I always think as women we have been brought up not to be angry/shout/cause a scene and so that energy has to go somewhere. I once had a big row with a more senior colleague and was so angry I started crying.
After he’d exclaimed “I don’t need to be dealing with such drama”, through continued breathy sobs, I shouted “these are not tears. This is anger coming out of my eyes as water. We are going to ignore this and keep going till it’s sorted”. Eek. By the end of the meeting he’d apologised, and we had a great working relationship after that!
Now, as an HR leader, who mentors many women, I encourage them to never apologise for crying. It’s better than a shouty man!
Hey Jo great article - your tears are few and far between, mine are, shall we say, more frequent…and it’s a trait my girls have inherited. I cry a lot. And I’ve been told more than once that my tears make other people uncomfortable. And yet in the same contradictory breath they say, ‘oh it’s good to cry, to let it all out’, but I don’t see them doing it. I think people think I’m realllly upset when I cry, but actually it’s like the release valve on a pressure cooker, sometimes unless I cry I can literally think of nothing else. I go quiet, inward, incapable, but once it’s done, more or less I can swiftly move on.
When my girls ask me why they cry when other people don’t, I don’t really have an answer other than what your boss said to you. It’s because they care. We care. This week I nearly cried in a meeting because I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to produce the work my colleagues needed. I turned off my camera. Sat quiet for a minute, tried to suck it up. And luckily, my boss, like yours, picked up on that. The next morning she rang me to check I understood the brief. She spelled out what I needed to do. She talked me down from my overwhelm. The work still needed completing but I moved away from feeling afraid to feeling like I could get it done.
I don’t think I’ll ever stop being a crier. But instead of being embarrassed, as I was as a child, teenager, adult, now in my ‘crone years’ I’m finding it easier to accept that tears are part of me. They’re the dilution of my spiky side, the rejoicing in the lovely, the soothing of my own sad.
Your writing always arrives in my inbox at the right time. Thank you.
This is just the most true explanation of why I cried last week at work... I may just email the below to the colleagues who had to witness it.
“When I cry, it usually happens at a point where I’ve been denying myself permission to feel something and my body’s had enough of the denial. It’s like the feeling needs to get out and if I’ve sat on it and squashed it and yelled at it to stay in that little box right at the bottom of my heart, eventually it’s going to explode out of me. Out of my eyes.”
I always think as women we have been brought up not to be angry/shout/cause a scene and so that energy has to go somewhere. I once had a big row with a more senior colleague and was so angry I started crying.
After he’d exclaimed “I don’t need to be dealing with such drama”, through continued breathy sobs, I shouted “these are not tears. This is anger coming out of my eyes as water. We are going to ignore this and keep going till it’s sorted”. Eek. By the end of the meeting he’d apologised, and we had a great working relationship after that!
Now, as an HR leader, who mentors many women, I encourage them to never apologise for crying. It’s better than a shouty man!
Loved the article. Thank you for sharing.
Hey Jo great article - your tears are few and far between, mine are, shall we say, more frequent…and it’s a trait my girls have inherited. I cry a lot. And I’ve been told more than once that my tears make other people uncomfortable. And yet in the same contradictory breath they say, ‘oh it’s good to cry, to let it all out’, but I don’t see them doing it. I think people think I’m realllly upset when I cry, but actually it’s like the release valve on a pressure cooker, sometimes unless I cry I can literally think of nothing else. I go quiet, inward, incapable, but once it’s done, more or less I can swiftly move on.
When my girls ask me why they cry when other people don’t, I don’t really have an answer other than what your boss said to you. It’s because they care. We care. This week I nearly cried in a meeting because I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to produce the work my colleagues needed. I turned off my camera. Sat quiet for a minute, tried to suck it up. And luckily, my boss, like yours, picked up on that. The next morning she rang me to check I understood the brief. She spelled out what I needed to do. She talked me down from my overwhelm. The work still needed completing but I moved away from feeling afraid to feeling like I could get it done.
I don’t think I’ll ever stop being a crier. But instead of being embarrassed, as I was as a child, teenager, adult, now in my ‘crone years’ I’m finding it easier to accept that tears are part of me. They’re the dilution of my spiky side, the rejoicing in the lovely, the soothing of my own sad.
Really enjoying these articles! Thanks for the insight.
Your writing always arrives in my inbox at the right time. Thank you.
This is just the most true explanation of why I cried last week at work... I may just email the below to the colleagues who had to witness it.
“When I cry, it usually happens at a point where I’ve been denying myself permission to feel something and my body’s had enough of the denial. It’s like the feeling needs to get out and if I’ve sat on it and squashed it and yelled at it to stay in that little box right at the bottom of my heart, eventually it’s going to explode out of me. Out of my eyes.”