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Tears make good medicine. They can help us stay both physically and emotionally healthy.
Most of us know that tears cleanse our eyes, help to remove the common irritants and debris that drifts onto the eye surface. Tears are the body’s natural warriors against the germs contained in the dirt which lands on the eye.
So much for tears as an aid to physical health - how do tears help emotional health? Tears are often silent distress signals. A person can cry as a way of asking for help, thereby giving those around him an effective message that something is wrong.
Infants have long been acknowleged as having the ability to communicate by crying. Ask any mother and she can tell you that your child gives several different messages by crying - there is the cry of pain, the cry of hunger, the cry for attention. Once a child learns verbal communication skills, the use of tears in order to deliver messages is discouraged. We have all heard, “Big boys don’t cry.”
The stereotype is that grown people don’t cry. Perhaps adults are expected to be able to verbalize requests for attention, or ask for help, or sustain pain. But what about the situations in which people are too ashamed or are otherwise unable to ask for assistance. Tears may be the only way to communicate in a given situation.
Tears may be an emotional safety valve. By crying we acknowledge to ourselves, even if to no other person, that we are experiencing pain. The pain we feel may be physical (a smashed finger), or grief (a loved one has
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grow, as evidenced by the popularity of VDACS “pickyour-own” programs and requests for assistance to the Virginia Tech Extenstion Service. The conference is open to all interested people and is expected to become an annual event.
For additional information, contact Ron Whitehead, VDACS, 203 North Governor Street, Richmond, Va. 23219, (804) 7863951, or the Rappahannock Extension Office, 675-3619.
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