Do tears heal?

I was re-reading "Belle of the Ball" and when it got to the chapter where Belle's dad recounts being treated as if he was a trans girl when he was a kid, and all of a sudden, I started weeping.

Buckets of tears flowed out of me, and I was helpless to stop them.

Maybe it was me releasing a bunch of stress, or maybe it was related to my PTSD or maybe it was both, but for some strange reason I feel better for having cried ...

Ah, well.