I cry.

My experiences have felt so fragile this last month that I have retreated into myself. It's become increasingly difficult to externalize where I am on my path, as sometimes I am not sure I have a clue. Thus, the silence. Oh, the silence has been good to me... I'd rather be silent than dishonest, or insincere, I think.

On my plane to Perth, Australia, a little girl wailed the entire flight. It was anything but a cry. It was as if this two years old girl was mourning death; loud, piercing, aching screams. At times I became frightened, and closed my eyes and reminded myself to breathe deeply. Her wails made it seem like the metal we were in was descending, like she might know something.

I don't think I have ever heard a child cry like this - and certainly not for three hours straight. Her throat must have been raw, and I know crying can be exhausting. While it became familiar and less alarming, I began to observe the sounds with a sense of curiosity. What compels a child to cry like this? I don't think she was in physical pain. Her parents didn't seem stressed, just really really really amazingly patient and calm. Maybe she was processing something, maybe it was an expression, maybe her ears were popping and the pressure in her head was unfamiliar.

I started to think about crying. I have so much ego around crying. I've been working hard on getting past that for years, y-e-a-r-s, because my intellectual side understands that holding back my emotions is not healthy for my spiritual anatomy. However, it's so, so, so freaking challenging. Whether we recognize the unfortunate affect it has on us, our society favours the concept of strength vs softness. We confuse courage with picking up arms, and cowardice with laying them down.

However, that is a learned concept. It's a construct of external conditioning. And because babies and young children have yet to grasp this concept, there is no shame around it. They wail, they sob, they release. And since I believe that at birth we are closer to our elevated selves, I wonder if there is something to this. I wonder if we, as adults, could also benefit from wailing, sobbing, crying - more often. I think about all the times I swallow my tears, or my hurt, or my pain, and I wonder now ... where in my body did you go pain, hurt, and un-cried tears?What organ, what part of me now carries this burden?