“The world breaks everyone and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.”
I recently discovered the phenomenon of the Japanese pottery Kintsukuroi, where gold is used to repair the cracks in broken pottery. After being pieced back together, the pottery is considered more beautiful and valuable.
Why can't we apply this metaphor to ourselves? If you know me or read any of my emails/blog posts, you know you can't read more than a few sentences without stumbling over a metaphor. Kintsukuroi is probably my favorite metaphor. We easily and automatically default to the view that the things that happened to us are scars to hide or be ashamed of. We let the stories that caused them rule our lives while pretending we're unbroken and perfect.
The secret is owning the scars and our broken parts, and seeing immense value in the healing. The problem is, that sometimes the healing can be as hard as it was to be broken and we decide to stay broken, or pretend- healed.
Healing means looking at every broken piece, examining its parts, and lovingly accepting it and putting it in its place.
This is not the work for just some people, I do this work too. I have to. "The world breaks everyone," as Hemingway says, and we all need to figure out how to find strength there. Myself included.
This is a great metaphor to describe what we will be doing in my new women's Daring Way 10-week workshop that is for Women in Transition (think: breakup, divorce, loss, move, new job, etc). We're getting together to learn about the vulnerability in being broken and how to show up to heal our brokenness so we leave feeling empowered and more whole. Check it out at the link below.
If you're not a woman in transition but want to learn how to heal in the broken places, reply to this email and we can discuss working together individually, or I have other groups for men and women as well. Looking forward to hearing from you!