## Chapter 9

# Chapter Eight: The Blessing of Tears

> “There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.” — Washington Irving

It happened on a day when everything felt heavy. My father had just started to get sick — really sick. He could barely walk ten feet without losing his breath. The diagnosis hadn’t come yet, but I could feel it coming. When something like that hovers over you, every part of your life feels suspended. The world keeps spinning, but you’re stuck inside a slow-motion version of it.

I still showed up to work, because that’s what we do. You keep the lights on, you keep the stand clean, you keep the rhythm going. But that day, my smile felt like work. Every customer got my usual greeting, every brush stroke looked the same, but inside, I was somewhere else. Somewhere between fear and grief and duty.

Then he sat down — a man I’d seen before, always confident, always composed. He was a vice president at one of the big financial institutions. I won’t say which one; it doesn’t matter. What mattered was how he carried himself — crisp suit, calm voice, the kind of person who always looks like they have the answers.

He said, “How are you?”

And for once, I didn’t give the easy answer. “Not so good,” I said.

He looked surprised, then concerned. “What’s going on?”

I didn’t want to spill everything, so instead I asked him something unexpected: “When’s the last time you cried?”

He froze. It’s not a question men ask each other, especially not between small talk and a shoeshine. But he didn’t walk away from it. He thought for a moment, then said, “A couple weeks ago.”

He told me about a night at home. His two kids, both under five, were refusing to sleep. One crying, then the other. His wife was exhausted. Tension building. Finally, something in him just broke. He cried. Right there in the kitchen, beside the sink full of bottles and dishes, after everyone had been trying so hard to hold it together.

“My wife didn’t judge me,” he said. “She just said, ‘It’s okay. You’re overwhelmed.’”

He laughed when he said it, but his voice cracked a little. And I don’t know what it was — maybe the timing, maybe the honesty — but I felt something shift inside me.

Because in that moment, I realized I wasn’t the only one carrying too much.

I didn’t tell him everything about my father. I didn’t have to. Hearing him open up was enough. It reminded me that pain doesn’t belong to one person; it moves through all of us. There’s a strange relief in knowing someone else understands what it’s like to reach the limit of your strength. Misery might love company, but it’s this kind of honesty that builds connection.

People often think vulnerability is a one-way street — someone gives, someone receives. But that day, it was both. His openness made space for my own quiet grief. I didn’t cry in front of him, but I could feel the tears sitting just behind my eyes, waiting their turn. It felt good to know that I could give space to those tears.

I think about that conversation a lot. About how this polished executive who probably spends his days making decisions that affect thousands of people sat there in my chair and let himself be human. It reminded me that everyone, no matter how put-together they look, is carrying something unseen.

And maybe that’s the real gift of what I do. The stand isn’t a therapist’s couch or a confessional, but somehow it invites truth. People sit down and, for a few minutes, they put down their armour. They talk. They breathe. They cry, sometimes. And I listen.

That’s the blessing of tears. Not the sadness itself, but the surrender. The moment when strength stops pretending and lets emotion do the talking. Tears don’t weaken us — they remind us we’re still alive, still connected, still capable of feeling.

When I think about that man now, I don’t think about his title or his success. I think about his honesty. About how we met in that small moment of overlap — both of us tired, both of us trying, both of us human.

It taught me something that day: tears aren’t something to hide. They’re proof that our hearts are still open. They show that we are all going through something. It’s therapeutic to know that we suffer together. And we suffer on all spectrums — we suffer even in times of joy, and we suffer in our own ways.

Maybe that’s the quiet miracle of this place — that in between flights and schedules, in the middle of all the noise, people still find room to feel and know they aren’t alone in that feeling.

Because sometimes, before healing comes, there has to be release.

And sometimes, that release sounds like silence — and sometimes, it sounds like tears.