Guttural Cries.
What might we learn from a toddler’s tears?
Turning the corner on my way home, I heard a family across the street before I saw them. Together two adults walked, one of them holding a squirming and writhing toddler who filling the air around us with his shrieks and squeals.
As the tall blonde man held his even blonder son, I heard him say , “Oh buddy, you ran right into that massive pole, didn’t you?” Also, remember, I’m in Scotland, so he said this with a most brilliant Scottish accent.
While the accent was music to my ears, it didn’t seem to soothe the boy’s tears — he responded immediately with a deafening scream, one that I could feel reverberate in my gut. And as I heard his cry from across the street, as I felt his cry from across the street, something stirred inside of me.
There was something of his humanity, something of the human experience of crying that deeply without holding anything back that captured me. It made me wonder, When was the last time I cried that freely? How often do I fully let myself cry out in pain from the depths of me without concern for the decibel I might reach? Do we really let ourselves feel and voice the full weight of our pain when we get past a young age?
There was something so beautiful and embodied about his cries. There was no holding back. There was no separation between his pain and his body — everything, all of him was moving and calling out in concert together, no censoring to appear strong or brave or unharmed. He was harmed and hurting and he responded authentically. How often do we not respond authentically to our pain, holding back the depth of the sting we carry inside, burying it down to hide? And what would it be like if our gut and our lungs were reconnected again, opening the voice of the belly cries that we were once allowed to feel?—Or maybe for some, that we’ve never hat permission for at all.
I focus a lot on the embodied experiences and movements that I want to explore and invite others to explore. It’s easy to paint these pictures when it has to do with something like ecstatic dancing, walking through the woods in your bare feet, or plunging into cold water. But what about this too? Wouldn’t a full embodied life—the remembering of moving through life connected to the entirety of our beings—also include these kinds of cries?
I think so. I also feel so. Really, from the moment my gut felt the cry of that little boy a couple of hours ago, it’s been as though a facet of me inside has been stirring, saying, “I want to be able to cry LIKE THAT! Where can we do that? How can we do that? What’s in the way and how do we get it out of the way?!”
And while I don’t have an answer fully sorted out at this precise moment, I know I want to honor the cry that’s stirring inside of me, longing for enough safety and the space to voice guttural pain that I can feel has been held back inside of me. And as I seek to honor this, I want to invite you to join me in playing with what this might look in case you also have a similar longing and pain that’s been buried inside of you.
And I know this isn’t as fun as asking you how we might feel the fullness of joy or sweet depths of gratitude. I also know, if I only ask about those kinds of things, I’m not just ignoring pieces of life, I’d be ignoring pieces of you. And because I want to invite all of you to explore new movements through life in this place, I’ll ask some questions that don’t feel all that fun at first glance…
How might we feel the depths of uncried tears today, all the way down to the base of our gut? And which young parts of us might this honor and heal?
And for those of you who are wondering what in this world this might look like practically… I’m thinking of playing some music to open space to move my body with emotions that have been stirring since I heard the little boy’s cries, laying flat on my back to feel the weightiness of it all in contrast with the sturdiness of the ground resting beneath me, and playing some piano while singing to let my vocal chords warm up for where they might want to take me :)
What might this look like for you? How might you invite all of you—your body, soul, mind, and more that are all wrapped up in one embodied being—to get in touch with uncried tears and explore what it might be like to not hold back, feeling the full weight of their call?
