Oh, Good (birthday) Grief!

a double posting day cuz it's my birthday!

I sat down to write about feelings I was having around my thirty-seventh birthday approaching. I expected it to be a fairly simple and easy endeavor, but as I began writing it was clear that there was more to unpack than I initially anticipated. I kept returning to my google doc where the draft of this post lived, like journal entries. Making sense of my feelings entry by entry. Processing if you will. Still processing to be honest. The point of sharing always, is to make someone else feel less alone on their own journey. I hope I’m able to do that. Thanks for being here! And in case you haven’t heard it yet today, you are so deeply loved. 

Wednesday, April 10th, 2024

Over the speakers I’m playing Spotify’s Peaceful Piano playlist as my husband crunches down on wheat thins and hummus, and my dog snores with such freedom on the couch, you’d swear he worked the longest day at an office. The symphony of Matthew’s chewing, Korey’s snout, and the peaceful piano is lulling me into a sleep of sorts, standing at my desk typing this. But then I’m interrupted by a notification on my phone. The brightness of the light brings me back to consciousness. It’s a former lover’s birthday. I attract a lot of Aries folx. Or I am attracted to them. Not just sexually. A lot of my best friends are Aries. It’s been a busy birthday season!

So, I pick up my phone, lower the brightness, and then debate sending a Happy Birthday text. This particular lover and I didn’t end in the best of ways. His fault. “Fault” feels like a hard word. His doing. After a few months of seeing each other regularly, he ended things over text. Citing that it’s him, not me. I’ve experienced people ghosting me when they feel like they’re getting too attached. When they’re feeling like they want more from me, but aren’t able to get it because I have a husband. Typical hurdles of non-monogamy. People have a misconception that when you’re partnered your heart can’t break. Or your heart doesn’t deserve to break. But I thought this guy would be different. Not that we’d magically be together forever in a perfect polycule, but that we’d be sure to take care of each other's hearts if things needed to end. He took care of his. And in my response, I also took care of his. Thanking him for at the very least communicating. When you’ve been ghosted by people you care about, sometimes you lower the bar on what an appropriate break up is. Or I did. So does he deserve a Happy Birthday text from me? I don’t know what “deserve” means in this web of lovers, feelings, and things. There’s no blueprint on how to navigate this, but he did invite me to his birthday party. I didn’t go, but I was touched by the invitation. Irritated also. Because do you go to the birthday party of a former lover who ended things with you over text? Or do you tell him to fuck off?  I wrestle with the “higher” and “lower” versions of myself in these moments. The girlie raised in the borough of Queens, by three Black queens–mother, grandmother, godmother– who never took shit from no man, and the girlie who wakes up between 5 and 6 am most mornings to meditate, journal, and create intentions for the day (something I also learned in my household of Black queens). I followed my heart, and crafted a short text. Happy birthday *heart emoji* He replied almost immediately, with gratitude. And then I deleted his birthday from my calendar. Tu-huh! No need to be reminded in the years to come. After deleting his, I swiped through the weeks, to see if there were any other birthdays coming up that needed to be deleted or acknowledged. I swiped until April turned to May. My birthday month. 

My thirty-seventh, fast approaching. Birthdays always make me pause and reflect on what was, what is, and what I hope will be. Of the thirty-six I’ve had so far, a few of them were wonderful, and a few of them were unbearable. I always find it interesting that, at least for me, there’s very little ability to tell what birthday vibes I’m going to have until about two months before. In that two month range, things really make themselves clear. All those goals I set the year before. All the things I said I wanted to do, see, be–will I have accomplished or made strides, or did another year go by with dreams for myself still unrealized? 

Recently an old friend from New York was visiting LA, and we went on an afternoon cookie date at Levain Bakery on Larchmont Blvd–a bougie LA neighborhood. She had just celebrated her birthday (another Aries), and expressed that birthdays never really meet her expectations so she tries not to put weight on them. I am the complete opposite. I have two favorite holidays–New Year’s and my muthafuckin birthday! I’m a sucker for new chapters. For new beginnings. For rebirths. Birthdays can feel like a rebirth. They can also feel like tumbling face first off a cliff with no harness or rope. Those birthdays are…sad. 

Sad, a small word that holds enough power to uproot one’s entire sense of self and reality. 

