“It’s all right to cry, crying gets the sad out of you.
It’s all right to cry, it might make you feel better.”
— Rosie Greer, Free to Be You and Me
Yeah, Rosie. I remember. That song is burned into the soundtrack of my childhood — that deep, tender baritone of a six-foot-five NFL lineman telling a generation of little boys that it’s all right to cry.
I get it. I don’t think it’s for sissies. Maybe I once did, but I’m of the generation where Rosie Greer indoctrinated us early. Sure, you’d still get pummeled on the playground if you actually cried, but at least there was a whisper that it might be okay. “Sensitive,” I believe is what they called it — though “pussy” is what they meant.
It was a new kind of manhood trying to be born — but no one told us how to live it.
Okay fine, not every song on that album stuck. William wants a doll — yeah, that was a line most of us weren’t ready to cross. Even Rosie might’ve lost us there. But crying? Come on. Crying was the one line we could’ve stepped over. It wasn’t that big of an ask. We’ve all seen men tougher than us let it out.
John Wayne cried — off-camera, sure, but even The Duke had his moments.
Ali cried when he lost to Frazier — and again when Parkinson’s started taking his body.
Jordan cried when he won his first championship, and again when his father was murdered.
Even Stallone, Rocky himself, cried on screen and off.
Hell, watch Mike Tyson talk about Cus D’Amato and tell me that man doesn’t know the taste of his own tears.
And let’s not forget the soldiers who come home and finally collapse in their kids’ arms — men trained to kill, now undone by love.
Real men cry. The ones who’ve seen death, buried brothers, held their children — they cry.
Because even the strongest men know what we’ve forgotten: tears aren’t weakness. They’re the release valve. They’re how pressure turns back into peace.
And yet so many guys I coach struggle with crying. I certainly do.
Some of my clients cry on a dime — and not performatively. It just moves through them like breath. Not me. I want to. I try to. I can feel it rising, and then my body betrays me — the throat closes, the jaw tightens, the chest locks up.
I listen to sad songs. I look at nostalgic pictures. I pick emotional wounds and spiritual scabs and — nada. Nothing. Dry tear ducts and dust. A barren riverbed where a flood should be.
After my dad killed himself, I couldn’t cry. I knew I needed to, but I couldn’t. The tears were there, but sealed off, like water behind a frozen dam. Occasionally, while jogging, they’d break through — something about running bypassed the brain. Movement cracked open the armor, and for a few seconds, tears would stream down my face. No story. No thought. Just release.
But that was the exception, not the rule. All my adult life I’ve struggled with tears. They just rarely come, and without them I feel stuck, blocked, and frankly, like I’m heading down the same dark road as my dad.
Nineteen years later — to the day, as I write this — I still don’t shed tears for my dad. Therapy doesn’t get me there. Coaching doesn’t get me there. Not even jogging cracks it open anymore.
But recently, I found a teacher who did.
He goes by many names — psilocybin, ayahuasca, San Pedro, MDMA, mescaline, cannabis — a thousand sacred plants that have been teaching men how to open their hearts since the beginning of time.
I simply call him The Plant.
And His power is undeniable — to be respected, even feared — because He ain’t fucking around.
This isn’t a hallucinogenic joyride or a weekend escape. The Plant doesn’t hand out bliss; He hands out truth. He takes you straight to the places you’ve spent a lifetime avoiding — the wounds, the blocks, the ghosts you thought you’d buried.
He doesn’t anesthetize; He awakens.
He doesn’t show you light without first dragging you through your darkness.
And if you’re lucky — if you’re ready — He lets you live to tell the story.
On a recent Men’s Peer Group retreat deep in the Rockies, I gathered with my band of brothers — nine men committed to real work.
And as fate would have it, it was the week leading up to my father’s Yahrzeit — the anniversary of his death. Nineteen years gone. I didn’t plan it that way, but I don’t believe in coincidence anymore. I needed this time. I needed to dedicate it — not to his memory, but to my own continued healing. To face what still lived in me. To confront the father wounds that, truth be told, still bleed.
