There is an often quoted scene in the movie A League of Their Own where Tom Hanks’s character, Jimmy Dugan, the coach of the Rockford Peaches, yells at one of the players about an error she makes on a play. She starts crying in response to his demeanor and he says to her mockingly, “There’s no crying in baseball.”

His response is really classic because you can replace the word baseball with virtually any workplace or sport and the prevailing point of view of visibly crying being judged still remains. Really this is just how overt emotional expression is viewed in society: It is not to be done (and it is often gendered).

Given this background, it is perhaps not surprising that from a young age, critically acclaimed singer-songwriter Serena Ryder received the message that emotional sensitivity, which she was prone to have, made others uncomfortable or angry, and she needed to figure out how to make hers stop. She says, “I just remember feeling not okay with feeling anything too big. Whenever the big feelings came, I tried to figure out how to make it safe for other people, because they made me feel unsafe when I felt emotional.”

One way she stopped was to start self-medicating. Her first way to do that was through television and food, and later on, she turned to alcohol. She prevented big emotions by pushing them down and numbing herself with other substances.

She also turned to music, as music was a place that not only allowed feelings, but actively encouraged them. She started to play shows at 8 years old and bought her first guitar at 13. By the time she was 17 she had moved out of her parents house and had a record deal by 20. She explains, “I always felt safe, and like, inspired in my music. So I really put myself there because it was that place where I could really let out all of these things and put it into, you know, a beautiful package almost right? Where these unsafe feelings were in a safe space.”

However, Ryder adds that as comfortable as we are with musicians expressing emotions in songs and on stage, in the real world, we still remain uncomfortable with musicians as humans having emotions off stage. She points out, “It [is] celebrated in musicians or artists to have these deep, dark feelings and emotions and [to bring] them out in that way. But when they [are] out in real life, it wasn't okay...It almost promoted me to become fragmented...So in my mind, ‘oh, I can be this person here. But I have to be this person here.’ ”

In other words, the realities of the world encouraged her to create a version of herself that was “singer Serena” who could have emotions, and another that was “human Serena” who couldn’t, and that was utterly unsustainable. That fragmentation and pushing down her feelings led her to experience anxiety and depression. She says she would be at work and would sometimes feel outside of her body or other times would have panic attacks. She calls it “corking the volcano,” because she would have outbursts of emotion and not know why. It could even have been utterly unrelated to that moment in time for her, but because she didn’t process her feelings earlier, she just didn’t feel safe. It even caused her to cancel shows a few times.

What she figured out in the long run was she was right all along as a kid: Expressing her feelings was actually what was best and crying helped her to heal in many ways. She emphasizes, “I’m not perfect at it at all, but how I experience my life, I allow myself to feel what I'm feeling. And, instead of pushing it down, I check in with myself first, and I cry, whenever I need to cry...If it makes other people uncomfortable, or whatever, it's like, that's their issue, right? But, you get to a point in your life where it's like, you have to stop caring what other people think.”

Her realization about her own emotions, and also how that might apply to others, led her to creating her new album, The Art of Falling Apart, which was released in March 2021. It is based on a keynote speech she gave with the same title and was written and recorded over a 10 day period. It takes the listener on a journey with her through her own emotional awareness from the very first track, called Candy, which deals with vulnerability, to the 10th track, Back to Myself, which talks about the journey to finding yourself and exploring your different parts along the way. With each track, Ryder released a remix featuring special guest artists reimaging the song. For example, for the song where she learns to cry, Waterfall, she collaborated with legendary icon Melissa Etheridge for her point of view.

This album comes at an important time for everyone when we need to be open and honest about our feelings instead of hiding them. It is also a time where people desire connection, both to themselves and to each other. Ryder has helped artists have a space for that through her Art of Wellness program. Launched in partnership with her label ArtHaus, the Art of Wellness is a free group program to help creatives develop stress reduction tools and find balance within themselves. She hopes to help others find the words she didn’t have when she was younger and learn that it is OK to put yourself first, as a human, especially when you are giving to others through your music.

Consider this line from her keynote: “To become a butterfly, the caterpillar has to fall apart before it can complete its transformation, I believe the same thing applies to human beings. Imagine if the caterpillar was like...I can’t fall apart it's too much. It would never fly.”

It is about time we are all allowed to spread our wings and cry.