Sometimes We Cry
to be happy, you have to let yourself be sad
“Of course, Terra, to let yourself be happy, you have to let yourself be sad.”—my friend
I was sitting next to my friend, a dear friend, the one I have known the longest in my life, who has accompanied me through many turbulent and joyful seas. We cry sometimes and often we laugh at the most absurd things.
She had just asked if I had ever been depressed? We were sitting next to one another on her soft, chocolate couch. She is taking supplements to help regulate her dopamine levels. She is dealing with some health issues, and I don’t want my friend to have health issues. If I let myself think about it much, I feel sad. Sometimes, maybe I am sad for me, as much as for whatever is happening outside myself. I love my friend. I am attached. Very attached. And you know what? I think that’s ok. Love is good, even when sometimes, it comes with a big dose of Sad.
She told me the couch had held many of her individual coaching clients and a monthly group she has led for ten years. She told me when she moves in the next few months, she will have to let it go as she doesn’t think it will fit in her new space. She told me the people that had come over those ten years were really sad about that. It had snuggled a lot of them and held them in their most intimate, vulnerable moments. It has and is hugging me now, like a big sofa teddy bear that I sleep on, nestled under piles of blankets, on a bamboo sheet she spread, with a tiny heater purring near my head. I am here to visit family, and it’s Thanksgiving. I could sleep on my parent’s couch, where Mom wanted to put me when more guests decided to visit. But I realized I didn’t want to sleep on the couch there. My uncle would have and he wouldn’t have minded one bit. But something in me needs my friend, the purr of that heater, and the quiet. There are reasons for that, some easy, some not. When parts of my life have not been easy, this friend has always offered her sofa for me to land. I am landing there again this trip, even if I have to drive a bit to stay with her. I know for me, it will be like taking a breath from family dynamics and I need to breathe. It’s good to come up for air. My uncle and my cousin will be there and I am happy about that. They both are my friends and have offered me couch-feeling places filled with care. I look forward to that. And I still need to take a breath, just like I am now, in a coffee shop overlooking an estuary near the ocean in Del Mar, while my friend teaches her on-line yoga class from her living room, which she transformed with lights and screens this morning in the space of about ten minutes, despite the current health issues. I tried to help, but mostly she did it.
A breath. A white bird floats by. It is cold and overcast. What I imagine to be a very expensive car is parked across the street. The outside is made of rigid white lines with no curves in it. I am sure it goes fast. And I don’t like it. I rented a car this time and God, who likes to surprise me, gave me a new white Prius.
I stood at the rental counter and asked, “Do you have a Prius?” and he assured me, just as the man on the phone had when I made a reservation, that they did not rent them. But when I was handed the keys in the multi-story parking garage the man said, “It’s down there. The Prius.” Only 6,000 miles on it. The tires needed air before I left and the other man who works at the gate took it and put some in. The technology scared me a bit. It has been a long time since I have driven a new car. And we made friends quickly. I just had to remember to push the button to turn it off as I spent at least five minutes late at night with my suitcases piled around me trying to figure out why the button I was pushing over and over on the keychain to lock it didn’t seem to be working.
A Prius is quiet, just like tears can be sometimes.
I told my friend I didn’t think so; I didn’t think I had ever been depressed.
I remember a day in high school when I was at a different friend’s house and looked at a piece of toast on the counter and just couldn’t imagine taking a bite. I had no desire to eat. At all.
It was strange.
And it didn’t last.
I also lost the desire to eat during my divorce. People call it “The Divorce Diet.” I think I lost ten pounds and found myself happy with my body and sad inside it.
But I don’t think I have ever been really depressed. I have always gotten out of bed. I don’t know that I have ever not seen the beauty around me.
And I have been sad.
Really, really sad.
It happened again on the airplane a few days ago on the way back to the US and words poured out of my fingers into some sort of poem, or expression. Maybe an exploration? As I was so surprised to be crying. It didn’t make any sense.
But sometimes we do and sometimes tears come at the oddest times.
Maybe I haven’t been depressed as I have found ways to let them flow?
When I was young I would cry into the fur of my teddy bear while I still had him, quietly at night. He received them. Sometimes I think angels hide in Teddy Bears and people just don’t know it. I remember the tears running silently into my ears as well, filling up the little crevices, that held them too until they overflowed and ran down my neck. Sometimes childhood can be hard.
I visited Kevin, my personal trainer, one morning in El Zonte a few months ago and he looked at me and asked, in Spanish, how I could be so happy? I think he told me I seemed like the happiest person he knew. He has told me a few times that I am his favorite client. When he said that, I realized he meant it (and that wasn’t easy for me to receive—it is still a practice).
I told him I thought that the key to happiness is to let yourself be sad.