On my twenty-ninth birthday, I had been in Los Angeles for almost eight months, and pursuing my career professionally for eight years. I sent out email invitations for a birthday dinner, and within minutes, dread set in. I sent another email canceling. I responded to the responses of concerns that came pouring in from my friends, that I confused dates, and would actually be on a trip. Truthfully, it felt like there was nothing to celebrate. It was about to be seven years since graduating college to pursue acting, eight months in LA, and I still hadn’t achieved my goal of being a series regular on a fuckin Shonda Rhimes series. Like in my mind, I was finally gonna make the move to LA, and Shonda was gonna write this part where Dr. Burke (who left the show in 2007) has a child he doesn’t know about (me!) who shows up as a resident looking to meet him, but instead finds Christina Yang (Sandra Oh), and she becomes the parent I always needed. Like, bitch, can’t you see the season arc?! The tears. The rage. The breakthroughs. The Emmys! But truthfully that dream died when Sandra Oh left the show in 2014. It’s now 2016, I’m turning twenty-nine, and I’m not on Grey’s Anatomy, so of course I have to ask the question, what the fuck am I doing with my life? Clearly this brutal line of questioning wasn’t about Grey’s Anatomy. It was my career as a whole. I was getting close to things, or booking things that didn’t go anywhere, or sitting and waiting for my agent to call with any kind of news. My progress toward these dreams of mine felt immeasurable, so I’m asking “what the fuck am I doing with my life” which is the easiest way to activate a spiral of self-critiquing, self-ridicule, and self-destruction. 

I got through it though. May 20th, 2016 came and went. Lasted only twenty-fours hours, as always. Suddenly I was a year older, still not cast on Grey’s Anatomy, but alive and capable of pursuing my dreams. Success eventually came, and I learned the hard lesson, that there’s still no guarantee of what the birthday vibes will be. Probably because career success is not the key to happiness. With as much Oprah as I’ve watched, as many self-help books as I’ve read, the amount of celebrity documentaries I’ve consumed, I should know that. Like, you can accomplish your goals, have dreams come true, and still there will be more goals and more dreams to chase. And still you might have a contentious relationship with your family. Still might live in a world that demands too much of you. Still might not feel like you’re enough. 

I’ve had some stellar birthday dinners and trips since canceling the one for my twenty-ninth. But here I am, a little over a month before my thirty-seventh, and babe, the vibes are low. Theoretically, all I want is to throw ass and eat a dozen chocolate chip cookies from Levain bakery, but my spirit is not in the mood. Stuck on dreams I had for myself that haven’t manifested. That, coupled with the wisdom to know I have no control over it. I can’t just will them into being. I can’t force them into being. I can’t make myself perfect to bring them into being. That even if I had manifested my dreams, there’d be more dreams to chase. Satisfaction, always slightly out of reach. All of it has me anticipating this is gonna be a sad birthday. 

Tuesday, April 16th, 2024

Yesterday, while I was standing at my computer, building this Substack site, figuring out my writing flow for the next few months, Matthew came up behind me as he does, and gave me a gentle kiss on my shoulder. I, without moving my eyes from my computer said, “I love you”. He, like always, responded, “I love you too.” The way he said it compelled me to share something that had been on my mind for a week or so. Something that was unprocessed, but I knew he’d be able to hear and hold. Maybe he’d be able to use his husband and therapist brain to help me process. “I think I’m depressed”. He sat down on the arm of the couch by my desk. “Tell me more”, he said. I was in work mode, so I kept typing away while trying to explain my feelings. Feelings of not wanting to be social. Not wanting to see many people. But also wishing that I did. While also acknowledging there’s been a lot of change in life recently. He said, “it sounds like grief.” As a writer and recovering perfectionist, I love when a word fits perfectly. Whenever I’m writing, I’ll often sit and labor over words, testing different ones out to make sure I’m saying exactly what I want to say. That it elicits the exact emotion I want it to. I know a word fits by the way my body perks up, and the sigh of relief my nervous system exhales as it settles into the new language it's discovered. Grief.

But what exactly was I grieving?

