The Gift of the Ugly Cry

Writing helps me heal. And crying. This story is about both—and the surprising magic that followed one very ugly cry in 1975.

Writing is so cathartic for me. Sometimes I write because I’m feeling really dark and moody and sad. And almost always end with feeling almost euphoric. It’s like I process everything while writing. Been doing this my whole life. As a teenager, I would write and write and write and then come out feeling good at the end. My folks couldn’t keep up with the amount of paper I went through.

It’s almost like how a good cry can make it all better.

I remember when I moved to Calgary in 1975 at age 19. I was living at the YWCA until I got situated, meaning a job and a place to live. Well, money was quickly running out, and I had no job yet. I was getting scared that I would have to go home. Admit to everyone that I couldn’t make it on my own. That I had failed.

So what did I do? Well, after a particularly tough day of job hunting with no prospects in sight, I went back to my small rather dingy room and did what any scared kid would do who was away from home for the first time - I cried and cried and cried until I had no tears left in me. And after all the sobbing, because it was sobs not just crying but big sobs, I fell asleep. I woke up about an hour later feeling totally refreshed. Well, let’s get ‘er dunne. Time to get a job. So, I washed my tear-stained face, put my best dress on and went back out and wouldn’t you know it - I got a job! Just like that!! Oh my goodness, I guess I needed to release all of my angst. And since I didn’t have a boyfriend, I didn’t have any other way of releasing my tension - wink wink!!

And today, in reading the book From Strength to Strength by Arthur C. Brooks, he mentions the interview Anderson Cooper did with Stephen Colbert. Sadly, at age 10, Colbert lost his father and 2 of his brothers in a plane crash. And Colbert said of this tragedy that he had learned to “love the thing that I most wish had not happened. It’s a gift to exist, and with existence comes suffering.” He continued, “I don’t want it to have happened…but if you are grateful for your life…then you have to be grateful for all of it. You can’t pick and choose what you’re grateful for.”

Huh.

None of us wants bad things to happen to us or to others. But it inevitably will. No one gets out unscathed. We all have sadness and grief in our lives. And if we look closely enough, our lives will balance out with love and happiness.

So, I’ve left my moody, rather sad ramblings on the cutting floor in favour of this. I prefer Colbert’s take on how to look at unimaginable grief.