Why I cry

 I wrote an email to one of my professors.  She is more than amazing; she is intense and yet compassionate she sees you.  She sees me as a person, and she notices oh how she notices. There are times when she is explaining something and she gets it, she has an understanding about hard things in life.  There are many times in class that the tears come.  They are not sad tears they are grateful tears, to be seen, to be understood.  For someone to experience things so deeply is something I often cannot even put words to.  She does that for me she has an understanding.  She notices those small tears and truly makes a difference. She talks about doing your own work and has an understanding of the finiteness of life. I always say that I want to become the care that I never got, and having her as my teacher, is giving me the tools to do that.  I am truly grateful for her.  Someday I hope to share the incredible difference that she has made and will continue to make for me.  She is funny and fierce and everything caring. I heart your heart. 

I think that I am learning that I cry because I am grateful to be where I am.  I am grateful to be heard and understood.  I am grateful that I get the chance to cry these tears and make a difference for others. I think I am finally at a place where the tears have to be ok.  Do I have work to do of course, do I cry too much maybe. But the life that I have lived the life I have survived I have a very real right to cry these grateful happy tears.  

At the conference this Summer, one woman said that she was worried about me because of the tears, and I think oh my friend you are missing the point, be worried if I can no longer cry.  Be worried if I get up there happy like everything is fine.  No, I cannot be anything other than me.  Those things hurt; those things could have killed me.  It is in the moments of music or words that I can reach places that I never could any other way.  There was recently an interview with Andrew Garfield.  He was reading a piece, and he began to cry.   The interviewer asked why this was hitting him so hard and he said." This is why art is so important.  Because it can get us to the places that we can't get to any other way. " Let that sink in so very powerful. I cry because I am alive, because terrible things happened to me and yet here, I still stand making a difference and doing things that no one ever expected. I cry because things mater because niceness, genuineness and trueness make a difference.  

I feel everything on such a deep level that it's hard to describe.  I never remember feeling anything differently.  It was deeply or not at all.  In this profession I will find the happy medium. I will find my place.  As I work on getting there the tears will flow, happy, sometimes sad.  Always from a place of compassion and heart. 

I hear your heart.