You’ve felt it. That heavy, hot sensation in the back of your throat before the dam finally breaks. But have you ever noticed that a tear of grief feels physically different than the ones you shed while chopping a yellow onion? It’s not just in your head. It’s actually in the chemistry.
There is a weird, beautiful complexity to how our bodies process loss through salt water. Most people think a tear is just a tear. Water, salt, maybe some dust.
Nope.
When you are mourning, your body is essentially running a high-stakes pharmacy behind your eyeballs. It’s trying to dump chemicals that you don’t need anymore. It is quite literally "crying it out."
The Three Flavors of Crying
Science generally breaks down our eye-water into three distinct buckets. You’ve got your basal tears—those are the ones that just keep your eyes from turning into sandpaper throughout the day. Then you have reflex tears, which happen when a rogue eyelash or a cloud of smoke hits your cornea.
But the tear of grief? That belongs to the third category: emotional tears.
Back in the 1980s, a biochemist named Dr. William H. Frey II at the St. Paul-Ramsey Medical Center did something kind of gross but incredibly important. He had people watch sad movies and collected their tears in test tubes. Then he compared them to tears triggered by sliced onions.
What he found changed how we look at sadness.
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Emotional tears contained significantly more protein. They were thicker. They also contained specific hormones like ACTH (adrenocorticotropic hormone), which is linked to high stress levels. When you are grieving, your body is flooded with cortisol and adrenaline. It’s a biological red alert. By crying, you are physically offloading those stress chemicals. You are exhaling through your eyes.
Why grief tears stick to your face
Ever notice how a tear of grief seems to linger on your cheek? It doesn't just zip off like a raindrop. Because emotional tears have a higher protein content, they have a higher viscosity. They are "stickier."
There is an evolutionary theory here that’s honestly pretty fascinating. Biologists suggest that because these tears move slower down the face, they are more likely to be seen by other humans. It’s a visual distress signal. It’s a way of saying "I need help" without having to find the words, which is usually impossible when you’re in the thick of a loss anyway.
The Microscopic Art of Sadness
Rose-Lynn Fisher, a photographer, started a project called The Topography of Tears. She used a standard light microscope to look at dried human tears. It sounds like a middle school science project, but the results were haunting.
When she looked at tears of change, tears of onion-cutting, and the tear of grief, they all looked like different planets.
The basal tears looked like a sparse, geometric grid. But the tears shed during deep bereavement? They looked like complex, jagged landscapes—like aerial views of winter forests or shattered glass. This happens because of how the salt crystallizes differently depending on the specific hormones and proteins present in the liquid. Even under a microscope, your sorrow has its own unique architecture.
It’s not just "water." It’s a map of what you’re going through.
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Is crying actually "healing"?
We’ve all heard the phrase "have a good cry." It sounds like a platitude your aunt says when she doesn't know what else to do. But there’s a real neurological reason why you feel that weird, exhausted calm after a massive sobbing fit.
When you cry out of grief, your body releases leucine-enkephalin. This is an endorphin that acts as a natural painkiller.
Think about that for a second.
Your body recognizes that you are in emotional pain, and it responds by producing a literal opiate to dull the ache. It’s a self-soothing mechanism that is hard-wired into our nervous system. This is likely why people who suppress their tears often report feeling physically "tight" or having headaches. You’re keeping the "pharmacy" locked up when the body is trying to distribute the medicine.
The Manganese Factor
Dr. Frey’s research also found that emotional tears contain 30 times more manganese than the concentration found in blood. Manganese is a mineral that affects mood. High levels are often linked to anxiety and irritability.
So, when you see that tear of grief hit the floor, you might be looking at a physical chunk of your anxiety leaving the premises. It’s a detox. It’s a biological "reset" button that helps move the body from the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) back toward the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest).
Cultural Baggage and the "Weakness" Myth
Honestly, we’ve done a terrible job as a society of letting people just exist with their tears. We tell kids to "dry their eyes." We apologize when we start crying in a meeting or at dinner. "I'm sorry, I don't know where that came from," we say, as if our body just committed a social crime.
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But if the science tells us that crying is a functional, chemical release of stress hormones, then stopping yourself from crying is actually a bit illogical. It’s like trying to stop yourself from sweating when you’re overheating.
Grief isn't a problem to be solved; it’s a process to be carried.
In some cultures, crying is a communal event. Think of "professional mourners" or the "keening" traditions in Ireland. These practices recognize that the tear of grief is a heavy burden and that the physical act of expressing it shouldn't be done in a vacuum. They understood the biology of it long before we had microscopes to prove it.
When the tears won't come
Sometimes, the most painful part of grief is the dry spell.
You expect to be a mess, but instead, you feel like stone. This is often a state of "functional freezing." Your nervous system is so overwhelmed that it has shut down the tear ducts as a protective measure. If this is where you are, don't panic. You aren't "doing it wrong." Your body is just pacing itself.
The tear of grief will eventually show up. It usually waits until it feels "safe" enough to let the chemicals out. That might be in the shower, or three months later when you see a specific brand of cereal in the grocery store.
Actionable ways to handle the "Deep Cry"
If you’re in the middle of this right now, or if you feel a "clogged" sense of grief, here is how to actually lean into the biology of it:
- Hydrate like it’s your job. If you are shedding high-protein, high-salt emotional tears, you are dehydrating yourself. That "grief hangover" headache the next day? That’s mostly dehydration and salt loss. Drink a glass of water for every "session" you go through.
- Stop the apology. Next time a tear of grief starts to fall while you're talking to someone, try to catch yourself before you say "I'm sorry." Just let it happen. It changes the power dynamic of the conversation and allows your nervous system to finish the cycle.
- The "Cold Water" Trick. If you get stuck in a crying loop where you feel like you can't breathe (the "hyperventilation" stage), splash ice-cold water on your face or hold an ice cube. This triggers the "mammalian dive reflex," which forces your heart rate to slow down and brings you back into your body.
- Track the triggers, don't avoid them. If a certain song makes you cry, play it. Use it as a tool to access that "chemical dump" we talked about. Think of it as opening a valve to let the pressure out before the pipe bursts.
The tear of grief is one of the most honest things your body ever does. It’s a high-protein, mineral-heavy, stress-reducing cocktail designed to keep you from breaking under the weight of what you’ve lost. Let it do its work. It knows what it's doing better than you do.