My enthusiasm, to put it mildly, knows no bounds when happy situations arise. An exciting opportunity, conversations with friends, good news, wagging puppy-dog tails, happy coincidences, all enough to turn my volume up and send my hands all aflutter. On the other side, I tend to favor stoicism and keep my difficulties or feelings of sadness locked down and private.

As someone who is prone to overanalyze with a habit of self-reflection, I'm pretty aware of why I do this. It's my dad's drug of choice in dealing with life's bumps and epic sinkholes. To put lipstick on a pig, in a house where someone struggles with emotional instability you tend to NOT want to add to that atmosphere. And because what's a fire without one more log, I've learned over the last decade or so that my physical health is a factor.

I have resting bitch face what is thought to be one of the most common but also highly undiagnosed endocrine disorders in women, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (or PCOS). It's estimated that 5-10% of women have it, but less than half are ever diagnosed. Almost three quarters of women with PCOS will struggle with infertility. There's no one test that conclusively diagnoses this disorder and a lack of education and understanding from many doctors is a big problem.

PCOS plays havoc with your hormones, too many of some, not enough of others. Mood swings, losing hair where you want it and growing hair where you don't, adult acne, insulin resistance, type II diabetes, brain fog, fatigue, infertility, increased risk of certain types of cancer, increased risk for heart attack. The list goes on. There are some women with PCOS who do not gain weight (within the PCOS community often referred to as 'Thinsters') but many of us do. A lot, very suddenly. It's nigh impossible to not have self esteem issues with such blatant physical reminders of how little you feel feminine.

This is not the kind of thing I talk about outside of a very small circle of people. When I was officially diagnosed, I had family respond by telling me there was no such thing or that every woman produces cysts and I didn't know what I was talking about. I've had doctors do their very best to fat shame me, telling me to push away from the table as I continued to gain weight no matter what I did. I had a primary care doctor refuse to send me to an endocrinologist because she was convinced I was sitting around eating bags upon bags of crap every day. Thankfully at the time I had insurance that no longer required her referral and I went behind her back to one of the best endos in the area. One of the best decisions I ever made, but my journey with PCOS is a story for another day.

So between my learned stoicism, being shamed for my private but on display battle and then a heaping dash of diagnostically out of whack hormones, I can count on my hand the number of times I've cried in a decade, give or take. Emotionally numb. I don't cry when I'm so frustrated at 13 years (off and on) of trying to conceive my first child and someone tells me they know what I'm going through, it took them a year. I don't know that I've ever cried happy tears. That, to me, seems like a very... odd... reaction. (Stiff upper lip syndrome?)

This build-up of facts and personal context leads me to this morning. One of the first things I saw this morning on my social media were people posting recordings of a national morning show about PCOS. Ten seconds in, I burst into tears. Happy tears. I had to set my phone aside and collect myself figure out what in the hell was going on.

The segment discussed how there is new hope for women with PCOS because scientists think they've found a genetic component and potentially, for the first time ever, what might be causing it. The hope. The validation. I cannot adequately pin down this outpouring of emotion. I watched the clip again and each time tears flow. As someone who is not overly demonstrative, it borders on alarming.

So today is the day I cried happy tears. Here's hoping that there's even more positive firsts in my future.