It is tiring to push away feelings, to try to tread water with a smile on your face.
Sometimes things are sad.
And that can be beautiful too, in an odd kind of way.
I don’t know what happens to one’s dopamine levels when we grieve. I know people can get addicted to emotions too, whatever they are: Anger, Grief, Joy… If we chase one of them, or feed off the energy of it, I think it hurts us in the end.
But emotions that one notices, that one says, “Hey there, I see you, can I hold your hand?” whatever they are, and then gives them a hug and sometimes a curious look and waits… Well, sometimes I think it helps things. I don’t know why. I just know it is true.
So maybe, if you feel sad, you can hold it a little with some kindness and let it be ok. You don’t have to feed it and come up with lists of reasons why, as that is a feeding it kind of thing to do… But maybe you can notice it and feel where it comes from. I imagine there is some love buried in there somewhere mixed in it like rose petals. Maybe as you feel it, you will smell the scent of roses too…like Mother Mary, holding your hand. Sometimes things are hard. And sometimes we are sad. And that’s ok.
I know when you read this it will be after Thanksgiving. Your family event will be behind you now. I hope it was sweet. And if you were alone, I hope that was sweet as well. Rose petals. That is what I wish for you.
Here is what I wrote on the plane:
Sometimes We Are Sad
I am on a plane
Elbows propped on the tray in front of me
My new Bose headphones are plugged into my phone.
There is less EMF that way.
The music playing through them is beautiful, peaceful.
My blue light blocking glasses are so soothing.
I feel held
And then I find tears
They are making quiet tracks down my face and I don’t know why
It is another day
I am wealthier than I have ever been
Someone emailed
Am I celebrating?
Today I am not afraid of running out of money before I die
At least not today
I am old enough to know numbers on paper can change
And today, that fear has no grip on me…even when it whispers in my ear that life is uncertain
That things can change
The music plays
The tears increase, making silent tracks
I hope the man in the window seat doesn’t notice
I wonder if this is his first flight
He held his backpack tightly to his chest until the stewardess told him where to put it
He took a video with his cell phone looking out the window as we took off
It was sweet
I met the pilot in a cafe as I ordered eggs to go
He said he would make sure the plane would not leave without me as he smiled
I didn’t have to worry about being too late he told me
He was getting breakfast too
I told him he looked like a young version of the president
But he didn’t want that
He might not like the president even though he looks like him
I told him he could change
He could shave his Bukele beard
But he didn’t want to
And why should he have to
Why should he change himself to look less like someone else?
He likes his beard…
I told myself I am not going to drink coffee
And I passed a store in the airport selling it
My friend loves coffee
My friend who has loved me through every storm in my life
She texted her couch will be ready
Just let myself in
Make myself at home
I stop to buy her coffee
The lady tells me all the coffee is organic
I don’t believe her and she points to a tag she wears on a lanyard
She is the coffee person who works for the government
She is from the tourism department
The tourisimo
And I can tell she believes in coffee and loves it like it is ambrosia from God
I ask her which is best and she brings me a bag
I set aside the $15 bag of organic coffee beans I was holding and take it from her
She tells me to smell it
She points to a map and shows me what part of the country it is from, a tiny area in the north of El Salvador
An orange dot on a map in a country that itself, is a tiny dot
And for me
Dots can be beacons of light
She shows me how to smell it as she speaks in rapid Spanish
This is coffee
You can only buy it here in the tiny airport store
A dot within a dot
Where the best coffee comes from
Organic, she repeats
I smell it and I fly into an altered state
It is not just coffee
I could breathe that smell in forever
It is rich, deep and earthy
I think of putting it under my pillow
I am sure I don’t need to drink it and I know my friend will make it for me when I come
That is the kind of friend she is
I buy it
A $25 bag of coffee that isn’t coffee really, but a reminder of heaven, and earth, and how they are connected
I tip my driver when he drops me off
I have finally found the driver I need
The one who speaks English
And French
And Spanish
But French is easiest he tells me
Google Maps speaks it to him as we drive
Why French? I ask
Because he is from here
But he went to the French school
His father sent him
And abroad
To learn English
Which was harder for him
He started attending the school when he was three
In the city of San Salvador
And so despite being in his homeland
French was the language that came
Easily
His father isn’t proud of him
He tells me his father is a successful business man
Still working working working
He doesn’t know how his son can be happy as an Uber driver
Only…
When I ask how they get along he rocks his hand from side to side
“so so”
He tells me
I know what it is like to be a Black Sheep
This morning another person looked in my eyes and told me he wants to read my book when it is finished
He runs a company that makes red lights
He tells me
They are quality and I believe him
He tells me he will sell me one when I am
Ready, at cost
I leave him
With my piece of cake from Elixir
Chocolate
That I didn’t have time
To eat
Yesterday Mira brought me the painting she has been working on for me
It is a gift from an artist
She channeled it for me
And painted light in between and underneath things
I knew it would be hard to receive
Mira paints the goddess
She paints Kali and Durga energy
And that flavor of divine scares me
I felt her and it on the way in the taxi I sent
I felt how this painting was coming to support and encourage me like a Sigil
That God made
Out of divinity
Mira unrolls it and I take a breath
I ask some
Questions
What does this mean?
