The day I cried in public again

Tears are not a sign of weakness. They are cathartic, and they heal.

This essay is part of a collaborative effort spearheaded by Victoria at Carer Mentor. Victoria offers her heart as a caregiver to her mom, a mentor and advocate for other caregivers, and a Substack writer. Her call to action—Caring about Crying—involves empathic reflections from those who share their grief in honest and healing essays. You can read more about her efforts here.

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I was twelve years old when I stopped crying in front of others.

While I was at school, my mom rifled through my room and discovered a private journal I kept, where I felt safe to record my innermost thoughts and feelings. At the time, I was trying to make sense of the rapid changes accompanying adolescence and our family milieu: hormones mixed with a mentally ill family member rendered me helpless, invisible.

And the rage spilled onto the page.

But after my mom confronted me about my diary’s musings, she pursed her lips, furrowed her brow, and said firmly, “You will be seeing the school counselor, starting next week.”

There was no discussion, which only fueled my teen angst. I felt betrayed, shocked, and humiliated. After all, what I wrote was for my eyes only, a form of process and exploratory journaling that granted me clarity in an otherwise tumultuous and confusing part of life.

After this incident, I caught myself when tears began to pool in the corners of my eyes, and I’d refuse to reveal my vulnerability to anyone.

Crying, I learned, meant I was weak. It was a reason to be concerned about my well-being. It meant my emotional pain was damaging in some way. Instead, I saved my tears for the solace of my bedroom, behind closed doors.

Through the years, I suppressed dark and difficult emotions entirely. Every time that knot would form in my throat, or my eyes would burn, or my nose would sting, I’d force myself to choke it down, to bury it somewhere in the recesses of my body—where the Thing That Must Not Be Mentioned would remain concealed.

Decades later, I prepared for the birth of our second daughter, Sarah. As my contractions grew in intensity and frequency, I eased into the experience of labor as I remembered it two years prior when Felicity was born. Dilation and effacement progressed steadily, and I approached each step toward delivery with an earnest exuberance, eager to meet Sarah.

But after twenty-six hours of lingering at nine centimeters dilation and eighty percent effacement, my family physician warned me that a cesarean might be imminent. I tried to push, but my heart rate and Sarah’s skyrocketed with every effort. I felt my body weakening, as well as my mental resolve.

Then, the on-call OB/GYN entered the delivery room, where my epidural was only effective at numbing half of my body. Dr. Annan lightly touched my forearm and leaned toward me until we were face to face. Her brown eyes were strong but kind. She affixed them on me in an expression that conveyed certitude but compassion. “We need to do a c-section,” she said resolutely but gently. “I know you’re scared about this, and I’m sorry you’ve been in labor so long. You never should have been in labor this long—“she paused to glare at my family physician (a male)—“but I’m afraid we’re beyond a vaginal delivery now. It’s not safe for you or for your baby.”

My lip trembled, and I felt fear rise to my chest, where it stayed trapped as I swallowed hard. This was my go-to for denying my painful emotions any visibility in front of others, but that day, it failed. Fat, hot tears blurred my vision, and the only way I could see what was happening to my body was to blink. This broke open the dam, and my cheeks soon became sodden with the saline solution produced by my body.

I tried to imagine that I was the ocean, as the tears tracked from eye to nose to the corners of my mouth. They were rivulets of water, and water was life-giving, wasn’t it? I couldn’t avoid their briny flavor, couldn’t wipe away the evidence that I was no longer strong, or in charge, or staid. My mouth formed no words, though my mind was abuzz with images and questions and thoughts and protests.

All I could do was sob.

The anesthesiologist arrived to administer a spinal tap. “Try to wiggle your toes,” he commanded, but my brain’s directive went unheeded by my limbs. “Good.” He was satisfied and left without another word. Shortly thereafter, labor and delivery nurses stood on either side of my hospital bed, straightening my arms and securing them to a wooden apparatus behind my head.  My wrists were strapped. Someone stood behind me and crudely capped my head with a hairnet. I noticed my husband Ben in my periphery; he, too, was donning a net over his head.

I felt alone, dissociated from my body, from myself. Everything inside me rebelled against this, but I was rendered helpless, in a state susceptible to anything—botched surgery, especially, I assumed. There was nothing I could do. I could not escape, or scream, or negotiate.

But I could cry.

At first, I felt embarrassed that the tears fell unbidden and that I could not control their flow or intensity as I’d conditioned myself to do for so many years. Yet as the nurses wheeled me into the operating room, something released in me. My body let go of something—was it fear?—and I surrendered to whatever was to come. Great relief washed over me.

This was the gift my tears gave me that day: the ability to demonstrate my humanity in front of others, including total strangers, and the catharsis of yielding to what I could no longer control or understand or manipulate.

Sarah and I at Sunnyside Park in New Paris, Indiana—spring 2014. Photo credit: Ani Wallach

Sarah was born minutes later in what Dr. Annan called “a textbook surgery.” By the time she exited my womb, my eyes felt dry, caked with remnants of crusted tears. I thought I had nothing left inside of me; my emotions felt as blunted as my numbed body. But then Sarah wailed, and the entire operating room fell silent.

I don’t know how many medical staff were present that day, but it was at least a half dozen. I knew none of them, including Dr. Annan, whom I only met an hour before my cesarean. To entrust yourself and your unborn child to strangers is a brazen act of faith for some, but in my condition, I had no alternative.

Once I learned that the hushed tones cast across the room meant that something didn’t appear to be “normal” with Sarah, I cried again. It seemed that, as soon as the floodgates had opened, my tears became a conduit of extracting all the poisoned thoughts I’d carried about myself and my life, all the paralyzing fears that gripped me with the unanswerable questions.

Tears became my bread; they nourished me. They also served as a salve, because they mollified the perpetual ache in my heart.

You see, Sarah was born with a rare genetic condition called Apert syndrome, which is classified as a craniofacial diagnosis. None of us knew prenatally. It became clear once she made her debut into the world, and her protruding forehead, bulging eyes, and fused fingers and toes became the evidence that she wasn’t a typical newborn.

Ever since the day we welcomed Sarah into our family, I cry freely, as I did in childhood. It’s not all the time, but I am often taken aback when the tears form—usually in the middle of the night, when I awaken after a long, exhausting week. Instead of suffocating them, I liberate the tears.

Crying is healing.

And now that I know tears of prolonged stress hold specific toxins and chemicals that differ from tears of joy or surprise or embarrassment, I let them do what they were meant to do.

I allow the tears time to expel the darkness and pain and suffering I’ve stored over the course of a lifetime. Whether it’s an ugly, messy cry or a soft, gentle sniffle, I realize that crying doesn’t signify weakness at all. It’s a physiological response that invites us to let go of the burdens we carry and to show others that we are human.

Crying connects us with others who are safe and kind. And it can teach us self-compassion. Consider your tears as cleansing, as baptismal, and their purpose will be a welcome reprieve to all the burdens you store inside.

I promise that if ever I witness your tears, I will cup my hands to catch them, to collect these sacred waters and preserve their legacy of what you’ve loved and what you’ve lost.