Life brings heartache. Grief is unavoidable. Like cool rain that cleanses the air and nourishes flowers, tears are sacred messengers of love.

Sir Walter Scott once said, “Tears are the softening showers which cause the seed of Heaven to spring up in the human heart.”

Don’t hold back. As the heroic warrior Odysseus showed us throughout Homer’s epic Iliad, it’s okay to cry.

"Tears are the safety valves of the heart when too much pressure is laid on," explained 19th-century British writer Albert Smith.

Celebrate tears. They reveal compassion. Crying heals, releasing tension, cleansing sorrow, and returning you to your center. It always feels better after a good cry.

"For frequent tears have run the colors from my life," revealed poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Loss is part of living. To truly know joy, we must also know sadness. The world’s greatest literature was written through tears. "To weep is to make less the depth of grief," wrote William Shakespeare.

"Tears," said English poet Alfred Austin, "are the summer showers to the soul."