Everyone’s Tears Are Salty

Everyone’s Tears Are Salty
By Daria Leslea, MA, LPN, RYT/CYT

Tears are a very primal language and many times in grief our tears say what our words cannot.

Our tears are made up of minerals, glucose, enzymes, antibodies, and hormones that are all suspended in salt water. In the early 1980’s William Frey, a biochemist, discovered that tears of sadness have a different chemical makeup than tears of joy or tears that we cry when peeling an onion. Tears of sadness contain a neurotransmitter that is a natural painkiller that helps reduce stress in the body. Tears are a natural healing response to grief and help to calm us by decreasing blood pressure, lower our heart rate, and slowing the breath.

Unfortunately, our society has stigmatized the expression of sadness, especially tears, so we tend to hide them. Stifling our tears takes much more energy than it does to just let them flow. Emotions are like an invisible force moving through our body and because we can’t see them we think if we suppress, deny, or avoid our feelings they will go away. Instead what happens is that energy gets stuck in our bodies and can affect us physically (headaches, tense muscles, stomach issues), and spiritually (numbness, withdrawal, hopelessness.)

Our inner life wants and needs to be felt. Grief breaks us open and what I have come to learn is that the only place to go is in. In entering into our sadness, it is our tears that move our sorrow from the inside to the outside as all wounds need air to heal. Perhaps it is in the shedding of our own tears that we begin to recognize that everyone’s tears are salty and it is when we allow ourselves to taste the salt that we can begin to heal.