Squiggle & Heart #9
This week’s Squiggle & Heart is based on something my therapist says to me often. If I’m remembering correctly, her teacher used to say it to her, and perhaps the lineage continues back from there.
The idea is, when I find myself emotional about something - even if it is tiny or hormonally driven or solely personal - to use that opportunity to grieve for the whole world. REALLY cry. Let it really happen. Because if we don’t grieve, collectively, we transmogrify our pain to weaponry. So if you are going to be someone committed to experiencing grief when it arises, then do it not only for yourself, but for everyone, everything, including those who can not.
It was thankfully a brief period of my life in the grand scheme, but during the latter part of college I could not cry. My grandfather was dying of lung cancer, 9/11 had just happened, I was stressed with classes, and scared of the future. I spent my days in the arid, stuck, flatness of depression and my nights shaking from anxiety attacks. It’s comforting to think that perhaps, during this time, some stranger was crying for me - moving through all of our grief when I could not.
There is much to cry for at the moment, and many who are not processing that grief, in multiple ways and for many reasons. I see it in my city - people running red lights, screaming at one another, smoking on subways - all symptoms, I think, of grief unaired. I see it on the world stage - endless cycles of oppression, greed, extraction, and fear - again, I think, rooted in centuries of not feeling through pain.
So if you find yourself moved, whether it be from external sources or personal strife or just the daily challenge of being a human, I invite you to cry for the whole world, as long as you are in a place where that feels safe to do so.
Cry with big breaths and uncomfortable noises.
I give you permission to make it huge, and not apologize for it.
And, when it is done, I give you permission to move on to whatever your next moment is. That moment might be boredom, or anger, or joy. Don’t miss it or judge it whatever it is. The letting go is as important as the doing, and your joy just as valuable.
Thanks, in advance, for your help.