Yes, tears are sacred expression.
It's amazing to me that women come to a circle that is premised on allowing vulnerability...and STILL apologize for our tears. It's so beaten into us that we need to excuse our emotions, like an uninvited guest we didn't mean to drag into the room and now must conceal in a hidden corner. When and how did we learn that our tears were weakness? When did we learn that feeling was a burden to others?
When did the holy water of tears become evidence that we are "broken", that we are "a mess"? When a woman cries, she baptizes herself into another layer of inner truth. Opening the gate of the heart can look exactly like the falling of tears.
Tears don't mean you are broken. They mean you are alive.
We have the impulse to apologize for our tears because some part of us has internalized a culture that devalues tenderness. A culture that has asked us to divide ourselves from our embodied knowing and just "keep it together." We have been taught to fear our vulnerability - that it means we won't be safe or respected or welcome here. We've been taught to fear our feelings because they are so powerful. Being vulnerable can feel dangerous, like risking too much. In fact...really feeling into our feelings may break our world open.
Feeling means you are alive, and sensing, and your body is working. It means you are getting to the heart of the matter - to the heart of what matters. Come on, this living stuff is fragile and painful and joyful and impossibly beautiful because of it. Our tears are a gift we share that say, I'm here.
Being intact with your own stirrings and your ability to listen, to follow and to express them - yes tears are expression, sacred expression - is a way to come by life honest in this world.
If enough women restored our connection with our inner knowing, we might just break this whole world open.
Inside of each of us is an archetypal Athena, who has survived by wearing her armor. It has protected her and aided her in navigating a world that was not created in her shape, one that trampled the gifts of her instinctual nature. She has adapted, succeeded and even achieved great things inside of the cultural context she was born into. We must honor her strength, but she's also forsaken something raw and inherent at the very core of her.
Athena invites us to recollect the parts of our Feminine nature that we have severed ourselves off from, the parts we have pushed down or denied. The parts that yearn to be brought back and made whole again. She invites us to rediscover and reveal what strength really is. She invites us to take off the armor that has divided us from ourselves, from connection with our soft and wild body, from connection to our hearts and the wisdom borne in our bodies.
We will meet Athena at the Myths of Feminine Mystery Retreat with Melanie Champagne from Sept 26th - Oct 1st, 2019 at Seven Springs in Tennessee. We will meet more of ourselves, through the invitation she holds for us. Much love xo Aimee