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Portrait of Your Tears

Rose-Lynn Fisher's photograph of tears of grief, taken under a microscope.

While she was going through a period of upheaval a few years ago, photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher wondered if her tears of grief looked different from her tears of joy. Over the next few years she photographed her own tears and those of several others, including a newborn baby.

Onion tears. Rose-Lynn Fisher

Science divides types of tears into three categories: (1) psychic tears, released at times of extreme emotion, uplifting or downcasting; (2) basal tears, which keep the cornea lubricated; and (3) reflex tears that respond to an irritant, like an onion. Tears of emotion also contain certain hormones, such as the neurotransmitter leucine enkephalin, a natural painkiller that the body produces in stressful situations.

To Fisher the tears, resemble landscapes seen from above. She calls her images "aerial views of

Tears of laughter by Rose-Lynn Fisher

emotion terrain."

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Radical Joy for Hard Times is a global community of people dedicated to finding and making beauty in wounded places. Reconnecting with these places, sharing our stories of loss, and making acts of beauty there, we transform the land, reconnect people and the places that nourish them, and empower ourselves to make a difference in the way we live on Earth.

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