Just Like the Rain, It’s Okay to Cry.

My dearest gentle readers, How are you? How have you been? I hope these words find you in a moment of quiet, wherever you are.

Yesterday I felt really low. If I were to be honest with you, I would say I was not very kind to the world. I was short with people, passing on my irritation without meaning too. Little things set me off, and then I felt guilty for it. I just felt down and out, like I was carrying something I couldn’t put down. Out of habit I whispered to God for a sign… That if he was watching over me, I could use something… anything… to remind me I am not just existing inside my own head.. that I wasn’t going crazy..

Honestly, I didn’t really expect an answer. But less than an hour later, the rain started.

It wasn’t a calm one. The wind came strong, whipping around, and then the heavy drops hit hard. It took down our DSTV antenna. Later I realized it had uprooted a tree in our neighborhood and broken an electricity pole, which took down several wires.

I remember standing in my veranda, like my body had agreed to pause before my mind caught up with what was happening outside. But at that moment, I felt less crowded inside myself. It felt like the sky was answering me in its own way… that, it’s okay to cry. Just like the rain.

I mean, there’s always something about rain that has always soothed me, but yesterday it became clearer. It felt like nature quietly telling me to stop resisting what was already happening inside me. Because before the rain, I had been holding things too tightly without realizing it.

And I think what surprised me most was not even the rain itself, but how quickly my body responded to it. Like something in me recognized the message immediately.

I started to think about how strange it is that we expect ourselves to keep everything in order all the time. To stay composed. To not spill over. To move through the day without showing the weight of it.

But even the sky does not do that.

Yes… it gathers what it carries quietly.. It gathers what the world throws at it. Heat. Dust. Smoke... It holds them for as long as it can. But when it reaches its limit, it releases everything without shame.

And somehow, nobody calls the sky weak for it.

Nobody looks at a storm and says, “You should have held yourself together.” Nobody expects the atmosphere to hold endless amounts of pressure simply because it managed to do so the day before. We understand, without needing it explained to us, that rain is the natural consequence of accumulation.

Yet when it comes to ourselves, we seem to abandon that understanding completely.

Somewhere along the way, many of us learned that strength meant containment. We learned how to swallow our feelings before they reached our lips. We learned how to smile through difficult seasons. We learned how to tell people we were fine because explaining what was actually wrong felt too exhausting. We became so skilled at carrying things that we forgot carrying was never meant to be permanent.

Perhaps that is why yesterday affected me the way it did.

The irritation I felt throughout the day did not come from nowhere. Looking back now, I can see that it had very little to do with the people around me. They were simply standing closest to a weight that had been accumulating for longer than I realized.

What I interpreted as anger was perhaps a heart quietly asking for release. And I did not really understand that until much later in the day.

Because after everything settled, after the rain had passed and I was finally alone with myself again, something in me stopped resisting. I did not even plan it. I just found myself sitting still, and suddenly it felt like everything I had been pushing down was no longer interested in staying down.

I remember thinking I should probably stop. That familiar instinct to hold it together tried to come back. But there was nothing left to hold. I had already gone past that point. So I didn’t fight it anymore. I just let it happen for a few minutes. And after a while, it stopped on its own… and I felt oddly calmer.

And maybe that’s the thing I needed to learn from the rain. That sometimes it breaks things. Sometimes it leaves a mess behind. That is still true.

But it also clears the air in a way nothing else can. After it passes, you notice things differently. The world feels like it has been reset in a way you cannot ignore. And the next morning is always different from the one before it.

Yes, even the sun itself shines brighter.

And maybe that’s all it is. I needed to let it out to feel warmer… brighter… lighter.

So please, if you are reading this, maybe you need this reminder… that you are not a machine moving through life without cracks. You are not meant to keep everything inside you all the time. You are not weak for feeling tired, overwhelmed, or like you might break.

You are human.

You are allowed to release. To reset. To be seen in your fullness without shame.

Because just like the rain… it’s okay to cry.