“The world breaks everyone, then some become strong at the broken places.” ~Ernest Hemingway
We all get broken in one way or another in this life. It’s an unavoidable part of living.
But we do have a choice about how we handle those breaks. Sometimes we get stuck in the brokenness and never heal. Or we try to pretend the brokenness is not there, driving it into our shadow where we act it out toward others without knowing why.
Sometimes we give ourselves the time and resources we need to heal those broken places, but the resulting scars remain tender and reactive.
And then there are the times when we do the hard work that’s required to not only heal the broken places, but to make those places stronger than they were before. It is then that our scars become beautiful in the way they allow us to bring healing to the world around us.
The Japanese art of Kintsugi (also known as kintsukuoi) repairs broken pottery with seams of gold and is a fitting metaphor for this last way of dealing with the broken places that life gives all of us. Kintsugi repairs the brokenness in a way that makes the container even more beautiful and valuable than it was prior to being broken.
This theme of finding beauty in the healing of life’s wounds shows up in my approach to life, in my writing, and in my kintsugi-inspired art work.
Visit the A Kintsugi Life website to learn more about this kintsugi-inspired work and browse the many kintsugi-inspired gifts available in my inventory.