Chronic Illness & Crying

Crying with a chronic illness is not weakness, it’s the body speaking when words have run out. There are days when the pain is loud, when fatigue presses down like weather, when another cancellation or medical bill or well meaning comment breaks something tender inside. Tears come not only from physical suffering but from the accumulation of losses, the shrinking of plans, the loneliness of feeling misunderstood. And yet crying can be an honest act of integration. It allows grief to move rather than calcify. It softens the constant effort of being brave. In my experience working with and living alongside illness, tears often mark the moment when we stop fighting reality and begin acknowledging it. They are not proof that we are losing the battle. They are evidence that we are still human, still feeling, still here.

Dr. Jeffrey Bone