The Ugly Cry

Welcome to A New Life podcast with Pamela Jean where it's all about empowering women to empower more women. Get ready friends to create a new life. And here is your host, Pamela Jean.

Hello my friends and welcome to this week's episode of A New Life podcast. Thank you so much for being here. Happy July. It's the first podcast of July 2021. Today is July 5th. I hope you had a wonderful 4th of July independence Day for our country. I hope you got to celebrate with family and friends and remembered that our freedom that we have in our country is not free. And thank you to the military men and women and family members that have all served to this great country of ours. But thank you friends for being here. I have a couple of announcements I want to share with you on July 9th. That is Friday of this week at 3 o' clock central time in the afternoon. I have a free webinar about my Commit to be fit R3 Health and Wellness plan. Send me your email if you would like to be added to the guest list. I would love to have you. You don't want to miss this. It's an amazing program that anyone can have success on. I think you're going to be really excited about it. And also we rise Together. Women's Conference is coming this coming fall. Watch for the Save the date that will be coming very, very soon. So let me ask you a question. When is the last time you had a really, really good cry? I mean, nobody likes to cry, especially in front of other people, right? Crying makes you feel vulnerable, weak and needy. And no one wants to be thought of as that needy person or someone who's so extra. She cries all the time. Well, I have to tell you, I am a crier. And I'm not talking about the ugly cry all the time, but the littlest things can bring tears to my eyes. I cry over commercials, TV shows, all kinds of things. I cry during baptisms or weddings. They just really, really touch me. So I'm definitely a crier. But when it comes to something that has really, really hurt, my heart just dug deep into my soul. Just like many of you, I hold it in. I keep it together. I don't cry over it. I don't show emotion over those things. I try to stay strong over those things. Well, I want to talk to you today about the benefits of having a good, hard, ugly cry. In fact, you will see the benefits are so valuable and it's transformative. I mean, yes, a transformative really, really good cry can change your life and I'm going to share with you throughout this podcast how a big ugly cry changed my life. So first of all, a good cry can improve your mood. Have you ever noticed that after you had a good cry, you just felt so much better? There's a reason for that. When we cry, we are actually relieving our body of stress. When you are stressed about something or worried about something, everything in your life is off, off kilter. Stress seems to breed more stress. You react to things differently. You're not as sharp, your mind is cloudy and foggy because inundated with this stress, things compound and before you know it, everything feels like it's out of control. Your health suffers. High blood pressure, migraines, stomach ulcers, all of those things and many other physical attributes are adverse effects from stress. When your body and mind are relieved of stress, you sleep better, your mood improves, your overall physical well being will improve. Is there a secret that you're keeping? You know, something that you don't want anyone in the world to know about? You would rather take that secret to your grave. Imagine if you got out from under that secret, whatever it is, the relief you would feel, you would feel renewed. Exactly the way you feel when you allow yourself to have that ugly cry. So much will be released from you. Anger, pain, sorrow. So much. If you've ever had this built up anger because you know someone did something wrong to you and you're so angry and you're so upset, but yet you haven't cried over it, you haven't really dealt with it, you've just bottled it up inside of you. A good cry, honestly, is going to help relieve so much of the stress that comes along with your anger and pain and sorrow. And friends, don't hesitate to get help working through all of this. Hire a coach. Get a therapist. You don't have to do this alone. And I think a lot of times that is our problem. As women, we feel like we have to everything, we have to handle everything. We don't want to bother anyone with our problems, so we take it on all ourselves. But you don't have to do this alone. Get some help. Get some support. And I do recommend getting some support outside of your personal circle because if you're trying to get support from your inner circle, sometimes the people closest to you are too close to the thing that is holding you back, that's holding you down. And honestly, they're not going to be able to help you as much as you hope to because they're not going to be objective. They'll most likely just be validating. They'll agree with you on everything, and they won't make you see things in different ways because they love you and support you. They're not necessarily going to challenge you with a different point of view. So it's a good idea to hire a coach, to hire a therapist, someone that is outside of your inner circle, to be an honest, objective sounding board, and not someone that's just going to say what you want to hear, what you need to hear to make you feel better for that moment. Crying can also strengthen your relationship with others. Crying does make us feel more vulnerable. I get that, especially when we cry in front of other people. But it's okay for other people that you have a relationship with to see a different side of you. They can see your feelings in a way that words cannot necessarily portray. This can be a deeper emotion bond between family and friends and those around you. So next time you feel like your lips going to quiver and your eyes are going to fill up, don't hold it in, let it out and see how those relationships can change. Crying also helps you recover