Hello, Dear Reader! Welcome to our new Carer Mentor community members!
I’m Victoria. You can read why I’m publishing Carer Mentor here: Who Started Carer Mentor and Why?
In July, A Special Carer Mentor Collaboration had a ‘Jerry Maguire moment. Planning happened in August with our thirteen-strong team. Here we have the full content of …not just our team but also contributions from writers/creators who accepted our invitation to Care About Crying with us!
Please ‘❤️’ LIKE the article
Collaboration Background:
The Carer Mentor Collaboration Premise and Background.
These four articles sparked the ‘Jerry Maguire’ invitation to collaborate.
Don't Be Sad, He Said. Putting the Cancer Grief into a Box by KRISTINA ADAMS WALDORF, MD at After He Said Cancer
Good News! I Cry Pretty Now Progress. . . I Guess By ANNE at The Future Widow
Memorial Planning as a Way to Avoid Grief Processing. I'm not actually recommending it. By ANNA DE LA CRUZ at GenXandwich
Sacred Tears How to be with others as they cry By CHRISTINE VAUGHAN DAVIES at Journeying Alongside
September Anthology Index:
The Caring About Crying Anthology. We All Cry. You’re Not Alone.
Sept 1 Launch article: Caring About Crying. We All Cry. You’re Not Alone By Victoria at Carer Mentor: Empathy and Inspiration
Sept 2 & 14 Crying: 'Did you know?' Resource: Tears the science and some art. By Victoria at Carer Mentor: Empathy and Inspiration
Sept 3 'Cry, Baby. Why Our Tears Matter' A Podcast Interview. Dan Harris and Dr Bianca Harris of Ten Percent Happier with Reverend Benjamin Perry. By Victoria at Carer Mentor: Empathy and Inspiration
Sept 4 ‘In Conversation with Rev. Benjamin Perry’. Victoria interviews the Author of 'Cry Baby: Why Our Tears Matter' By Victoria at Carer Mentor: Empathy and Inspiration
Sept 5 ‘My stoic mom's parting gift. Making peace with tears’ By Sarah Coomber at Sandwich Season
Sept 6 We Invite You to 'Care About Crying'. By Victoria on behalf of the team.
Sept 7 Triggered. Caring About Crying Anthology By Kristina Adams Waldorf, MD at After He Said Cancer and Anne at The Future Widow
Sept 8 'Can't Cry. Want to Cry??' A Caregiver's Paradox of Human-ing. By Victoria at Carer Mentor: Empathy and Inspiration
Sept 9 AWC Town Bulletin - On Crying A Discussion Thread Tiffany Chu bakhtawar
Sept 10 The Healing Power of Tears. How giving myself the permission to cry a good cry helped me process unspeakable pain and lifted me out of deep depression. By Lily Pond
Sept 11 My Tears are not a Grief Gauge. Crying through Ages and Stages By Anna De La Cruz at Gen Xandwich.
Sept 13 Sweet Relief. After He Said Cancer | A Memoir By Kristina Adams Waldorf, MD at After He Said Cancer.
Sept 15 When was the last time you cried in public? Moving from private grief to community healing by Mariah Friend at Heartbeats
Sept 16 Crying While Parenting: A Mindful Approach by Amber Groomes,Ph.D. at Dr. Amber_Writes.
Sept 17 Cry, Baby, Cry By Louisa Wah at Lily Pond
Sept 18 Why we stop crying by Rachel Ooi at Conscious Living
Sept 19 Carer Mentor Collaboration: my cup overfloweth with my tears By Christa Lei (They/Them) at Is This What You Want?
Sept 20 Rain, Drought, Whereabout? An essay on crying, and its impact on those who care. By bakhtawar at Stories and States
Sept. 22 Dark Night of the Soul: How Spiritual Crisis Can Lead to a New Dawn by Christine Vaughan Davies at Journeying Alongside
Sept 24 We Need a Cultural Container to Hold Each Other's Pain and Tears by Louisa Wah at Lily Pond. And thanks to Beverley Dickson for this poem
Sept 25 An Inheritance of Silence. On an heirloom of hushed tears, and rejecting this legacy for the next generation by Tiffany Chu at Notes from the Town Hermit
Sept 27 Why are Queer Tears Not Enough? by christa lei (they/them) at Is This What You Want
Articles shared by readers/authors in the invitation
"Constructive Wallowing: How to Beat Bad Feelings by Letting Yourself Have Them" by Tina Gilbertson
Taylor Coffman (Rare Disease Girl), thanks for sharing the video. Happy tears, and capturing your 'Happy Ever After Moments' (Sept 8)
‘After everything you've been through makes so much sense, and is a great tip for caregivers as well. When I was caring for my Dad, I used to 'memory capture' the moment - use all my senses to imprint the memory. This is how I found 'piercing joy' in the darkest moments’. - Victoria
Neha Dhami wrote this beautiful poem Empathic Echoes: Reflections of the Soul (Sept 7) Tale #16: Reflections of Empathy that explores 'the deep resonance of human connection and the powerful echoes of our shared experiences.'
