Sometimes I have tried to stop them from flowing. I think this reaction is more about not wanting to make a companion uncomfortable or about feeling judged as being weak. I know I’m not alone. Except for showing grief at a funeral, strong displays of emotion are generally frowned upon. Boys aren’t supposed to cry. And women who cry – they’re labeled as too sensitive.

When tears have formed in my eyes and have rolled down my cheeks, my first reaction is often betrayal. I’ll get upset that my emotions can so easily trump my will when it comes to how I want to show myself to the world. Then there are times when I feel betrayed by an opposite phenomenon, when I want to relieve myself of frustrations or resentments, and I somehow can’t bring myself to cry. I know I’d find some respite in letting things out this way, but sometimes it seems, I’ve already shut the door.

As a feeling and expressive person, I think I’ve taken comfort from Dickens’ words.

“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before–more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.”

This past week, I have been grappling with the subject of tears in a different way. The inner debate over whether they should be restrained or encouraged was not my struggle. The hurts tears could potentially have helped heal were not mine.

One good friend invited me to lunch the other day and shared a personal story, now over a month past being news, about being involved in a car accident – as a pedestrian. She had barely talked to anyone but closest family following the incident and has been giving her full attention to physical therapy, sleeping, and respecting her inclination for solitude. She shared that she couldn’t even remember details of the accident other than to say she was glad to be alive and felt grateful that neither the driver of the car that hit her nor a witness who came forward to help the police abandoned her while she waited for the ambulance.

She relayed how just talking about the accident made her cry and she didn’t know why. She didn’t want to cry. She told me she couldn’t remember much and took her inability to recall the details as a signal to back off, as an alarm that she was not ready to unravel some things yet.

I talked to another friend earlier this week that was in the throes of a depression. She confessed that she felt like crying all the time. She had undergone quadruple bypass surgery just weeks ago and still had a lot to process. She’s dealing with physical discomfort, frustration over how her medical team handled her, financial stresses, and not having family around to help her manage daily activities.

Wow, I couldn’t do anything in either case to make my friends feel better except to respect their individual relationship with crying.

I noticed my impulse to want to encourage my friend who was in the car accident to cry and then to follow her tears to the source of what she was holding in, but I realized she already felt too vulnerable to take this trip. Not now. And I listened to my other friend, in starts and stops, express her fears and worries between sobs.

One wanted to be alone until she regained her strength and confidence. The other friend, I think, was overwhelmed by how alone she felt when being alone was the last thing she wanted. She may have been comforted, to some extent, by me simply witnessing her tears.

My respect for tears has only grown. People may let them flow or may hold them back.  Although tears have been referred to as “God’s way of cleansing the heart,” I can see their power in a more direct way.

Robert Herrick, a 17^th century English cleric said, “Tears are the noble language of eyes, and when true love of words is destitute, the eye, by tears, speak while the tongue is mute.”

Tears are a language that can express things words cannot approximate. Letting them flow or not is like making a declaration or deciding to rely on the eloquence of silence. That tears can speak in such a way is no small thing.

Photo:  Our Lady of Syracuse: Source unknown