I’ve been estranged from my mother for what will be fifteen years this fall. We’ve spoken a few sentences to each other during that time, but nothing of substance. She became a Born-again Christian shortly after my minister grandmother passed away (almost fifteen years ago) and took issue with my sexual orientation. A turning point in our relationship was an afternoon my mother stopped by the apartment I was sharing with my partner at the time, for what I thought was a usual hang. Instead of us sipping tea and keeping each other company in a world where grandma no longer resided, my mother took twenty minutes to read me all the Bible verses that state homosexuality is a sin. After which, she promptly left, leaving me in the dust of her Born-again Christian tracks. Following that day, whenever we would get on the phone, she’d break into prayer for me to marry a woman. She developed an impressive ability to turn a conversation–could be about the weather, what I was eating for dinner, or even Beyoncé– into a sales pitch for giving my life to Christ and repenting for my homosexuality. No matter how many times I asked for us to agree to disagree, she stated that because I was her “child” it was her duty as a mother, to let me know what I was “doing” (being gay) was a sin. It was her duty to save my soul. After a year of back and forth, no closer to finding middle ground, I stopped talking to her.  A sentence that I still have to disassociate from myself to type. It’s a decision I didn’t make lightly. A decision I wouldn’t wish on anyone who loves their mother. But a decision that saved my life. 

Without giving all the details, because I’m still processing, at the end of last year, after about fourteen years, my mother apologized for hurting me. Actually the text she sent  said, “I’m sorry if I hurt you.”  Yes babe, the “if” is glaring as fuck. But one thing about a Black parent, especially a Caribbean Black parent–apologies are not their forté. So I chose to not see the “if.” I accepted the apology, genuinely grateful, but obviously skeptical. After all, I ain’t Boo Boo the fool. Despite any initial misgivings, we seemed to be on the road to repair. The tiniest flame of hope that I had kept burning in my subconscious for our relationship was timidly growing. And then, a few weeks later, she hurt me again. I cried. I’ve cried before but this time I wailed. A wail that had been brewing for fourteen years. I let out sounds that I never wish for any ears to hear. I screamed like a newborn baby screaming for his mother.  

A single Black mother and her only son is a complicated bond, but a deep one. My mother was my first best friend, and at one point in time, she was the BEST at it. But that was so long ago. Decades. So I wailed. I let my heart shatter into millions of pieces. Maybe billions. Likely trillions. Shards of my heart everywhere. In the past, I’d try to gather them up, and bury them somewhere my soul wouldn't think to look for. Somewhere my spirit can’t reach.  But this time, I decided not to pick up the pieces. I decided, out of exhaustion no doubt, to leave them, like an urn of ashes poured into a river. 

After almost fifteen years, I’ve finally accepted that my mother can’t mother me. That there are truths my mother has to be willing to face, not just about us, but about her, to allow for actual repair. That until then, there isn’t a healthy relationship to be had here. That the kind of relationship she has with her religion, which is one of a life raft in the middle of Titanic waters, will not make space for us. Baby, she’s Kate floating on that big ass door, I’m Leo hanging off the side, freezing to death. Except I refuse to hang there and freeze. I’m getting on my own raft. Mine built with the pieces of myself I tried to discard to win her acceptance.

When she hurt me this last time, I let her know it. Not as her “child,” but as a grown-up, who has spent years learning to love themself. Has spent the last fifteen years rebuilding what she broke. Fifteen years, learning how to tell the truth of how I feel. Fifteen years, learning how to advocate for myself. It’s fifteen years of healing that I can’t compromise. I won’t.  

I’m no longer protecting that tiny flame of hope. In fact, I blew it out like candles pitched in a stack of birthday cookies. I say that with peace. Not happiness. I say that with pain. Pain that I will likely spend the rest of my life managing. But I can manage pain if there’s peace. 

With the ending of that relationship, came another unexpected change. Before her pastoral pursuits, my mother was an actress. I grew up soaking in her dreams of Oscars, Emmys, Tonys. Dreams of being a TV star. A movie star. I think now, when those didn’t come true for her, they became my dreams. My pursuit. And pursue it I have. With some deep reflection, I believe that beneath that pursuit was also a hope that if I were to do what she set out to do, then the love I would get from the world might make her see me differently. Might make her love me differently. Love me as I am. If audiences can love me and my art even though I’m queer, then she’d have no choice. Right?! Somewhere inside of my consciousness, I believed attaining success could mend us. Which no doubt raised the stakes of my career, and made the normal rejection one faces in my industry feel even more tragic. But now that I no longer yearn for a relationship with her, I have to ask myself, are these dreams even mine? A terrifying question, since this is all I’ve wanted to do since I was 14. But the same way I think there are truths my mother has to face, there are truths I have to face as well. Truths I must speak.