Dr. Vicki Connop shared this article 'The antidote to depression may not be what you think. Reflections from both sides of the therapy room.' (Feb 25, 2024)
The most powerful antidote to depression may not be what you’ve been led to believe. My decades of working through my own pain, and sitting alongside other people as they navigate theirs, have taught me that we’re often looking for it in the wrong places. It’s not joy, or gratitude or positivity. It’s not exercise or eating well – though these things can undoubtedly be helpful.
The most powerful antidote I’ve found to depression is to fully feel your sadness. Or rage. Or shame.
Does that sound paradoxical?
Louisa shared this article by Susan Frybort. IT'S OKAY TO CRY...It's Okay Not To Cry (Feb 16, 2024). The reflections resonate and match those shared by Reverend Benjamin Perry in our conversation.
It's okay to cry. It’s okay not to cry. It’s alright to take your time and wait for the primary emotion to surface and allow the immediate response to hold the space.
Whatever is coming up for you in the moment works or whatever slowly makes its way out after awhile is valid, too. Because emotional responses can be raw, mixed, complex or have their own method of being known.
Cheyenne Hardy at Cancer Diagnosis has written ‘I Cried In Front of My Patient. And she wrote me a letter.’ This is a touching example of how healthcare professionals are torn in the moment with tears. I’m glad that Cheyenne received such a lovely affirmation of her empathy.
Janine De Tillio Cammarata has written a beautiful poem. Those last lines! My Tears Flow Like a River Wild. Her publication is Pathways of Connection. Tissues, please.
Jeannie Ewing takes us on a journey, sharing her childhood censorship of tears to the relief, release and catharsis she felt delivering her beautiful daughter, Sarah. The day I cried in public again.Tears are not a sign of weakness. They are cathartic, and they heal. I dare you not to be moved by this!
Broadwaybabyto has written this article for the collaboration. I’m bearing witness to all she has to go through. I see you, you don’t need to hide from us! We see you, you’re not alone. All the Tears I Can Not Cry and All The Pain You Will Not See. I'm allergic to my tears - I can't cry. I've become excellent at hiding my pain. But why should we hide it? Why shouldn't we allow people to see our suffering? Ask them to face our disabilities?
Keisha Kokonezi Thank you. Conquering the Battle With My Tears. A Story About Culture & Healing. An eloquent, vulnerable, yet fiercely brave journey of your tears. The words ‘Ancestral pact’ are powerful.
My earliest memories are filled with many stifled tears culled from a multitude of fearful moments and physical or emotional pain. They floated around inside me like scarred over wounds that became imperceptible through the years. My resilience eventually outshining them.
THANK YOU TO EVERYONE INVOLVED AND CONTRIBUTORS!
I hope to share the team’s thoughts and specific highlights on September 30th/soon after.
High-stress, exhausted tears are being shed right now! Thankfully, I can tap into all this empathy! xo
What an important and meaningful initiative, Victoria. I too find it hard to cry. When I need to cry and I can't seem to unleash the healing tears, I listen to certain pieces of music that give me the opening to my emotions that I need. In the days following my Mom's death, I could only cry alone in the car while listening to a song that had the effect of breaking open something inside me that I couldn't allow while in the company of others or attending to the practicalities of planning her celebration of life. And on my recent journey on the Camino, it was a new song gifted by a fellow pilgrim, Forget Me Not by Marianas Trench, that allowed me to release the tears that had been building as I walked those 186 miles in honor of my mother, clutching a vial of her ashes in my pocket and looking for the place in which to give her, and me, a place of rest and contemplation. I found it in a private cove on the Atlantic Coast of northern Portugal, holding hands with my daughter. And the tears were a benediction.
Thanks for sharing all of this Victoria (and for including my piece here). Looking forward to digging into some of the other essays