On tears, toughness, and honoring where you are.
This week, in a coaching session, a client I've known for several months spent the last part of our session crying. It was a profound time.
When tears come, I often experience it as something shifting inside.
I once heard that when tears finally flow, it can mean a person is ready to leave the pain. That rings true for me at times. While I'm still in it, there may be no tears. My system isn't ready to cry it out until I'm ready for whatever comes next.
And that next is a delicate place. It isn't about moving on or leaving everything behind. It's more like something is becoming clearer. The lessons, the growth, the understanding of what I've been carrying. Sometimes that's when my system can finally cry, or grieve.
It wasn't always like this. Crying was unavailable to me. I was a crying child who threw a lot of tantrums, at least in my memory. And at some age, that became not okay.
Because "men don't cry”. "Men are tough”. And toughness, not crying, was what strength looked like.
My life was filled with addiction. It was how I managed to get by. To stay tough and strong.
Until the day I sat in a circle for the first time. At my first men’s retreat. And my world opened up.
I saw men cry, sob, lose it, and let their hearts rip wide open.
There, during those three days on that men's retreat, so far from who I am now, I knew I wanted two things for sure:
1. More of this.
2. To be part of creating spaces like this.
But crying became a hook, a way of measuring emotional growth. My ego slipped in: if he cries, I'm doing good work. If I cry, I'm progressing.
When the time for a cry does come, it can happen in the most random places. A video on YouTube. Someone talking about their pain. A scene in a TV show. Sometimes a song in the car.
Other times, my capacity to cry closes for a while. Not because I'm not allowed, or because I feel ashamed. Sometimes things are still working themselves out.
"The gates of tears are not locked," the Talmud teaches.
There's a beauty that unfolds when we allow our true feelings to be felt, however they show up. With tears or without them. Whoever you are. Man, woman, adult, child, grandfather or grandmother.
After that cry, my client told me it was the first time in his adult life he'd cried in front of another man. I honored him. I blessed him that his tears should come as they need to, with ease.
It's hard for me to imagine meeting a man where crying is not allowed. I can see how that rule can spiral into pain and suffering.
I sometimes wake up and remind myself there's work to do. More spaces to create.
Where being you, today, as you are, is allowed and appreciated.
Cheers to those men who paved a path where men can be safer, sober, and closer to their Divine masculinity, building a better world.
So much love,
Motty
