"It's An Honor"
The truth about letting walls down & others in
I’m not shy about despising pregnancy.
And I realize that in 2025, that’s not something you’re really allowed to say.
Given the prevalence of infertility, loss, and and the social narratives around pregnancy and motherhood - the general consensus is that we should be endlessly grateful to be carrying a child. We should be GLOWING.
So I’ll preface with this context:
I’ve also experienced pregnancy loss.
I work with women walking through infertility, complex medical challenges that have shaped their family planning & forced grief around their expectations.
I’m not not naive to this world.
I also ADORE my children. I love being a mom. So much so, that I consider the 10 months of hell worth it in the end.
It’s a dichotomy I’ve grown comfortable with - I can be grateful to be growing a human and sustaining a life, while simultaneously grieving what it costs me.
Over the last 8 years & 5 pregnancies, it’s cost me low iron levels, gestational diabetes, sciatica, pelvic floor issues, so much sleep, and at times, my sanity.
But this time around, the sleep has really been what’s gotten to me. Unfortunately, when you’re pregnant, the medication solutions that help the general population with insomnia aren’t available, so I’ve tried every form of caffeine restriction, water monitoring, and magnesium/unisom combination available, to no avail.
Pregnancy, while beautiful and miraculous, has once again been it’s own form of torture.
The sleeplessness hit is peak (hopefully!) a couple of weeks ago. After months of getting a single sleep cycle (4-5 hours) a night, and then tossing and turning for the next 3-4, I had a week of truly horrendous sleep.
It culminated with a night where I slept from 11pm-12am and then 6am-7am.
For anyone counting: 2 hours of broken sleep.
We were on a trip for my husband’s job and the place we were staying was lovely, I was exhausted, and there was no clear reason for the insomnia. But I tossed and turned all night, and then rallied to go to breakfast with a few friends on the trip.
To be honest, I’m so accustomed to the sleep disruptions at this point that it didn’t consciously phase me - I didn’t consider canceling our plans, because I can’t cancel clients every time I don’t sleep, I certainly can’t ignore my kids, or cancel pickup when I haven’t slept… it’s just a part of my life, and life keeps rolling - even on 2 hours of sleep.
When I got to my friend’s door for breakfast the next morning, she popped out and cheerfully asked - “How are you?!” with no context on my night. And despite my best intentions, I started crying.
In a lot of settings, I feel fairly comfortable with tears - I’m also rarely surprised by them. But in this quasi-professional, quasi-friend setting, with someone I admire who doesn’t know me THAT well, I was really embarrassed.
So I did what most of us do when we’re really embarrassed - I apologized profusely and tried to dry up the tears ASAP.
But, as I was bumbling my way through an explanation and context for why a simple question prompted such a big response, she reached out and settled me.
“It’s an honor,” she said.
And I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
Because the way her response allowed me to exhale really mattered.
It felt like I had been sucking it up for days, maybe even weeks - through sleep issues, pregnancy symptoms, a road trip with 3 little humans, and extended family conflict - they all culminated in that moment. And 2 hours of sleep really pushed me over the edge.
It was a hard week.
And she was okay with a big reaction.
Something about the combination of her reaction and my release of tears freed me. As embarrassed as I was, it was also the stress relief I needed. And I’ve slept better and felt more regulated since.
But as I’ve felt better, I haven’t stopped thinking about her reaction. People do this to me all the time in therapy. I haven’t kept track, but I would guess that clients cry more often than they don’t in a session. Especially early in therapy. And when they do, they inevitably apologize as they reach for tissues, trying to explain away their tears. This reaction, in a context where they are literally paying for me to enter the sad, hard, frustrating situations with them, in hopes of finding a path out.
In response, I often say something validating. Something that acknowledges that I’m unbothered by their emotion, and that it actually might be why we are having the conversation…
And in the time since my mini-meltdown, I’ve found myself wondering if this inability to let go - to cry in front of people is playing a role in the loneliness that people (including me!) are talking about behind closed doors and in research surveys, but doesn’t seem to come up as often in conversations with friends.
I feel incredibly thankful for friends that I’ve had for decades. But when I think about the people who I feel most connected to, part of our bond is time and part of it is tears. Tears that don’t pop up as often now, in my adult life.
Maybe it’s that we are wearing the hat of “professional” or “parent” more often than not, and it’s trickier to switch out of those modes? Maybe it’s that crying with our partner feels safer in this season of life? Or more normal? But when I think about it, I have wonderful friends who have known me for years, who haven’t seen me fall apart in that way.
Not every friend needs to be that friend.
But, I wonder if making sure there are relationships in our lives; whether they be in therapy or friendships, where we can fall apart, is a little release valve that we all need when the pressure of adulthood, pregnancy, or parenting builds? I wonder if having a human to cry to, to regulate alongside, is a necessary support structure?
I’m still noodling what this means for me in my own life - but this week, I wanted to ask: when is the last time you cried in front of someone who wasn’t a family member?
When was the last time you took a vulnerable leap - whether intentional or not - and let that release valve out?
Did it help?
Did it shape the way you view the person you cried to?
And, from now on, I might just borrow that simple line: “It’s an honor.”
Because it is an honor to be trusted with tears.
It’s an honor to be let into that part of another human - to see a grown adult fall apart. To see them vulnerable.
And, it’s an honor to be a part of the healing process when someone is carrying too much and needs to hand off a bit of the steam.
Photo of the cutest bookstore I’ve ever encountered: Godmother’s (in Summerland, just south of Santa Barbara). Which was inenvitably a key part of healing that day ;)