I’m curious, do you know if your dreams are your own, or were they dreams someone else had for you? Were they dreams someone else told you were yours? 

Monday, April 22nd, 2024

I think I’m terrified of aging. Like, I can handle a lot of things, and I do. Racism, homophobia, queerphobia, capitalism, intersectionality, generational trauma, to name a few. But aging, if I’m really honest, that shit got me fucked up. Like my brain and my body are reckoning with it non-stop. And with regular cricks in my neck, a sick devotion to an early bedtime, and my ten-thousand step skin care routine, I’m constantly reminded, “Bitch, you old!”  

And I know I’m not “OLD”, but girl, I ain’t young either. (Hello to the seventy-three year old rolling their eyes at me!) And aging in Los Angeles is a muthafuckin trip. Youth is a commodity in our global world, but Los Angeles feels like ground-zero for it. It feels like all the messaging about our bodies, our faces, our clothes, are born here, and then pumped out to the masses via television, movies, and social media. I describe LA as a city of comparison. If you’re not conscious of it, you can spend your days comparing everything. Your looks, your car, where you live, even your fuckin astrological sign. It’s a city fueled by competition which I believe trickles down from the Hollywood machine, and bleeds into the everyday, making so many interactions hollow as they’re centered on appearances and not heart.  As one gets older in an environment like that, they may find themselves chasing what was and completely missing what is. And I can tell you, the stress of trying to be what you no longer are keeps the nervous system dysregulated. 

Towards the end of 2022 and beginning of 2023, I was in a different doctor’s office literally every week for three consecutive months.  My stomach was acting up, skin breaking out, I got strep for the first time in my life and then got it again, back to back. I was seeing my regular doctor, ENT,  physical therapist for my hip and neck, podiatrist for a first wart on the bottom of my foot, dermatologist for rashes on my face, urgent care when my throat or gut was acting up and my regular office didn’t have appointments available. Finally, exasperated, exhausted, and defeated, I told one of the doctors at the urgent care I had been frequenting about all the visits and chronic illness that was suddenly happening. After giving me options to address my gut health, which included the god awful FODMAP diet where you stop eating anything that brings you joy, she asked about my emotional life. Suggesting that there might be a mind-body disconnection that’s causing my symptoms. I had to sit with that. I’ve been in therapy since 2013, plus I meditate and journal daily, so I already believed my mind and body were connected. But appearances and heart are not the same. I could do therapy, perform my rituals, and have it look like I’m connecting mind to body. But if I wasn’t willing to be unapologetically honest in those spaces, they would just be a wet band-aid I was placing on broken bones. So I went home with the FODMAP brochure, lit a candle, put on some music, and asked a question I often ask my friends, “How’s your heart?”  Without thinking, I said “I’m drowning.” I put on my wannabe therapist hat, and asked myself a follow up question, “What’s causing the drowning?” And up came that fear of aging. But, girl, I eat well, I’m active, I get checked up regularly, and I ain’t scared of no wrinkles—they got botox for det! So what about aging is making me feel such anxiety? I cracked open my journal and with a stream of consciousness, let the feelings make their way to the page. 

Scared of getting older, scared of not making something of my life, scared of failing, scared of losing this version of myself. A version that took decades to learn how to love. Scared of no longer being “cool,” or “fun,” or invited. Scared of losing the access my youth has granted me. The privileges. Scared of change. Scared of being discarded. Scared of dying before I get to build and enjoy the life I want, now that what I want is freedom from the societal and familial expectations placed on me since birth. Scared of dying, period.

And there it was, glaring at me. The vulnerable truth I had been trying to ignore. Mortality. As the numbers that make up my age continue to climb with each birthday, mortality brings itself more and more into focus. Heightened by acknowledging  that there are people close to me who are now navigating the kind of diagnoses that at one point felt like only adults deal with. A reminder that we are now those adults. Acknowledging that the parents of some of my friends are losing their mental and/or physical faculties. Some, whom I’ve known and loved for years, have passed away. The feeling of being immortal that I think most of us carry in our youth—perhaps even what defines “youth”—I can now feel slipping through my grip like sand grains. It’s undeniable that the longer you find yourself on this floating rock, the more loss you’ll have to navigate. And with that loss comes grief. I’m not terrified of aging, I’m terrified of loss. The wrinkles and changing body are just signals of mortality, reminders of the imminent loss. 

