Margery Kempe Is A Bit Upset
Margery Kempe (1373-1438) traveled the world, wrote the first autobiography in the English language, and cried her eyes out.
Margery was born on the east coast of England to a fairly well-off family. Her father had been elected mayor of her town several times, so she had high expectations for life. When she was 20, she married a merchant of more middling status. They weren’t rich, and Margery admits that she was envious of those who were more well-off.
She gave birth to her first child the same year she was married, and it was a harrowing experience for her. In what must have been epic postpartum depression, she had visions of demons, biting her hands so hard that she would always bear the scars. Eventually, she was visited by Jesus, calmed down, and went on about life.
Disappointed by her husband’s modest salary and with an eye for the finer things in life, Margery set out to make some cash. She opened a brewery, but the business fell apart. She tried to run a mill, but that business failed too. She says that her neighbors said she was cursed and laughed at her.
After 20 years of marriage, during which she had given birth to 14 children (yes, fourteen, one-four), she decided that she wanted more out of life. But she wasn’t interested in worldly goods anymore. She sought spiritual meaning, following from her visions from decades earlier. She made a deal with her husband: she would pay off his debts if he would let her go on pilgrimage.
So Margery traveled to all the medieval pilgrimage hotspots. First, she went to Canterbury in England, pretty much at the same time as the pilgrims in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, but as a real person, not a bunch of fictional characters. Then she went to Rome, but she didn’t get to meet the pope. Then it was on to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Finally, she set her sights on the Big One, and found her way to Jerusalem. She was extremely well-traveled.
In her autobiography, she tells about her travels, but she doesn’t focus on the sights and her communion with the divine at important religious shrines. Instead, she complains about how people treated her. If you’ve ever heard someone whine for half an hour about how their baggage was delayed and only say, “Oh yeah, it was great,” about the beach or the palace or the museum, you get it.
Why did people treat Margery so badly, at least as she saw it? It might have been the crying. When she visited a special place, or just even thought about the suffering in the world, Margery would start to cry. Not just a sniffle and a few tears. Think bawling, uncontrollable weeping. Loud. Really loud. For a long, long time.
Margery cried in church. Margery cried during prayer. Margery cried when talking to others about God. She considered the tears a gift from the Almighty. In her own words, in the third person self-referential:
“Hir wepyng was the gyft of God and sche mygth not wythstondyn it.”
Not everyone shared the view that her crying was a gift from heaven. She was doubted and ridiculed. Many thought she was putting on a show, just trying to out-pious everyone else. Again, in her own words:
“Summe seyd it was a wikkyd spiryt vexid hir, summe seyd it was a sekenes, summe seyd sche had dronkyn to mech wyn.”
Whether it was a wicked spirit, sickness, or too much wine, she got on the nerves of her neighbors and fellow travelers. She got tried for heresy a couple of times but managed to shake off the charges and avoid punishment.
Margery returned home in her final years and dictated the story of her life to her son and her parish priest who wrote it down for her, because although she wrote the first known autobiography in English, she was illiterate.
Would she cry if she knew how famous she was today? Maybe. Would she weep to know that she was never made a saint? Probably. Would she sob to learn there are zero contemporary pictures of her likeness on the modern internet? Most definitely.
Is it ever okay to cry at work? Is it a weakness, showing that someone is not up to the task? Is it a weapon, instantly making the person who caused the distress The Bad Guy?
Whether it’s a tiny drop by the water cooler or a soaking sobbing in the stairwell, tears are a feature of life at the office.
(from here, Medieval Manager hands the quill to his esteemed colleague to author this section)
So what does Margery have to tell you about crying in the modern workplace? You may not produce quite the waterworks as Margery did, but there’s a fair chance you’ve shed a tear or two at work - and an excellent chance that you’ve worked with someone who did.
Rage, frustration, sadness, exhaustion… humans cry for many reasons. Just because you’re in a work context doesn’t mean you’re immune to those feelings. Far from being something to be ashamed about or even made fun of for (“There’s no crying in baseball!”), maybe it’s time to consider the benefits of crying at work.
Tears can be an outlet for emotional release, reducing stress and preventing burnout. Companies today spend millions of dollars on employee assistance programs trying to achieve those same results.
Instead, understand and accept crying as a natural reaction, in yourself and others. It can lead to deeper empathy and stronger team cohesion. Emotional expression has long been part of the human experience, and acknowledging it in modern settings can help create a more authentic and humane work culture.
(A big thank you to Whitney Stull Chiu for sharing her wisdom regarding emotions at work here.)
