If I Don’t Cry, Am I Really Grieving?

Last week, Dan Verhasselt shared something remarkable. After forty years of not crying and a lifetime of absorbing some version of, “Don’t cry. Be strong. Be a man.” he found himself weeping during a massage after the death of his wife, Sandy. For Dan, those tears mattered. They gave him a release he had not been able to find anywhere else, and afterward he described feeling less anxiety, less tightness in his chest, and a little more like himself again.

Then Lila wrote to me.

Her husband, Ken, died, and unlike Dan, she does not cry. In fact, she cannot remember crying at any point in her life. And after reading Dan’s story, she found herself wondering:

“I still grieve for Ken but I can grieve without crying. Now I wonder if I am really grieving?”

And there it is. The should. I should be crying. If I really loved him, shouldn’t I cry? If I am grieving correctly, shouldn’t grief look like…grief? We managed to take an article designed to free people from one rule—Real men don’t cry—and accidentally created another one: Real grieving people do.

Nope.

Don’t should on yourself.

Tears Are Not a Grief-O-Meter

Tears are one way grief expresses itself. They can be powerful, physical, uncontrollable, cathartic, embarrassing, relieving, exhausting—and occasionally triggered by an animated fish looking for his father. But they are not a measuring device. We cannot look at someone crying at a funeral and calculate the depth of their love, and we cannot look at someone who remains dry-eyed and conclude there must not be much grief underneath. Love does not come with a tear gauge.

Some people cry easily. Some rarely cry. Some cry when they are angry but not when they are sad. Some will make it through the funeral, the burial, the luncheon, the thank-you notes, and six months of life without shedding a tear, then lose it because they find a grocery receipt in an old coat pocket. And some may never cry at all.

Grief does not come with a prescription. There are probably as many ways to carry grief as there are stars in the sky, because grief grows out of a relationship, and no two relationships are exactly alike…though if you watch enough Hallmark holiday movies, you might think otherwise.

Here Come the Shoulds Again

Grief has an impressive ability to turn almost anything into a test we think we are failing. I should be crying more. I should be crying less. I should be stronger. I should be falling apart. I should be ready to go back to work. I should not be laughing yet. I should want to talk about them. I should be able to clean out the closet. I should be doing better by now. And now, apparently:

I should be grieving like Dan.

This is why I keep coming back to a phrase somebody once shared in one of my grief groups: “Don’t should on yourself.” Dan’s tears were right for Dan. Lila’s lack of tears is not evidence that something is wrong with Lila. The question is not whether your grief looks like somebody else’s. The question is whether you are giving yourself enough room to experience whatever your grief actually is.

That may include tears. It may include talking endlessly about the person you love. It may look like silence, prayer, work, walking, storytelling, anger, laughter, exhaustion, forgetfulness, sitting in the car because you are not quite ready to walk into an empty house, or reaching for your phone before remembering there is nobody there to call. Grief has a lot of languages. Crying is only one of them.

Permission Works Both Ways

This was really the point of Dan’s story, and it is worth making clearer. Dan had spent decades believing he was not allowed to cry. When he finally did, something opened for him.

The lesson is not: You should cry. The lesson is: You are allowed to.

And permission works both ways. If you cry, you do not have to apologize for it, hide it, wipe your face quickly so everybody else feels more comfortable, or prove that you still have yourself under control. If you do not cry, you do not need to manufacture tears to prove that you loved somebody enough. You do not have to cry to prove that you are grieving. You do not have to stop crying to prove that you are strong. Your grief does not have to look like anybody else’s to be real.

Remember

Grief has many languages. Crying is only one of them.

One Step Forward

Listen for the word should in the way you talk to yourself about grief this week.

I should feel…

I should be…

I should have…

When you catch yourself, stop and ask:

Who decided that?

Then try replacing the should with something more gracious, grounded and true:

This is what my grief looks like today. Tomorrow may be different.

Consider This

Whose grief have you been using as a measuring stick for your own?

Until next week, remember: tears can be part of grief, but they are not proof of grief. There is no prize for crying and no prize for keeping it together.

Love is not measured in tears, or anything else for that matter. In fact, how could anyone put a measure on love?

Peace,

Tom