Culturally, we talk about death in a fantastical sense. In Heavens and Hells. In spiritual jargon like “energy,” “the universe,” “mercury retrograde.” But that has nothing to do with the broken heart we’re left with in the wake of death taking someone we love or when faced with our own mortality. Or when we lose a relationship with our mother. Or a sibling, a partner, a friend. Or when we lose a dream.

My default tactic for ignoring the inevitability of loss, is to try and control everything in my life. The way I control is through perfectionism. I had unconsciously slipped back into old habits of perfectionism and trying to show up perfectly, was literally making me sick. I know it, because the moment I consciously decided to let it go, and to actively let the reckoning of my life be messy (see what I did there?), and accept my imperfect feelings, all the illnesses went away. I went from three months of stomach, skin, and throat issues, to not even so much as a sneeze. But to prevent remission, I had to address this fear. Have to. No doubt, it will be something I’ll regularly have to make peace with, because the world will always remind us through its beauty campaigns, social media algorithms, and bank offers for retirement funds, “Bitch, you old!”

Wednesday, April 24th, 2024

I’ve started differentiating between adults and grown-ups, no longer taking them as interchangeable words. I think “adults” exist in many versions, all of us 18 and above. Paying our bills, doing taxes, renting cars, going on Target runs, getting drunk as fuck at brunch. Adult shit. But to be a grown-up you have to be willing to grow as a human. And to grow, is to let go of things. Like being a kid growing out of your crib, and into your first twin bed. I’m sure going from guardrails to an open mattress can be unsettling. And the grief of losing your first bed can certainly be sad. But that sadness shouldn’t be a red flag. Shouldn’t act as a stop sign. Rather, it’s a notification that growth is in progress. That something better is trying to get to you. Which means, with growth comes grief.  So it makes sense to me that to be a grown-up is to grieve at times. To be alive is to grieve at times. Knowing that, it would behoove us to have grief practices. We don’t have to wait for the death of a loved one before we give ourselves permission to experience grief. There are little deaths happening all the time, and many of those need to be grieved. It could be over a job, a relationship, a change in your Sunday plans. If you lose something that once mattered, take the time to grieve it. I think perhaps so many of us are so afraid of feeling grief that we render ourselves stagnant. We stay in a situation, relationship, or environment longer than necessary, because we don’t want to feel the grief that comes with its loss. But again, growth requires grief. If we know that, then maybe we can stop fighting the change of loss and find peace in the flow of growth. 

This age of thirty-seven that I’m barreling towards with each exhale has a different weight to her. Has a different heftiness. A different strength. A different knowing of self. A different kind of responsibility. I feel like I’m toiling in a chrysalis, as the bones of a new version of myself snap into place, bracing to emerge. A version that says, my old coping mechanisms no longer work.  Old patterns, old behaviors, have to be dropped. Old narratives and beliefs of myself (many of them false) have to be reexamined, and replaced with ones that are based in the truth of who I am now-not who I was then. There’s so much to shake off. So much to release. The process of that can be merciless. But by now, we know the only way out is through. And when you “go through” tears might be prescribed. Also rage.

Vanessa (my therapist) and I started poking around my relationship to rage when I realized I was actually so upset at how that Aries lover ended things with me over text. That text was in November, and it’s now April, and the reminder of his birthday bringing up delayed rage made me have to reexamine my relationship to him. Firstly, I was curious why it took so long to feel the rage. Vanessa was curious why I hadn’t even mentioned the relationship until now. She called out a pattern I have of not always sharing things with her. But she also acknowledged it was not quite that I don’t share, because I do. More specifically, I would bring up random things that had happened months, maybe even years prior, that are significant, but for whatever reason, we didn’t talk about while they were happening. Like, how did I never mention this Aries lover who I had been seeing several times a week for several months, nor mention when he ended things with me via a loose midday text message?

I decided to pull the thread of her questions. What I discovered was when someone does something that hurts me, underestimates me, disrespects me, or discards me, I default to empathy and grace for them. I create a story of why they may have done that, which allows me to “not take it personal” and move on. But really what’s happening is rage. This is a good time to stop and define rage. Not the kind of rage that wants to harm someone. But the kind of rage that wants to scream at the frequency that shatters glass. Wants to open cupboards and break shit. Very, Jazmine Sullivan, busting the windows out your car. Very Beyonce, yellow dress, baseball bat vibes. 

