Crying in Public Is a Service to Humanity

When was the last time you saw someone cry in real life? That is, someone other than yourself (if you’re even prone to letting yourself cry)? Has it been a while? Can you even remember a time?!

I hope you can. But I rather suspect for many folks who aren’t either in recovery or working in mental health, it might be hard to pinpoint an occasion. Because we’re all much too socially trained to lock that shit down and keep our tears to ourselves – which is a shame. 

Crying is a healthy and normal outlet for big emotions, and when we don’t let ourselves do it, we get emotionally constipated. Seriously. It’s bad for our mental health to keep that stuff bottled up. But since we don’t typically see grown ass people crying outside of the movies, it’s hard to accept that it’s something we’re supposed to do, too. 

If we don’t see people crying, we don’t let ourselves cry. Without models for behavior, the behavior doesn’t get normalized. We don’t know things are possible or okay if we don’t see them happening around us. We don’t know that crying is absolutely okay and healthy and something that is an entirely normal human reaction to things. (We have tear ducts for a reason, people!) 

Instead, we get the implicit message that crying is shameful or impolite or an inappropriate reaction. Or, worse yet, we actually get told those things explicitly – by emotionally inept parents or people in our lives who suffer from the delusion that emotions are things that can and should be controlled.

That’s why crying behind closed doors (if at all) is the rather unfortunate norm. Most folks find crying embarrassing or unseemly. We don’t learn how to hold space for other people’s tears, especially if we try to avoid our own. We get the message that crying is something to apologize for! And that is such bullshit, y’all. 

We should not have to apologize to anyone for taking up space, for listening to our bodies and having the emotional experience we need to have. In spite of how much progress we’ve made in the last decade raising awareness around trauma and mental health and the need to feel our feelings, there’s still a long, long way to go. 

Let’s All Cry When We Want/Need/Have To!

That’s why I’m taking a stance on crying in public. Let’s all do it! Let’s be models for other people so that everyone doesn’t have to struggle quite so hard to let themselves feel their feelings. 

Let’s cry at work if we have to. Let’s cry in the grocery store. Let’s cry on airplanes, in restaurants, at the bus stop. Let’s especially cry on a park bench or at the beach or on a hike and not feel like we have to hide it from the random strangers who might bear witness. 

(Note: I’m only being slightly hyperbolic about all this).

Maybe this is all a little self-serving since I’m a big ol’ cryer. Basically everything makes me cry, and I spent way too much of my life fighting with that reality and crying alone in my room because I didn’t have models to teach me it was okay to cry in front of other people. But then I got sober and basically two decades of repressed tears started leaking out my face. I couldn’t help it. And I’ve now come to a point where I’m generally done trying to stop it. 

Crying is not shameful. Crying is not a sign of weakness. Crying is not something we have to spare other people from! And if at some point you got the messaging that crying is emotionally manipulative or irrational or something you should suppress – FUCK THAT NOISE. That’s the patriarchy talking. Crying is as natural and normal as breathing or blowing your nose. Or pooping. Everybody poops and everybody should cry.

Talk to any good therapist, and they are likely going to tell you that suppressing your emotions (i.e. stifling your impulse to cry) is NOT good for your mental health. Shutting that shit down is what keeps us stilted and sick. It feeds the monsters of not-enoughness or there’s-something-wrong-with-me. We have to process our feelings to get to the other side of them, and crying is just a part of that.

Emotionally congested? Have a good cry! Get it out of your system! That’s essentially what a good chunk of the movie industry is built on – providing people with sad fucking stories so they have the opportunity to let that shit out. (I don’t willingly watch sad movies because I don’t need help with crying. Pretty much any animated feature will do it for me just as easily.)

Audience Does Matter, Though.

Now, before I get too far into this tirade, I will absolutely acknowledge that crying around strangers or coworkers or people who aren’t trustworthy with your vulnerability is not always the thing to do. I’m not saying we should just start openly weeping in professional settings. Toxic work environments mean it’s often unsafe to display emotions. And there are a LOT of emotionally inept people out there who will leave you feeling ashamed for crying over basically anything. 

So, there are sometimes very good reasons for not letting ourselves cry in public. However! We do still need to cry. That shit that you found upsetting at the office but managed to bottle up and not have a meltdown about in front of your shitty coworker? It’s still gonna be there when you get home. And you gotta let it out somehow – ideally with a trusted friend or loved one. And maybe/maybe not on social media – that depends on what kind of environment and set of friends/followers you’ve curated for yourself.

They say misery loves company, but that doesn’t tend to hold true on social media. So much of that messaging is all shiny, happy, life is amazing! Which is why, when we’re depressed or struggling, we often keep it to ourselves. It’s why looking to our feeds can leave us feeling even worse, comparing our insides to other people’s outsides. We’re ashamed of having so-called negative emotions. We worry about what people will think. But there’s a difference between dumping our shit on others and being honest about where we’re at. And presenting a facade of only the good shit (which is essentially what social media has historically been FOR), is unhealthy and unrealistic. 

I’m not quite ready to start live feeds of my emotional meltdowns, even if it would be in keeping with what I’m trying to get at here. But I do want to see a social media landscape that can hold space for a range of emotions: where we can post about being in a tough place and then get the support we need, where we can witness people going through both challenging times and good times and hold space for both. 

That’s why I started this blog in the first place – to create a space for talking about a break up and grief, about trauma and mental health, and to offer a model for sharing vulnerability. So that any of y’all reading this might feel a little less alone in your struggle. Because being a human in this world is hard, no matter how much good shit we have in our lives to be grateful for.

It Starts with Us

This all gets back to the whole “be the change you want to see in the world.” What if we lived in a world where crying wasn’t such a big deal? What if it were socially acceptable to tear up when we’re frustrated or exhausted? What if we didn’t have to hide or repress our feelings in order to be taken seriously or treated with respect and compassion?

I want a world where people feel empowered to express and experience the full range of human emotions. And that includes feeling fucking sad or distressed or overwhelmed at times. And it would be soooooo nice if we didn’t have to layer onto those feelings additional frustration or shame or embarrassment for feeling them in the first place! Wouldn’t it?

So let’s be the change. Let’s start letting ourselves cry when we need to – even if it’s inconvenient or somewhat more publicly than we’d prefer. Let’s model that crying is healthy and normal and okay so that more kids grow up learning that they don’t have to hide their feelings from the world. Let’s liberate everyone’s emotional landscape one tear at a time!