SisterGrace, I relate to your post. We tend to evade crying and push it out of our mind. On the other hand I hope that this thread continues. Just as the rain refreshes the air I find that crying refreshes my mind. However I tend to push crying out of my mind rather than welcoming it the way I welcome the rain when things are dry.

Now I am thinking about what other WonderCafers will have to contribute to this discussion. A big problem being that crying tends to be associated with shame.

Let's open this topic up with the further discussion that it deserves.

Sometimes crying revealed my deepest fear, that others would regard me as weak. I certainly encountered those who did think this way.

And sometimes my crying revealed to others and myself that it was okay to be vulnerable. Crying releases a facade that discourages our pretentious living and allows us to acknowledge that everything is not okay. It honours our feelings and there is no shame in that but it did take a long time to not always want to cry by myself.

Beauty, prayer, love and yearning can all bring tears to my eyes. Pain does at first bite but they stop as soon as I take hold of the pain (then I swear). Grieving drives me inwards for a while... I go blank. It's only later, unexpectedly that the tears come. It's almost as though tears are a messages from another presence within me. I like to think it's a holy source... and hope I'm right.

I think crying for joy, sadness, grief, pleasure, etc. is a graceful emotional response.  I'm the queen at crying during movies.  I like to think it's what makes me a good actress, my ability and eagerness to be emotionally reactive with everything and everyone around me.

However there are times when I cannot control my tears - when I'm frustrated, when I'm angry, when I take something more personally than it's meant... these are times where I wish I could hold them in.  If I can't get a dance step right away, or if I make sounds on my cello that aren't what I think they should be, I feel them forming.  If I'm mad at someone and can't form a logical or reasonable response, but instead tear up... I get angry at myself.  These tears show me as Waterfall mentioned - weak.  Unable to defend oneself.  Too reactive and less active.  To me, these tears are not the same as getting choked up during my wedding vows, or losing one's composure while listening to an evocative piece of music.  But I do try to accept them as part of me, and explain to people that they need not react to them with pity or special attention.

Hi SisterGrace:

Yes, crying can be catharthic, and often is the best thing we can do for ourselves.

According to some psychologists, crying flushes out the chemicals that might otherwise cause depression.

Zakk Wylde once said (in regard to macho bullshit) that if you don't bleed or cry, you are not a man. Just a thought.

   I cry all of the time.  I cry when I'm happy, sad, angry, frustrated, joyful.   And sometimes I cry even when I'm not sure why.

   A week or so before Christmas it started really snowing and a realized I was almost out of dog food so I better get into town quickly in case the roads closed.   I came out of the store with my bags and it was snowing heavily.  Then through the normal noise I heard the bells on on of the churches on the hill ringing out Christmas carols.  It just struck me as so beautiful, the sound, the snow, the mood, the atmosphere all came together somehow and I just started crying right in the middle of the parking lot.   I'm even tearing up now just remembering and writing about it.  

Faernach I can relate to the crying when angry and frustrated and trying to control it.  It's been a problem when I was in some sort of work related function because it does not get taken as being part of accepted anger response and is looked on as some sort of weakness as you say.    Annoyed the heck out of me which led to more frustration.    I took some solace with other female friends and collegues though who dealt with the same sort of thing.    I don't think it means weakness or being unable to defend oneself.   For many and I've found in woman particular they are quite a natural emotional respose connected with anger and frustration.   Crying is an outward release of the energy of emotion and if you already experience that release with other emotions it just makes sense that it wouldn't stop with those ones. :)    Or at least that's the way I look at it.

One night last week a teen-age couple walked past my window having a "lover's tiff".

The young girl was hysterical - sobbing loudly and uncontrollably.

It made me reflect how passionately life is experienced when young - somewhere back in my past I had a dim memory of being similarly distraught.

Nowadays, tears spring readily to my eyes - but only raw grief can cause me to sob.

So many things make me teary, a lot of them good.

Unbidden tears are a sign to me that, at that moment, God is in my heart.

Tears are always about connection - connection with pain, connection with pleasure, connection with others.

I hope there are many tears to come........... 

For many years I tried not to cry - never in public, seldom in private.  If I did find myself crying I tried to hide it.  Or I would watch 'Old Yeller" or a movie about a dying child and cry when everybody else was crying.  They could think that I was crying for the dog, or the child, but I might be letting all the grief stored in me pour out in the darkness of a movie theatre.   Crying in the rain may be something similar.    And last summer my daughter found her 6 year old smearing his recent tears all over his face when he was about to meet some classmates  "They'll think it's sweat," he explained.

But crying is nothing to be ashamed of - except those temper tantrams and outward shows of emotion sometimes used to get your own way.  