For fourteen years, when my mother would say or do something hurtful to me, I would respond with empathy and grace. Even the choice to not speak to her was choosing grace. Choosing to “mind my manners.” But the initial feeling is rage. How could it not be? But rage on a girlie from Queens is anything but polite. And I’ve always had to be polite. 

Rage. An emotional part of the human experience. An emotion not safe to feel in a Black body. A Black male body. I was taught, and know it to be true, that rage expressed in a Black body can have deadly consequences. And yet how unfair to not be able to experience a part of my humanity. I’m not talking about a desire to behave out of rage, simply the ability to feel it. To acknowledge that I feel it. To give myself permission to set up healthy ways to experience and express it, as opposed to opting out of it. I don’t think you can opt out of rage. Just like you can’t opt out of sadness. And you certainly can’t opt out of grief. 

Yung Pueblo

I have no grand resolutions to make. I’m simply sharing what I’m experiencing. Observing. Gently interrogating. What I’m healing. Working on healing. 

Is any of this resonating? Any of it feel familiar? Any of it feel foreign? I’m curious what’s coming up for you as you read. 

This birthday is not my happiest. I’m grieving. Family, dreams, youth. Reflecting on thirty-seven years of mistakes, wins, failures, surprises, devastations, hurdles, laughter, tears, relationships, pursuits, crossroads, endings, beginnings, endings again–all of it a beautiful mosaic of me. And I’d like to keep growing.  I’d like to expand. With a little less of life’s weight on me, I’d like to fly with this life of mine. 

I wrote my first book framed around the question, “Who would I be if society never got its hands on me?”  There are inherently so many things you don’t get to choose that informs the life you're living. But there comes a time where you can choose to let life dictate who you are (as it has been doing by default), or you can show life who you are. I’ve let life dictate for long enough. Now I’m in charge. 

Monday, May 20th, 2024

Thirty-seven. A gift to make it to this big age. And actually, I’m excited to keep aging. Looking forward to arriving at an age, rested and satisfied. An age when I can place my hand over my heart, and know with certainty that I lived. I really, really, lived. And I loved. Oh, how I loved.

To love, is to live, isn’t it? To love is to feel your heart beating. To know that blood is gushing through you. To love is to exhale, and inhale again.

I have learned to love my imperfect, messy, life. Fumbling with all these pieces of it, trying to put it together. A puzzle that might look odd to some. But for me it is a blanket of calm knowing that I’m aligned with my heart. That I can live a full, expansive, free life. A life my ancestors, especially the queer ones, deserved to live. So even with the sadness, the grief, the confusion, the reckoning, the rage, the complexities of my emotional life, I still celebrate. I find joy in loving and living.

-bkg

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More Mess:

About my grief practice

Every person’s grief practice will look different depending on the circumstances of their life. My grief practice has the privilege of being quite involved, but perhaps something in it will inspire you to tailor make your own. I begin by blocking out time on my calendar. Might be an evening, might be the weekend. Last summer it lasted a few weeks as I navigated emotions brought up by the writer and actor strikes. 

First, I let Matthew know that I’m feeling sad, and going to let myself sit in it. This way he knows that my change in mood is not about him, nor is it something he needs to help me fix. If necessary, I’ll let the friends that I speak to regularly also know that I may not be available for a period of time. Then I lean into my comforts (like a Taurus). Perhaps it’s through music, listening to a familiar album, watching youtube videos, a favorite movie or tv show, munching on favorite snacks or meals. When I grieve, I intentionally reach for things that are familiar. There’s a safety in the familiarity. Feels cozy. I’ll also journal, or talk to myself out loud. Yes honey, if you were walking by my house you’d think I was having a very chaotic zoom meeting. But talking out what’s in your head is helpful. If writing or talking isn’t your forté, perhaps it’s dance, exercise, singing, drawing, crafting. Whatever helps you release.

Also, I cry. I don’t force myself to, but as I check in with my feelings, if the urge arises, I give myself permission, as opposed to my default of trying to shut it down. For those of us who aren’t big criers, this is difficult. I have no tricks for crying other than, make your environment feel as safe and comfortable as you can. Also any kind of breathing and stretching will help. You’ll be surprised what emotions will come up while you do a hip opener or an overhead shoulder reach.