When did you last cry…seriously, when? If the time is right (…if not today, maybe soon) let it out. Coax it. Do what it takes to breach the dam. For me it was a day of self-compassion, a hot bath and Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2. They did what I needed them to do; I felt it rise up and spill my edges, wept my hot tears, shook from the shoulders, acknowledged the release that came oh-so quickly, like molten lava through my veins. How long had it been building? I can’t even say. It had passed through at last and I felt unspeakably better for it.

So many of us have become accustomed to not crying, for months even years…telling ourselves it’s not our character-type; equating it with weakness or waste of time or back-tracking or failure; fearing it will somehow break or consume us, becoming the relentless gnashing and wailing that will never cease. We like to think we have it all locked-up, contained, out of sight…even from ourselves…but we’re kidding ourselves if we think its gone. Sometimes we just need to shift the immense electrical charge that has built up in us, to release that static, allow the more passive back-and-forth flow to return between our head and our weary heart. Better, more productive, to admit the emotion and allow it to move up and out of us, fully seen in the light of day…then be stronger for it, having heard ourselves out and held that space with such tenderness and humanity. The catharsis so often feels bigger than ourselves. It’s as though a tangle gets untied in the fabric of reality and, like a tornado set in motion by the wings of a butterfly, ripples its release to the whole of creation.