Sometimes she doesn’t know
Because she was allowing it to come
Through her
For me
We have dinner at Brutto
We eat truffle butter on bread and Mira touches the bits of black coating and brings the dried bits to her lips
Savoring
We return and I ask what is hard for me to receive
Why does the woman she painted have orange in her eyes?
I don’t tell Mira it scares me
The woman who walks through water sprinkled with skulls
Just like me
Because Earth is like that now
And I know my job is to walk through the energy of everything and remember God and who I am
To be untouched
Unaffected
By demonic energy
So why is there orange light glinting at me?
I know the painting is a gift and I need to trust
Myself
To allow spirit guides to have orange eyes and wear animal
Skins
To wear nipple rings
Or not
Mira almost
Painted one like hers but she didn’t
Because the spirit guide is not Mira
And if she had
Mira is what I would have seen
Tears come faster
In a little stream
The light man
The entrepreneur
The motorcycle rider
Has just told
Me of his friend
And the brother
The addict
Who recovered
For
Two weeks
Until he overdosed on fentanyl
And his friend, his employee, held the recovered addict in his arms
The man who relapsed
And took too much
The brother who died in his arms
Just two weeks
Ago
Mira tells me
Two of my friends are in jail now
Well
Only one is my friend
Probably addicted to pot
In jail now for selling weed
She says someone is watching his dogs
I see his smiling face and his dreadlocks
His laugh and how he always wanted to greet me with a hug and a “Hi Beautiful!”
The other man is the local addict in El Zonte
He had a tendency to drink
But this time he was doing cocaine
Mira said the police came and put a gun to the woman’s
Head in the house
I don’t know why
She tells me
The man,
The addict
Took in children off the street
Now he is gone
Like my friend
Those things are not likely to happen to me
And somehow
Somehow they do
Because somehow
The tears stream and stream
I love it here
It is hard to leave
And I have a painting
A 21 year old friend
An entrepreneur bringing light to people
And enough money
I tip
My driver $10
The taxi ride was $30
He will pick me up
He knows where to get my painting framed
Somewhere close to my house
He knows vegetarian restaurants I might like
He is shocked at the tip I leave him
Life is so beautiful
And I am
Surprised at the tears that suddenly came
Unexpectedly
I want my book to tell people
Hey
You are not alone
Those painful things
Those hard things
It’s not just about you
Take my hand
Listen
You don’t have to know what I am trying to say
You don’t have to understand my words
You can tell yourself it is just about me
Because maybe you are scared
Too scared to feel
What is there hidden inside yourself
The little places storing your tears
And that’s ok
You can tell yourself it’s just about me
That you hope I get some help
Some
Relief
Some therapy
Meanwhile I will whisper into the cracks of your heart as you read that you,
You darling blessing from God
Are not alone
That you are loved
And I will gently breathe into your cracks while you aren’t looking
And Mira will watch as she places her first taste of black truffle in her tongue
And tells me
Wow Terra
It’s really good
Now I know what they were talking about
…Truffle loving
I want to thank my newest paid subscriber. Don’t feel bad if you are one of the 300 (yeah!) people who read this for free. I really do put it out as an offering. And someone new signed up a few days ago and sent me a message. He had read a post from about a year ago, when I was just getting started. He decided to be the first one to “like” it. He wrote that he thought it was good, that he told himself he was not going to sign up for any more Substacks as a paid subscriber. That he was sure I had so many of them already.
And his little note and recognition mattered to me so much in that moment.
Little things are sometimes big.
It can be a smile, a tip, or an unexpected Prius.
You and I are here for a reason and sometimes our fellow humans, and God, offers some encouragement.
It was nice to get that as I embrace this book I will finish. I can feel the hands waiting for it and the encouragement he inadvertently gave me to keep going, when I received such an unexpected gift and kind words. I am drinking the tea now he got for me in this coffee shop as I craft this for you.
You have gifts as well and people are waiting for you to offer them. It might be the tiniest thing and I want to say to you, as he said to me, that you matter. That you are here for a reason.
That you have a scent. Maybe it is like roses… or cinnamon.
…and…Sometimes We Cry…
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Thanks for sharing Terra! Thats one helluva great piece of poetry too! Keep it coming! I bless California has kisses and hugs to share 🙏❤️
Thanks Ollie—