About a week ago, I was listening to Rebecca Campbell’s Light is the New Black audiobook and the messages were speaking right to me. You know those moments where you’ve been asking for help and you come across the RIGHT message in a book, online, or someone you know speaks about the exact topic you needed to hear…it was like that.
I’d been feeling so stuck with regard to the slow process and timing of several areas of my life, and her words spoke to me, giving me the perspective that I needed. It was exactly what I needed to hear. I was overwhelmed with a variety of emotions and began to cry. The kind of cry that occurs so naturally that there’s no time to think about it or decide whether to try to suppress it or let it flow.
It was my second cry within the past week and that is not typical for me. The same messages flooded over me after this cry that came with the prior cry. After each cry I felt relief, I felt more clear minded. That always happens after we cry it out. When the crying comes to its natural end we are left in a clear, calm, almost peaceful state.
After that cry I felt amazing, and so ready and confident to take on one of the projects I had been working on. It cleared out space energetically for creativity, and set a new space for me.
What a gift it turned out to be!
It made me realize how healthy it is to cry and to release. Crying can be a really good thing, like a purification process.
Trying to resist it actually makes it worse. It is important to release emotions so they are not held unnecessarily in our energetic field, where they wait in queue to take their turn to speak to us again whenever we are finally ready to hear them.
We are often taught early in life that crying is something to be avoided, something we should suppress. That it makes us appear weak, or vulnerable. These are things our culture has taught us, an image it has constructed of the right way or the best way to be. However, suppressing our emotions is not natural. It is more unnatural to try to put a plug on the wave, or at times the tsunami of emotions that overcomes us from time to time.
There is nothing natural about pretending our emotions do not exist or that we don’t feel the way we actually do. It seems much more natural and healthier to let that wave or tsunami build up to its high point, its crest, and then naturally release. Just like the waves in the ocean that gain an energy and momentum and then crash down, releasing that buildup of energy back into the sea from which they came, calm again, flat, so too our emotions seem to follow the same pattern, the same course.
The next time you feel that strong buildup of emotions, like a damn ready to be released, welcome the cry. Welcome the cry, and notice how you feel afterwards. Revel in the peace and purity of the emotional waters being released. Let it all go. When the crying has met its natural end, take a deep breath and just be. Soak up the moment and the peace you feel afterwards. This is a beautiful space of clarity, creativity, and receptivity. It is a gift that comes at the natural end of a cry.