jQuery to find all previous elements that match an expression

Using jQuery, how do you match elements that are prior to the current element in the DOM tree? Using prevAll() only matches previous siblings.

eg:

<table>
    <tr>
        <td class="findme">find this one</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td><a href="#" class="myLinks">find the previous .findme</a></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td class="findme">don't find this one</td>
    </tr>
</table>

In my specific case, I'll be searching for the first .findme element prior to the link clicked.