes when it comes- and it helps if we can let it have its way with us. Blessings, Oriah
DeleteThat is me
ReplyDeleteI couldn't cry at my sisters funeral
I didn't want anyone to see me
Israel, so sorry for your loss. Hoping your tears find you when you are feeling in a safe place.
Delete