In support of regular crying.

I somehow stumbled into a work conversation a few weeks ago about crying frequency.  One of my male co-workers couldn't comprehend the whys of regular female crying. 

"Alana, how often do you just watch a movie to have a good solid cry?"

"Weekly."  I answered immediately.  (If you ask my husband, he might guage it to be more often.)

The previous female who had been asked had answered "Monthly," so I suddenly became the boob of the group. 

Doing what I do and having been trained in emotional health and life balance as I have, I know personally, that crying is just something I often need to do.  It's as important to your life as laughter, when you feel it.

It has become a common topic with this co-worker to ask me "did you cry this weekend?"  "when was the last time you cried?"  and once he told me about a movie he had seen over the weekend with his wife and child about a dolphin whose tail had been amputated, but he was taught how to swim with a prosthetic and his wife had cried.  But he hadn't.

It's a silly topic, and we play around with it.

This morning I was reading a blog post about my dear cousin's wife Illana Smith, who has cancer. 
http://ilanascancer.blogspot.com/
She had a bad bout this week.  Needing a trachiotomy, eye patches on both eyes, IV nutrition, and increasing paralysis on either side.  They had a picture up of her eyes covered, tubes in and out, and the little notes she tries to write to communicate.  The writer talked about how her mom traveled to come and hold her daughter's hand and feel that "I love you" between them. 

Crying is okay.  It happens when you feel something human and empathize to support one's self or someone else.  I care about my cousin, even though I haven't seen him in years.  I care about his mother who is hurting for him, and his little boys who he is trying so hard to raise while their mom is battling.  It is important to feel that and to let it out.  It provokes action, like letters of support, and hugs when I do see him again.  I don't cry because I feel pain for him, but because I recognize the beauty of the experience between his wife and her mother.

We fabricate these kinds of experiences through media, and then it may feel silly sometimes to be "tricked" into such an emotional response to a character.  But the fact is, I'd rather know that I am someone who sees beauty and feels that spark of love in herself, rather than someone who lets that beauty pass her by.