from grief. I know everyone listening has suffered some type of grief in your life, whether it be a loss of a loved one, the death of a relationship, the loss of what you thought was your dream job. People grieve about many, many different things, and grieving is a process. It involves time of sorrow, numbness, guilt, anger. Crying is so important during times of grief, and everyone goes through the grieving process in a different way. There's hardly a right or wrong way to grieve, but it's important to allow yourself that time to grieve and to cry while doing it because it's so, so healthy and it's so good for you. Crying also restores an emotional balance. It doesn't only happen in response to something sad. Sometimes when you cry, you're happy, you're scared. Have you ever cried when you got scared or stressed? Crying in this way can help restore an emotional balance. When you're incredibly happy or scared about something and cry, it may be your body's way of recovering from experiencing such strong emotion. It is okay to cry, my friends. It may even be beneficial to you if you feel the need to cry. Don't hold back your tears. Tears are normal. It's a healthy way of expressing your emotions. I was having a conversation with one of my friends and also someone who I have coached in the past and she had told me about she had a big ugly cry about something that she had Been holding in for most of her life some pain that she had experienced long ago that was still affecting her today. And let me tell you, this is a tough cookie. This is a strong woman who does not show weakness ever. It's a defense mechanism. It's a strategy of keeping herself safe. But she allowed herself to cry it out, and I mean a big ugly cry. And she was telling me how transformational that was for her, how she felt light as a feather and airy because all of the weight of what was so pent up, she finally got to let out what a beautiful thing that is. And honestly, her telling me that story was the inspiration for recording the podcast about having the big ugly cry. And I want to share with you the biggest cry of my life. After this moment, I experienced a huge shift. It was a long weekend of grieving the loss of what I thought my life was going to be. You know when you have your life mapped out and you think you know exactly what it's going to look like 10 years from now, 20 years from now, you have it figured out. Well, all of a sudden, what I thought my life was going to be or was supposed to be, was completely shattered and rocked. My heart was broken. I felt physically ill. I felt completely destroyed and lost with absolutely no direction. I spent much of a weekend on the floor of my bathroom in a puddle of my own tears. I had been laying there, I don't even know for how long, to be honest with you. Just asking, God, why me? Why me? Why am I in? Why am I where I'm at right now? What have I done to deserve this? Because honestly, friends, I've always felt like I'm a really good person. How can this horrible things be happening to me? But honestly, bad things happen to good people. And this is what came over me. Something clicked. And it came to me while I was curled up on that floor. Instead of asking, why me? I said, well, why not me? Why not me? It was that moment. After purging the years of pent up emotional anxiety and grief, I realized I had gone through all of that. It was for a greater purpose. A purpose bigger than anything I could ever have imagined. It led me to empowering women, to empower more women, just like I try to do on this podcast every week. My purpose is to lead other women to their best life. Help each of you go after that big dream that I know you have deep inside of you. I know it's there. But through the biggest ugly cry of my life, I learned and was shown my greatest purpose. And my greatest purpose is to serve you. It is to serve the women that I come into contact with, that I get to see and talk to and work with and share with and inspire. There are people that I have never met that I know are listening to this podcast. And I know I'm speaking to you today. And had I not allowed myself to have this big, ugly cry and feel all the feelings and go through all of the things, I know that I would not be here, sitting here today, recording this podcast for you. Because all of those things that led me up to that big cry prepared me to do what I'm doing today. I began to see my life and future clearly. I began to dream again. And honestly, I have no fear about what is going to happen next, because I know there's a huge plan, and it is a beautiful plan and purpose. And I created the life that I wanted. And honestly, all of the pain I went through was an incredible blessing. Now, if you'd asked me that at the time, of course I would not have said, yes, this is a blessing. But, oh, my gosh, looking back, it was an incredible blessing. And I'm grateful for the past. It has made me who I am today. And honestly, I love who I am. I love me. Friends, I hope that if you have that thing that is just spilling inside of you, that is building up and is holding you down and it's causing you stress and pain and hurt and all of those things, it might be something that happened way back in the past, something that you're still holding on to. I encourage you to cry it out, to get it out, to deal with it, to hire a coach, get a therapist. Simply get it out. It will give you so much clarity. So much clarity is going to come from doing that. You're going to dream again. You're going to see your future in a different way. You're going to see yourself in a different way. I promise you, it will shift and change your life. And you deserve that. You deserve that. Friends, I hope you have an incredible week this week. I hope it's filled with amazing things. If I can help you in any way, please reach out. I'm here to support you. Thank you so much for being here. I love you all. We'll talk to you next week.

Thank you for joining us today on a New Life podcast. We will see you next time.