We spent the week doing what I call inner and outer workouts: hiking and plunges, yoga and journaling, breathwork and circles. All of it mattered. But nothing cut as deep or opened me as wide as the Plant.
This was a teaching. A reckoning. A face-to-face confrontation with the blocks in my mind, heart, and soul.
It wasn’t a bypass. It was a beeline into the pain.
Eight hours wandering the woods and every ghost I’d ever buried came to visit. Fear. Shame. Doubt. My father. Always my father.
And out there, it hit me — he couldn’t cry. Or wouldn’t.
I don’t ever remember my dad crying. Not once. Maybe he did. I’m sure he did. I just don’t remember it. Even when his mother killed herself — nothing. I remember anger. Rage. Sorrow. Regret. But not tears.
And I never realized the weight of that truth until I was out there in those dark woods. Until The Plant held up that mirror and made me see it — not as a memory, but as a message.
He couldn’t cry. And maybe that’s what killed him.
Not in those final moments, but across a lifetime of them — the slow suffocation of a man who couldn’t let the flood come.
Maybe if he had. Maybe if he’d found a way to release the pressure, to show it, to share it — maybe he wouldn’t have carried so much pain alone.
Because that’s what kills us — not sadness, but suppression.
Not weakness, but walls.
A lifetime of holding it in until there’s nowhere left for it to go.
I saw it all out there. How I’d turned his death into purpose. How I’d built a life around helping others grieve so I wouldn’t have to feel it again. How I’d become an expert on loss while keeping a moat around my own.
And then something shifted. The medicine cracked open the dam.
The tears came. Not in a cinematic rush — more like a thaw. And not out in the woods, but back at the cabin, in our closing circle — our final ceremony.
One by one, each man lay in the center while the rest surrounded him — holding space, offering touch, prayer, presence.
Then came my turn. A long day of battle with ghosts and darkness, and finally, it broke.
First a single tear. Then another. Then the flood.
I wasn’t crying for him. I was crying with him.*
For the boy in me who couldn’t save him. For the man in me who still tries to save everyone else. For the son who still wonders if it could’ve been different.
And most of all, for the closed hearts — both of ours — and the tragic consequences of a tearless existence.
The sobs were primal. The block was terrifying. But I kept pushing through, guided by the power of the Plant and the love of the men holding me.
When I came out of that final journey, I had nine men holding me — touching me, loving on me, crying with me. I was born again that night, not surrounded by my father or my mother, but by my brothers — midwifed by the power of the Plant and the pathway of those tears.
And then the line that’s haunted me for years finally made sense:
“My tears are my divinity; they come from the inside of God’s face.” — Rabbi Nachman of Breslov
That night, I understood.
My tears weren’t just mine — they were ours.
I cried for both of us. For my father, for my brothers, for every man who’s been taught to stay dry-eyed and tough. I followed those tears through the darkness, through the birth canal of my own soul, until the weight finally lifted.
When I came out, something in me had changed. I wasn’t lighter. I was freer.
That’s what men’s work is about. Not talking circles. Not therapy scripts. Not fixing.
It’s about presence. Permission. Pressure turned to peace.
It’s about being surrounded by men who won’t rescue you or run from you — men who hold you while you do your own work.
That’s the work we do in Men’s Peer Groups.
We don’t teach men how to avoid pain. We teach them how to walk through it together.
To find the courage to feel.
To let the tears come.
To remember that crying doesn’t make you weak — it makes you real.
And when men cry together — when we finally let go — something shifts. The walls fall. The armor drops. The isolation ends.
That’s when men begin to heal.
That’s when we begin to lead.
That’s when we come alive.
And hey — if that man William still wants a doll, that’s his business.
But if old William wants to cry?
Brother, give me a call.
We’ll put on Rosie Greer, pour a couple bourbons (or a plant-based tea), and let the tears do what they’ve been waiting to do.
Because it’s all right to cry, men.
It really might make you feel better.
Dr. Baruch “B” HaLevi is the co-founder of Men’s Peer Groups, helping men reclaim connection, purpose, and strength through brotherhood and truth.
