I agree, there's no set "healthy" or "unhealthy" for everybody. It is individual. What's problematic is when someone has been brainwashed to never show unpleasant feelings, ever, or else. If you (general you, not aimed at anybody specific) feel like crying, but you choke it off with all your might because you're ashamed of doing so, then I think that's a problem.

How does anybody here feel about that parental saying? "You'd better stop crying, or I'll give you something to cry about!" My mother used to say that to me, and then in my adulthood when I talked about having been forbidden to show my emotions, she swore up and down she never once forbade me to show my emotions.

The saying doesn't make sense. If I didn't already have something to cry about, I wouldn't be crying. Duh.

I just a few minutes ago read a poem written about a parent grieving the death of his little daughter. He dreams he goes to Heaven and sees her there. She should be happy, but she's not, because all of the other children have candles to light their way, but hers won't stay lit. Why not? Because every time she lights it, her father starts crying again, and his tears put her candle out. He has to stop crying, so she can light her candle and be happy.

What a horrible message this sends, IMO. Essentially, "don't grieve the loss if your child dies, or else you're hurting your child."

When I was a teenager, and my boyfriend was killed in an accidental shooting, I didn't cry, and my family thought I was being "brave" and "taking it well." I wasn't. I was stuffing my feelings. Why? Because I'd had too much of that "crying is bad" ingrained into me. The previously mentioned, "I'll give you something to cry about." Things like "If you're a big girl, and you don't cry when the nurse gives you your shot, I'll buy you ice cream." The seasonal "you better not cry" because Santa Claus is coming to town. Plus more subtle things such as my mother's seeming inability to even say the word "cry" without adding "like a baby," even in reference to herself.

By the time I was a parent, and my youngest baby died from SIDS at two months old, my family had come to realize that me not crying about it wasn't something to praise me for. It was cause for concern. My inability to cry was, for me, very unhealthy.

Years later, I saw a Touched By an Angel episode featuring the mother of a SIDS baby. After Monica revealed herself to be an angel, the mother angrily demanded to know where the angels were, on the night her daughter died. Monica assured her that there *was* an angel with her that night, the same angel who is with her now. That got me going. And it should have. I'm glad it did. I needed it. Thank you, Roma Downey, for speaking that line, and thank you to whoever wrote it.