Proxy Cry: Borrowing a Doorway to Release

There’s a quiet way emotions accumulate.

You function.
You stay strong.
You keep moving.

And what doesn’t get processed gets stored.

Grief. Rage. Fear. Helplessness.
Not expressed — just compacted.

Over time, it can feel almost solid inside the body. Dense in the chest. Tight in the belly. Hard to access.

I call the antidote to this phenomenon proxy cry.

A proxy cry happens when you can’t reach the tears directly connected to what you’ve been holding — so you borrow a doorway.

A film that cracks you open.
A poem that undoes you.
A song that suddenly floods your eyes.

The tears may seem out of proportion to the trigger.

They’re not.

They’re cumulative.

Your nervous system is wise. It looks for moments of safety to release what it couldn’t process in real time. When you allow yourself to fully cry — to shake, to curl inward, to soften — your body is completing stress cycles that were left unfinished.

This is not weakness.

This is regulation.

We’re in the stretch of winter where the light has begun returning — near Imbolc, the Celtic marker of cautious hope. Beneath frozen ground, life is quietly preparing. But thaw must come before bloom.

The same is true inside you.

If you’ve felt heavy or emotionally flat, you may not need to analyze anything. You may simply need a safe doorway.

Choose something that moves you.
Stay with it longer than is comfortable.
Let the tears come fully.

Release creates space.
Space makes room for spring.

Relief is preparation.

And sometimes the most sacred nervous system practice is letting yourself cry — even if the reason arrives sideways.