It's a Crying Shame: The Importance of Embracing Our Emotions

Being vulnerable isn’t easy. If the idea of vulnerability scares you, that’s okay! I’ve designed the Vulnerability Challenge to help you open up and embrace your true self.

It’s time to turn shame and self pity into self love and compassion.
Turn disconnection into intimate self reflection.
Turn fear and avoidance into courage.

I won’t ask you to do anything I’m not willing to do myself, so for this new blog series I will be openly sharing my own process through the Vulnerability Challenge, starting with the question:

When was the last time you cried? What was it about?

Today - whether it’s the day I wrote this or the day you read this post, I will have cried.

Ever since the beginning of the pandemic, I’ve been brought to tears almost daily, which has been a real adjustment for me. At first, it was concerning - I shouldn’t be crying this much. It’s not normal. Then it was annoying - Jeez, I’m crying again?! I don’t have time for this. But as 2020 progressed into 2021, I learned to accept it. Perhaps it’s not “normal,” but it makes sense. This past year and a half has brought a lot to the surface for all of us.

The crying isn’t always because I’m sad or depressed. More often than not, it’s because I’m fully allowing myself to feel for the first time in a long time. I spent years pushing down my emotions and repressing how I felt. Now, my emotions sit just below the surface, easily welling up in my chest and bringing tears to my eyes for all sorts of reasons - I’m sad, I’m grateful, I’m scared, I feel empowered. Either way, my emotions feel big. So big they can’t be contained, so they release through crying.

I spent a lot of my life avoiding my emotions because I saw them as weak; I saw them as an inconvenience; and most of all, I was afraid of being overwhelmed by them. This created a lot of shame around feeling and expressing. Over the last several years, I’ve worked on releasing that shame and leaning into my feelings, but this past year and a half took that practice to a whole new level. There was too much to hold and not enough space to store the emotions away. I had to face them, often daily. And it’s been a process.

While a part of me knows that feeling my emotions is the best way to heal, there’s also a part of me that still buys into the shame and wishes I could go back to when I wasn’t crying everyday. But I have been patient with myself and my growth, and I’m starting to see subtle transformations in how I feel about crying. 

Before I Embraced Feeling

A few years before COVID, I was watching a documentary with my partner and suddenly felt triggered. I was surprised and taken off guard. I calmly walked to the bathroom and closed the door and let out my cries. I was confused and processing what had triggered me and why. I didn’t want him to see me like this - this had nothing to do with him and everything to do with my own shame. I was ashamed of feeling broken. I felt like it was something private that I needed to process on my own (translation: I didn’t want to burden him with my problems). After a few minutes, I wiped away my tears, flushed the toilet to signal that I used the bathroom, and went back out like nothing had happened.

Now That I Allow Myself to Feel

Fast forward to the beginning of June this year. My partner and I went on a weekend getaway to celebrate our 5 year anniversary. We were sitting by the ocean, relaxing and having a good time. I was reading a book, and on finishing a chapter I looked over at my partner with tears in my eyes. I started to explain why I was crying, and then I stopped and laughed. He asked me why I was laughing. I responded, “I just realized that I don’t need to explain my tears to you. It’s not new for you to look over at me and find tears in my eyes.” I’ve come a long way from hiding my tears. This was such a profound moment of realizing how vulnerable I have allowed myself to become. And that is a good thing!

What's one song that makes you cry like a baby every time?

For me, it's "Wonderful" by Everclear.

This song takes me back to when I was growing up - those late elementary into early high school days. It was my crying song. I put it on when I was sad and angry. When I was tired and fed up with being told that everything was going to be okay when it wasn’t.

I felt lied to and betrayed, and this song perfectly summed up my feelings. More than anything, I needed to have my experience and pain validated.

That’s exactly what the song did for me. I felt seen and because of that I felt a little less alone.

Music became really important to me during this time. It was the one place I could go to have my experience validated. It actually became a point of tension between my parents and me, because they didn’t know how to see and validate my experience, but the music did.

Today, it makes me cry because as I listen to it, I think of little Elizabeth (I went by my full name then) and all she had to carry. But the truly wonderful thing is, the grown-up me gets to look back and tell her that everything did turn out okay. That we learned how to take care of ourself, how to love yourself, and we found healing. 

That she doesn’t have to carry this all by herself her whole life. That things change, for the better, because of her determination, because of her compassion, because of her resilience.

This song is a reminder of that for me.

Ready to Join the Vulnerability Challenge?

If you’re ready to start your own journey toward embracing your emotions and finding a deeper understanding of yourself, I’d love for you to join me! The Vulnerability Challenge starts in September. Sign up below!