Crying isn’t a sign of weakness, it is a sign of strength. 
Why do we link sadness with weakness? Allowing yourself to feel the pain will bring forth a river of tears. Allowing yourself to feel the pain, takes incredible strength. It doesn’t take strength to bury the pain. This is much easier than feeling the magnitude of the pain left behind by a suicide loss. I often hear others say, “I still cry everyday.” Good! To me this means you are leaning into the pain. Of course the crying should decrease over time, but it should never end. How could it? We will always miss the people we lost. We will always be sad they aren’t here. Sadness brings tears. When we cry, we are allowing ourselves to feel what we need to feel. Don’t criticize yourself for crying. Instead, give yourself credit for leaning into the pain.
“Allowing yourself to feel the pain, takes incredible strength. It doesn’t take strength to bury the pain. This is much easier than feeling the magnitude of the pain left behind by a suicide loss.”
Since my father took his life a year and a half ago, I’ve learned that we all deal with things in different ways. I cried a lot at first. Now I try not to. One of my brothers cried just a little and just once, and I never saw my other brother shed a tear (of course there is stigma around men crying, so I’m sure that played a role). I agree that crying is not a sign of weakness and that it does take strength to feel the pain. But I also feel that burying the pain is sometimes the right thing for me.
I try not to think about my dad’s suicide too much. It is too sad, too depressing. I don’t like crying and I don’t like to think about how his life ended, so I try to focus on remembering how he lived. And I do try to shut off the tears when I feel them coming. For me that does take strength – I don’t think it’s an easy way out, it allows me to function normally day to day.
We shouldn’t beat ourselves up no matter how we deal with suicide. We all have different coping mechanisms and there isn’t a right way to grieve, to remember, or – even – to try to forget.
Thank you. I cry most everyday for my son. Others tell me to let his passing go. He’s in a better place….he’s at peace…..I will see him again. How do they know. I want to hold my son in my arms again, hear him tell me”I love you, Mom.”. Allow me to tell him how very essential he is in my life and how deeply I love him and always will. These are the things I know will never happen again. Each of my tear I cry represents a piece of my soul, my heart, my very being that I lost when I lost him.