As a social worker and the founder and director of a non-profit, Meredith Hawkins works tirelessly to give back and inspire others. But when her marriage fell apart, she felt lost, consumed by immeasurable pain and loss. Having studied composition and creative writing in college, she returned to the written word to process her feelings. Writing would prove to be a catharsis, allowing her to reflect not just on her own life but also on the lives of the less fortunate women she encountered while serving the unhoused on the streets of Arizona and Africa throughout her career. And in keeping with the theme of her lifelong commitment to serving the vulnerable, she shares her memoir to encourage women in the aftermath of divorce.
Hawkins relates her personal struggles alongside powerful stories of resilience from women she met while volunteering in her community and abroad. Exploring the highs and lows of the human experience from different perspectives, her expressions nurture the soul. Far from playing the victim, she shares the lessons to illustrate how to get up, dust yourself off, and carry on. Raw and uplifting, Hawkins' empowering memoir will teach readers how to live, love and laugh again.
As a social worker and the founder and director of a non-profit, Meredith Hawkins works tirelessly to give back and inspire others. But when her marriage fell apart, she felt lost, consumed by immeasurable pain and loss. Having studied composition and creative writing in college, she returned to the written word to process her feelings. Writing would prove to be a catharsis, allowing her to reflect not just on her own life but also on the lives of the less fortunate women she encountered while serving the unhoused on the streets of Arizona and Africa throughout her career. And in keeping with the theme of her lifelong commitment to serving the vulnerable, she shares her memoir to encourage women in the aftermath of divorce.
Hawkins relates her personal struggles alongside powerful stories of resilience from women she met while volunteering in her community and abroad. Exploring the highs and lows of the human experience from different perspectives, her expressions nurture the soul. Far from playing the victim, she shares the lessons to illustrate how to get up, dust yourself off, and carry on. Raw and uplifting, Hawkins' empowering memoir will teach readers how to live, love and laugh again.
y story.
How do you love again after the funeral? When the heart is broken? When the betrayal is revealed? How do you take the next step when the tears dry? These questions and more are the subject of this searingly honest and articulate memoir about love, loss, and new beginnings.
Piercingly poignant and packed with pathos, Meredith Hawkins's When The Tears Dry is a beautifully written memoir rippling with intensity and insight. It also packs a wallop. Told in the first person and saturated with pithy reflections, it skillfully interweaves personal experiences events with observations of nature, people, and the world at large.
In The Light in the Story, for example, the author reflects on the brevity of life while watching a magnificent sunset. “Please, just one more glimmer of light,” she writes, reflecting on a recent loss. Opining on the sun going down on a life and the sun setting in the sky, she observes, “It is a sunset that make your eyes well up with tears and reminds you just how beautiful life really is.” Rather than beating the reader over the head with implications, she allows you to connect those dots yourself, as is the case throughout this fine and fluid memoir.
Refreshingly, the text is peppered with observations that are crisp and keen without being preachy, such as: “Don’t let the hard times harden you. Rise and strengthen not to merely harden and shut down but to let go, open your heart, and let love and life back in." And “Faith is like pilings under a house; you cannot see their strength, but you can feel it.”
A generous number of photographs accompany the text, which is broken up by sections called Life Lessons. These are numbered lists of observations in bullet form. They chronicle observations gained in a wide variety of settings. Included are “life lessons” from a hospital bed, a horse show, “From the High and Lows,” from watching the Olympics, and so on. Also Fourteen Helpful Tips When Tragedy and Loss Strike (these are practical, not Pollyanna pie-in-the-sky platitudes or trite cliches.) Twenty-four Life Lessons are included on page 184. You won’t want to miss these.
The author also takes us on trips to and work in Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Uganda, Liberia, and Kenya. Also street outreach in Phoenix and work with homeless people in San Diego, where the author artfully interweaves some of their stories with hers.
Searingly honest and frank, When the Tears Dry opens a door into a soul that’s been battered and bruised but refuses to be defeated. It pulls no punches. It’s authentic. Visceral. Vivid. It meets divorce, tragedy, illness, death, loss and grief head-on without devolving into mawkish or maudlin. Examples include the “eerie silence” of empty chairs at the Thanksgiving table and four steps on how to cope with the loss of a partner, spouse, loved one or friend.
Incidentally, it is not "2,000 words" as listed. It's just over two hundred and twenty pages. In those pages the author shares how she slowly learns that it’s okay to be broken. To appreciate the dark. The fear. The loss. And how to “find beauty in the pain.” How she chooses to allow life events to shape but not define her. How she finds strength, resilience, joy, love, and faith in the midst of the smelting fires of suffering and loss. And in so doing, she shows the reader how you can, too.
In short, When The Tears Dry is a towering achievement, especially for a new author. I’d grab a copy now ‘fize you.