Meredith Hawkins - When the Tears Dry

Charleston, SC
www.PalmettoPublishing.com

When the TearsDry
Copyright 2022 by Meredith Hawkins

All rights reserved

No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
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mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherexcept for brief quotations
in printed reviews, without prior permission of the author.

Hardcover ISBN: 979-8-8229-0954-0
Paperback ISBN: 979-8-8229-0955-7
eBook ISBN: 979-8-8229-0956-4

I dont care how spiritual you are. how long you can melt in the sweat lodge. How many peyote journeys that have blown your mind, or how well you can hold crow pose. Honestly. I dont.

I want to know how human you are. Can you sit at the feet of the dying despite the discomfort? Can you humanely show up at the table no matter how shiny, chakra-aligned, enlightened or lost you feel. Can you hold loving space for your beloved in the depths of your own healing without trying to be big?

It doesnt flatter me how many online healing trainings you have, that you live in the desert or in a log cabin, or that youve mastered the art of tantra.

What turns me on is busy hands. Planting roots. That despite how tired you are, you make that phone call, love your children, you feed your family.

I have no interest in how well you can ascend to 5D or have out of body sex. I want to see how beautifully you integrate into ordinary reality with your unique magic, how you find beauty and gratitude in whats surrounding you, and how present you can be in your relationships.

I want to know that you can show up and do the hard and holy things on this gorgeously messy Earth. I want to see that you can be sincere, grounded and compassionate as equally as you are empowered, fiery and magnetic. I want to know that even during your achievements, you can step back and be humble enough to still be a student.

Whats beautiful and sexy and authentic is how well you can continue to celebrate others no matter how advanced youve become. Whats truly flattering is how much you can give despite how full youve made yourself. Whats honestly valuable is how fucking better of a human you can be, in a world that is high off of spiritual materialism and jumping the next escape goat for freedom. At the end of the day, I dont care how brave you are. How productive, how popular, how enlightened you are. I want to know that you were kind. That you were real. I want to know that you can step down from the pedestal from time to time to kiss the earth and let your hair get dirty and your feet get muddy, and join the dance with us all.

Taylor Rose Godfrey

I have attempted to write this book countless times, always struggling at which point in my life do I begin to write my story. You see, with every twist and turn, the pieces of my life begin to settle into their places of the puzzle, slowly exposing the picture meant to be revealed. Yet, there are still unanswered questions, years more to live, to love, to lose, to win, to laugh, and to cry. I have never understood how a memoir can be written. How does the author choose at which point to cut off and end the story, when the movie is continuing to play and has yet to reach the credits? I am not a life coach, and I am not a celebrity. No, I am mean average woman who, since birth, has been dealt some pretty trying life cards, all weaving the tapestry of who I am. I have my masters in social work and have countless years working with children and adults in foster care, mental health, and counseling. Even with all the education and years in the field, nothing can compare to the experience when you are broken, lost, and in a dark place and are able to climb out, dusting yourself off, time and time again, and emerging stronger than ever before.

In what began as merely the retelling of my past, I uncovered layers and exposed stories buried beneath the surface of smiles. The telling of my past became a story of love. It is my hope that, though you may not have walked down my path, hearing my stories can give you hope, strength, peace, forgiveness, faith, and love in your heart, in your darkest hours.

When the tears dry. When the storm dissipates. When the funeral ends. When the heart stops. When the spectators disperse. Who stays? Who wipes the tears? Who helps pick up the pieces? The loved one is lowered into the ground, and through the silence, you can still hear the tears. You hear them through the screams, the wailing, the sniffling, the blowing of noses, scattered throughout the crowd. The sound of the pin drop is replaced by the rocks that are placed on top of the casket. Nothing feels secure or stable as you feel your heels being sucked down into the dirt below. There isnt anywhere or anyone to hold on to. In the Jewish religion, how I was raised, after the cemetery, you sit Shiva, where all mirrors are covered, and loved ones come in and out of the house offering love, support, food, and condolences. The visits eventually become sparse; the spectators go back to their lives. The mirrors are uncovered, and the reflection of you is unmistakable. You are exposed and can no longer run and hide. Have you cried until there are no more tears? Until when the tears dry? The hole is still wide open. Its still painful to swallow because there is a lump in your throat. Your body convulses, but the tears no longer appear. They no longer run down your cheeks to enter and flood your mouth with the overpowering taste of salt. When the tears dry. When the casket is lowered. When the heart is broken. When the betrayal is revealed. When you are left to try to regain your footing and you dont have anything or anyone to hold on to, how then do you hold on? How do you take the next step? How do you find the air to breathe? How do you love again? How do you laugh again? When the tears dry.

I began writing this book after I filed for divorce after ten years of marriage, a fourteen-year relationship, and a history, in an attempt to make sense of the senseless, not knowing where they would end up and what their purpose would serve. But I wrote. I wrote until the tears poured out and fell from my face. I wrote until my fingertips became numb, until there was nothing left. I wrote on planes, in waiting rooms, in hotel rooms, curled up on my couch, in my home office surrounded by candles. I wrote because I felt dead inside. So empty. I wrote because I yearned to feel alive again. To jump-start my pulse. To fill the void. To patch the black hole. Each tear. Each breath. With each stroke of a key on the keyboard, I pleaded to be heard. To have a voice. To gain understanding. Something. Anything.

I wrote because it was the only thing that came naturally. I would not and could not know at the time that I would attend two funerals just in the year of my divorce to add to the countless lives lost in my life and the deaths that continued to plague the years that followed. So, I wrote. I wrote to gain sense of it all. To gain perspective. To shout from the rooftops. To swallow the lump that lay buried in my throat. To pave a pathway for the tears to flow. The hands on the clock continued to press forward. At first glance, it appeared as though it would be years exclusively of loss. Overwhelming loss. A sickening, paralyzing loss. The loss that impales your heart, your soul, and leaves a hole, a crater that is beyond repair, demolishing any signs of what was. A nausea that doesnt go away. The tears fight your eyelids, which try to block the inevitable. You try to remedy it with anything that you can get your hands on just to feel better. To numb the pain. The emptiness. The sickness. There are times you cry for no reason and other times you cry without any tears at all. Your body shudders, and you weep, but the tears refuse to make another appearance. They are exhausted. There is nothing left to give. Countless loss. Unquantifiable loss. Loss of a marriage. Family. Friends. The expected. The planned. The road map. The security. What I didnt know at the time and could only gain insight on after was that through this loss, there was gain. There was beautiful, intoxicating, magnificent, and unexpected gain. Gain of friendships. Family. Peace. Freedom. Strength. Love. Through the tears, I found a calm and faith in the present.