I started writing an inspirational go-for-your-dreams post because much of the time I do feel inspired… but you know what? I’m not feeling it today.

Today, I feel like I need a good cry. I haven’t yet (and I’m NOT a crier) but, hey, the day is still young.

And so what? Maybe a good cry is exactly what we need some days.

By fifty, the secret is out. Life isn’t always rainbows and unicorns.

Things don’t always go our way. Life doesn’t always play out the way we’d like it to. Some days we feel frustrated, pissed off, sad, disappointed and ornery.

Sometimes we’re able to laugh about whatever went wrong easily brush it off our shoulders, keep our chins up and continue moving onward without missing a step.

Then there are times when the same bit of bad news or the shut out from the kids or no on a project proposal – just completely deflates and derails us.

It isn’t really even the enormity of the situation – it’s just that for a bunch of reasons, which we may or may not be able to pinpoint, we were ripe for the meltdown.

Call it what you’d like – stress, or hormones, a midlife moment of crisis, or just plain being human.

Ninety-five percent of the time, we have our sh*t together. We handle the situation like an ER nurse doing triage. We figure out how bad the injuries are and bandage ‘em up post haste.

But that other five percent is a doozy.

A three alarm fire. A real sh*tshow.

A complete surrender to the emotions and fear and self-doubt and to every tiny little thing that ever when wrong since we were two years old – all pouring onto us and stinging like salt in our wounds.

And what’s wrong with that? NOTHING. That’s what.

For crying out loud… we’re still allowed to cry out loud!

Personally, I prefer to have my (infrequent, but still academy award winning) irrational I need to cry meltdowns alone. Why scare the family unnecessarily? Actually, my family would likely throw me the box of tissues and just go about their business.

Although we don’t start crying with any kind of plan… the post-meltdown recovery is the best part.

That spent, exhausted, trembling – I feel like a hot mess moment. That’s when we really shine. Runny mascara, sniveling nose, puffy eyes, blotchy cheeks and all.

We shine because we pull ourselves out of it.

We throw ourselves the life preserver and climb out of the well. Our self-talk filters in and we lift ourselves up from the dark awful swamp of negativity and doom.

We accept that we needed that moment of explosive expression and then the practical us steps right up to tell us either it ain’t so bad or that we have stuff to do and we can’t stay locked in the bathroom all night.

Whatever we allowed to bring us to the melting point is still there and still real but now that we’ve cried about it, we can suddenly move on.

At that moment, it just is what it is.

There’s nothing we can do about fixing whatever the situation is from our spot on the bathroom floor.

Nature arranged things so that a human can only cry for so long. And if you think about it, it isn’t really that long. So since we can’t keep crying, we are left no choice but to pull it together.

And we do.

We intuitively move ourselves out of the depths of that intense emotion and back on to steady ground.

“We can change our thought pattern and change our feelings. Put a little distance between ourselves and our thoughts.” – Angela Duckworth

As humans, we are resilient, adaptable, creative, problem-solving, strong and magnificent creatures.  Our minds are the key to our entire perspective. What we speak to ourselves, especially when we’re down at our lowest, is critically important to how we cope, how we climb out, and how mindfully we set our intentions.

Deep down, we may not like to consider it, but we know we can handle anything. And if we can’t, we know we can ask for help.

So it seems that my pity party finished with an unexpected ending.

I managed to talk myself (and hopefully any of you feeling the same) right up and out of the dark sad swamp.

If we can go deep and low and manage to drag ourselves back up – then we have the power to mindfully and intentionally grab for our dreams and fight for the life we want.

One day at a time.

Cheers to us being human and to sometimes needing a good cry. To our ability to edit our self-talk and make the best of each unique (and sometimes tearful) day of our journey.

– Marlene

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