On Sobbing
Things I sobbed about this week (an abbreviated list):
Elizabeth Warren not being president
my Christmas tree falling over half a dozen times, several times on top of me
not having a husband to properly set up said Christmas tree
unaffordable childcare
people not letting me sob
Injustice, exhaustion, hormones, bliss. So many experiences in my life carve out a space for tears.
Sobbing feels like coming home. Short of breath, talking-too-fast cries shed a skin for me—a rebirth in the water. Not a barrier to the next right thing but a bridge. My tears leave me wrung out like a dishcloth—done with my work, resting, ready for my next job.
I am feelings.
a pitcher.
a finite container which holds what I see in the world. Each feeling a splash of water into my small frame.
“You cannot give from an empty well,” they say. They seem to miss how precarious an overfilled watering pot can be. Tip it ever so slightly and … too much water in the well makes a mess.
Maybe what some of us need is not a filling up but a pouring out. Maybe what we need is not someone to pour into us but someone to catch everything spilling out of us.
“It’s too much,” she says gently. She’s not in a hurry. She’s called to hear my sobs. She doesn’t rush to the positive, trying to fill me when what I need is to toss my feelings out like bathwater into the yard. She doesn’t think my feelings are dirty, but she knows they need some sunlight. She has seen that my little pitcher will shatter with the pressure if someone doesn’t cup their hands and let me empty myself.
I am learning to not apologize for spilling myself. Trying to see my full feelings as sacred. Finding the trustworthy tear-catchers. The people quiet as my sobs are loud.
She lets me word vomit every horrible thing through tears, every so often affirming the weight with one or two words. She doesn’t feel like I do, but she knows my feelings are a good part of me. She knows that this spilling over is keeping the world together.
My sobs are only mine, but I have held these things for many. I am making a place for pain, for celebration, for injustice, for hope, for a different way. I am a container for the expanse of the world. I am a safe, fiery vessel for the human experience, collecting the spread-out grief and goodness. Tiny beads of water easily ignored gathered into an unignorable ocean. My feelings containing the power of Poseidon, pressing us forward
but capable of drowning me as well.
My sobs don’t last forever. It’s a holy gift that even my feelings are finite.
After sobbing, we go to bed or take a bath or eat some food. We do the basic most human things. We feel our bodies. The vessels for the world’s feelings. We patch up the cracks that the pressure created. We take a day to sit on the couch with our dog. We breathe deep, our lungs expanding our capacity to hold the world again.
And then, we show up empty. We come wide-eyed and tenderhearted. Arms open, sitting down to listen. We give the gift of space to the world. Drop by drop by drop.