Sometimes the End Is Truly the Beginning

Not long after I published Girl in the Spotlight, I received an email from a woman named Crystal Hawkins.

Crystal had written a book about surviving childhood trauma and was just beginning to think about publishing it. We met for coffee, and I shared my insights about the publishing process. For Crystal, publishing her memoir seemed so close and possible, and also so far away.

The gap between writing our stories and sharing them with the world is real.

So many questions come up, practical ones and emotional ones.

Fast forward to today, and Crystal is weeks away from releasing When the Secret Keepers are Gone to the world. She’s reviewing her proof copy and planning her book launch party.

Leading up to her book launch, Crystal has been sharing the lessons she’s learned from reading other memoirs.

I was honored that she included my memoir and appreciate her takeway after reading it: Sometimes the end is truly the beginning.

Our books are similar in that they are coming-of-age stories. We share the moments in our childhoods and young adult lives that shaped us, as well as the turning points that led us to where we are today.

Our stories on the page came to an end, but they hint at the life that comes after: who we are becoming and who we will continue to become in every chapter that follows.

I’ve been writing online for 18 years now, which still feels unbelievable to me. This weekly letter, Hello Friday, originally started as a blog. It’s where I turned to document my life after taking a leap of faith and leaving my career in television news. For nearly two decades, I’ve shared behind-the-scenes glimpses of raising my family, stepping into a more authentic identity, and realizing my dream of writing a book.

Hello Friday is the sequel to Girl in the Spotlight, playing out in real time.

I’m cheering Crystal on for many reasons. Her memoir is raw, beautifully written, and compelling (I got to read an advance copy), and I know how it feels to share intimate stories about your life, what’s at stake.

I also know why it’s important to do it anyway. If my story was one small beacon on Crystal’s path, helping her find the courage to share her own, then my book did its job.

Telling our stories is how cycles are broken. And even though it’s a messy and imperfect process, telling our stories is how we heal.

We don’t heal because we’ve exposed the secrets, or the ones who keep them.

We heal because we shine a light on the darkness, the pain, and the shame many of us carry. We literally flood the darkness with light. Memoirs turn heroes and villains into humans because we see pieces of ourselves in all of them. We heal when we break the stigma, when we break free from the belief that our experiences make us less worthy and less lovable than anyone else.

So how can we, starting today, continue to break cycles and step into our own new beginnings? I love what Crystal had to say about that on Instagram:

“In my own life, I have felt stuck at times. I have found that knowing what I’m NOT going to do is a good place to start. Sometimes you have to let go of the thing that is no longer working for you before you find your way.”

- Crystal Hawkins, Author of When the Secret Keepers are Gone.

I invite you to join me in cheering Crystal on as she publishes her memoir by following her on Instagram.