This is a really lovely piece that makes me think of the stereotype that goes, "gosh, pregnant women are so EMOTIONAL!" > https://twitter.com/annehelen/status/1198264644600647680

The past 6 months have been pretty rough. I don't enjoy the physical sensations of being pregnant. I nursed my dog through two major surgeries and then watched helplessly as he finally succumbed to cancer. I canceled two vacations to visit family so I could care for him.

I had a lot of flashbacks to Dad's death. I've cried a LOT through these months, and at times I've wondered what marginal percentage of this emotion has been due more to "ooo, pregnancy!" as opposed to, well, a simply rational response to everything that's happening around me.

But what if pregnancy doesn't actually make us more "emotional" (whatever that really means) - what if it's just the only time in our adult lives that society accepts women feeling and displaying our feelings deeply and openly?

Especially in a society that penalizes both men and women (in different ways and through different mechanisms) for displaying emotion, and encourages us to bury it under so many layers of work, capitalistic tendencies, and tribalism?

In other words, what if instead of perceiving pregnant women as unstable because they're "overly emotional", we considered them a reference condition for healthy emotional expression, and celebrated that as such?

anyway, tl;dr, crying in many cases is good for you and a lot of us would probably be better off if we did it more