down with the ugly cry

No more “ugly cry” talk, please. I find that language so demeaning...to us as human beings and to the sacredness of our tears. I get that it’s slang. Hip terminology that Kim Kardashian (insert eye roll here) and Oprah have helped make popular. And that we don’t “mean” anything by it. But language has meaning. Our word choice matters. There is nothing ugly about crying, nor about us when we cry. 

• When you cry because your neighbor’s dear old dog died, it’s because you cared about the dog, and you care about your neighbor.
  
  
• When you cry because you’ve got a new boss who’s not so nice and it changes how you feel about going to work every day, it’s because you’re sad...and mad...and scared.
  
  
• When you cry because you see a darling boy who loves Broadway get the “golden buzzer” on a popular talent show competition, it’s because you feel his vulnerability & his talent deep down and it’s so nice to watch something positive on television.

All of these tears, referred to recently as "ugly cries" by people I know and love and maybe even by me, are really quite the opposite. They're tears of beauty, and to paraphrase Washington Irving, tears of power, eloquence, grief, contrition, and "unspeakable love."

I get that sometimes when we cry really hard, our makeup washes away and our noses run and our faces may turn blotchy and red and our eyes may look like oh, that's right, we've been CRYING. None of that is ugly; it's human, and it comes from our most beautiful body part: our hearts.

So, please, keep telling me what moves you; what speaks to you so deeply that tears form in your eyes and cascade down your cheeks. Call it sobbing, say you "bawled your eyes out",  tell me you wailed like there was no tomorrow, but please don't tell me you ugly cried. You're way too beautiful for that. xoxo

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