Is Crying Good for you? I Cry All the Time and I’m F*cking Great

Before we begin — and after giving myself a well-deserved pat on the back for choosing such a clever song to open this post — I had a thought: Lesley Gore sings this song, but who wrote it?

Turns out, four men did (Songfacts, n.d.).

Legend has it, the inspiration came from one of the writers’ daughters, Judy (American Songwriter, 2023).

Judy didn’t want to invite her grandparents to her Sweet 16, but was told she had to. So Judy started to cry. Her father told her to stop crying, and Judy — bless her cotton socks — shot back, “It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to.”

Judy: a crying crusader since ’62.

Okay, let’s dig in.

An Ode to Crying

I cry all the time, and I’ve never been happier.

A super smart friend of mine recently told me that crying releases cortisol — you know, the stress hormone that makes your body freak out about traffic and taxes and the dinging sound of a Slack message after close of business. Apparently, science backs this up: emotional tears literally help flush cortisol and other stress chemicals out of your system (Harvard Health, 2021; Medical News Today, 2023). So yeah, crying is kind of nature’s detox.

But I didn’t always know that. Most of my life, I was told to stop crying.

“Why are you crying?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Don’t cry.”

It was like everyone thought tears were a symptom of malfunction — that something had gone wrong with me. So I learned early on that crying was bad. That something must be broken inside if tears showed up.

Is Crying Good for You? (Spoiler: Yes, Duh.)

Now that I’m older — and have cried approximately 47 times just this week — I can say with complete confidence that crying is actually amazing for you (Verywell Mind, 2023). It’s not a weakness. It’s not drama. It’s not “too emotional.”

Crying is your body’s way of metabolizing emotion.
It’s emotional digestion.

When you cut that process off — when you hold it in, choke it down, slap on a smile — the feeling doesn’t disappear. It gets stuck somewhere inside you, swirling around looking for an exit (PsychCentral, 2022).

And when those emotions have nowhere to go, they turn into something else. For me, they turned into coping mechanisms. Eating disorder. Alcohol. Drugs. Men. Shopping. Sometimes all of the above.

But what I was really doing was managing my own pain because I hadn’t learned how to let it leave me — or knew that the portal out was through my tears.

The Sacred Science of Tears

Crying is sacred now. It’s how I move through things instead of around them.

When I cry, I feel the pressure inside me soften. I can feel my nervous system exhale. I can feel myself unclench from the inside out.

On the other side of those tears, there’s always relief (Gračanin et al., 2014).

Now, when something hurts, I let it. I don’t try to fix it, numb it, or pretty it up. I let myself cry because I trust that those tears are doing the work my body needs (Michigan State University Extension, 2020).

So Please Stop Telling Me to Stop Crying

Every time you tell someone, “Don’t cry,” you’re telling them to hold on to what hurts. You’re telling them to store pain in their body instead of letting it out (TIME, 2016).

What if instead, we said, “Cry if you need to.” Or better yet, “I’ll sit with you while you do.”

Because crying isn’t a sign that something’s wrong — it’s a sign that something’s moving.

Final Verse

So yes — I cry all the time. In the car. In the shower. On hiking trails. And I’m fucking great.

My tears aren’t breakdowns anymore — they’re breakthroughs. They’re little love letters from my body saying,
“Hey, I’m still here. Let’s keep healing.”

My gift to you: a research-backed article you can send to anyone who tells you to stop crying or invalidates your tears.

Okay, one more offering — I can’t help myself. If the moment calls for it, gently say, with tear-filled eyes and a quivering lip, “Please don’t minimize my process because you can’t hold it.” This is strictly inspirational, not a directive.

And thank you for the inspiration, Tracey.

Sources

• American Songwriter. “Behind the Song: ‘It’s My Party’ by Lesley Gore.” (2023).

• Songfacts. “It’s My Party by Lesley Gore.” (n.d.).

• Harvard Health Publishing. “Is Crying Good for You?” (2021).

• Medical News Today. “What Are the Benefits of Crying?” (2023)

• Verywell Mind. “Ways Crying Can Improve Your Mental Health.” (2023).

• PsychCentral. “The Science of Tears.” (2022).

• Gračanin, A. et al. “Is Crying a Self-Soothing Behavior?” Frontiers in Psychology (2014).

• Michigan State University Extension. “Benefits of Crying.” (2020).

• TIME Magazine. “The Science of Crying.” (2016).