Crying can cleanse and relieve - and when we find ourselves crying in public it can be shared.  We hug and we cry together.  Or one is strong and offers her shoulder for the other to cry on.  Believe me, I've cried in private and in public a great deal during this past year.  And its helped. 

GOD

I am in everyone;

Everyone is in me.

Fire can't burn me,

Water can't drown me,

Nothing can touch me,

But a single tear will move me.

-Arminius

 I spent several months crying... after my first daughter was born and I was suffering from postpartum depression.  Before I could identify what was happening to me, I lived as though all barriers had broken down and all there was was tears.  Unthinkable loneliness, unthinkable hopelessness.  I was not able to stop.  I would awake at night to find myself sobbing.  Never thought tears could be a symptom of illness until that time in my life.

Nowadays, I cry far less often.  Still very easily, for my own liking.  Crying makes me feel out of control - or perhaps it reminds me of a time when I was.  Often, it surprises me, too, because it reveals a much deeper response to something than perhaps I was aware of.

Anyway, thank you for starting this thread.  Reading it actually made it easier for me to cry as I make a decision this evening.

Crying can be such a beautiful release! I've done quite a bit of it in the last couple of years (having 8 of your loved ones pass away can do that!).

I have a love/hate relationship with crying. I love being able to release that emotion - to share with others how I am really feeling. At the same time, I hate how I feel physically afterwards. The act of crying always exhausts me - my eyes and shoulders always remain sore for days. Anyone got a cure for that? Extra fluids don't seem to work.

 There were times when I was just so wound up and stressedI wished I could cry just for the release.  Then other time my eyes leak and I can't stop them, like when my baby boy entered the world premature but safely. Times that I imagined in advance would be a big sob session I stayed stoic only to be taken by surprise at other times over something seemingly trivial. My tears certainly don't come when I expect them to or even when I want them to. They come when they come. Mike Paterson's post also echoes my own experiences.

Just wanted to highlight this, because it is so lovely!

I hear you on this.  It reminds me of when I was acting in Hair - the main character would die, night after night.  I was so exhausted from late night after late night (on top of 9-5 job, of course), that I thought every night it would be easy to just let go emotionally.  But every night, I had to fight to cry.  I wanted to let all that emotion out, all that weariness, all that finality of the day.  However, my tank was empty.  There was nothing left in me to force out into tears.  Sometimes you get to that point, beyond crying, where all you can do is stand there and feel emptied.

The Bible says "JESUS wept". If HE can cry, not one of us can say we're too good to do the same.

When my son was 1, 2 and 3 I cried almost every day.

"Cry,

cause no one can hear you

and it doesn't matter what you do

in your lonliness nothing matters

you could even die too.

Plea, flee, fly off the balcony

cause everything sucks

and nothing amounts to much."

Nowadays not so often, maybe a few times a month. Sometimes I cry in the car, just cause I get to thinking about things, and it feels safe to be vulnerable and weak for that brief time. I like to feel that way sometimes, it's a relief. To let myself be small and helpless. Let someone else help me. Shoulder off the burden.

I cry pretty easily, when I think of something utterly nice, when I think of things too terrible to say, when the clouds are beautiful, during movies, often from stress. I don't sob much though. Rarely now, thank heaven.

My son has seen me cry, and been concerned, and that warms my heart. I told him sometimes women cry, and it's ok. Oh, tearing up just thinking about it. Men on the other hand, I think have a harder time to cry. My dad finds it easier now that he's a senior. He's much more sentimental now than when I was a kid,.

I am not a weepy person. Most people would tell you I do not cry. Pain makes me cuss and grit my teeth or steel my resolve. Crying was always giving away my power, due to abuse. Only my partners, pets and God saw me, the real me. They would hear my voice crack or see me cry. It was not infrequent and was not often because I was weepy, but because I was passionate, moved or touched.

When I spoke publicly, passion or emotion did not show itself so much, I was a professional and in my field (domestic violence) we did not get emotional.

Then, I stood to preach one day and  my voice showed my emotion. A retired and very well respected 90+ year old minister took my hand in both of his afterward and looked me in my eyes in a way I can say I have never been looked at in my entire life. He stared for a long time saying nothing, then he said, "never quit being vulnerable,___,  it is your gift, the ability to be vulnerable in a crowd, naked".

No longer do I work at avoiding it. I do not edit out where my voice might crack and, in delivery, if it does I do not sweat it. One sermon this summer had my voice crack and my eyes well., but one out of dozens. When I co-officiated a wedding this fall, my voice cracked. It happens and he may be right, it may be my gift.

I'm not 90+ (yet)  - but I agree with that minister. All kudos to you. 

At our core, we are all vulnerable.

Sadly, it's often the strongest that hide their vulnerability. I say sadly, because these are the very folks that other folks admire - and could thus learn from.