I found a bowl in the cupboard the other day as I was transitioning my home altar from spring to summer for the Summer Solstice.
The bowl was still in 3 pieces from when I dropped it months ago.
I love this bowl. It’s one of my favorite seafoamy colors. It’s the perfect size for holding keys or change or offerings (as it is in my new altar). And it was my Mom’s.
I’m not sure why I haven’t tried to put it back together before.
Perhaps I thought it was too broken, so was saving it for a craft project?
I stocked up on super glue recently and I’ve been gleefully glueing everything back together—my trail running shoes, my faith stone—why not this bowl?
I glued two pieces together. Then the third wouldn’t fit!
Argh.
Turns out, it would have fit perfectly if I had glued all three pieces together at the same time.
Tricky but doable.
I jammed it in there the best I could. It’ll still work as an offerings bowl etc. but there’s a big jagged edge. Like a crooked scar.
Too Broken to Be Whole
When I was 20 years old and my Mom died unexpectedly, it was my heart that broke into pieces. Similarly, I set it on a shelf because I didn’t know how to deal with it.
I sort of put my heart back together, but it took me years to put the last piece in—to fully grieve, to forgive and to be whole again.
No right or wrong, just is.
And no coulda-woulda-shouldas, though I often sensed the now lesson learned that “glueing” all the pieces back together at once—as hard as that is—would create more immediate wholeness.
Tricky but doable, indeed.
After I glued the bowl back together, I shared this lesson learned on Facebook and some folks reminded me that: “In Japan they add ‘gold’ to the cracks, to highlight that the cracks are part of its history.”
Kintsugi (金継ぎ, “golden joinery”), also known as Kintsukuroi (金繕い, “golden repair”), is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-e technique.
Becoming whole again with beautiful golden cracks.
Healing the deepest hurts
This is what it felt like happened to my heart last week when my family spread my mother’s ashes in a place that was special to us and to her—a nearby mountain she had climbed 15 times by the time she was 28 years old and started having the three of us kids.
Losing her was a sudden and deep wound. And the recovery was long and deep.
So many years later, my eyes and heart sobbed as deeply as the day her spirit left us.
As the ashes lingered on my finger tips then caught the wind in a tiny poof, I could feel the solid mountain beneath my feet.
Deep breaths. Still moments. A blessing shared out loud sealing a universal ritual in a sacred place.
“May perpetual light shine upon
the ashes of all who rest here.May the lives they lived
unfold further in spirit.May all their past travails
find ease in the kindness of clay.May the remembering earth
mind every memory they brought.May the rains from the heavens
Fall gently upon them.May the wildflowers and grasses
Whisper their wishes into light.May we reverence the sense of presence
in the stillness of this silent mountain.”1
The crack was painted with gold.
I was able to easily flow from this moment into the next—sharing snacks and champagne on a picnic table with the grandkids—recovered to a seemingly normal state.
This is what we patiently seek.
Really Seeing Ourselves
What all is healing in you?
Is it getting the space and attention it needs at the stage that it’s at?
We are all healing.
We all have cracks that can be painted gold.
They don’t make us stronger, but they can give us strength.
The world needs you to repair what is divided.
Healing is a process of becoming whole again.
We think of it as slow or fast, but it’s actually timeless.
Sometimes healing takes years before we reach integrity again—for us to be unimpaired, undivided.
Start The Process
Since becoming injured in a bike accident in several weeks ago I’ve been acutely aware of the stages of healing wounds:
- Shock Stage: Triage
- Immobility Stage: Protection
- Growth Stage: Rebuilding
- Mobility Stage: Recovery
That’s my own words, not the terms medical professionals use, based on how I’ve experienced them whether it’s been my body or spirit that’s been healing.
With this recent wound, I’ve watched in awe my body doing what it naturally knows how to do. My job: to stay out of the way.
“The healing process is remarkable and complex, and it is also susceptible to interruption due to local and systemic factors…When the right healing environment is established, the body works in wondrous ways to heal and [revitalize itself].” Online Source
Now that the scabs are gone, skin grown back, bruises faded and I’m walking and running again it appears that I’m all better.
But, I’m not.
There is still pain with certain movements, fatigue from too much use and instability in my balance.
More patience, more healing.
That’s why the recovery stage is such a surprisingly difficult stage in healing. The process of returning to a normal state.
But what is a normal state?
When everything is so healed that there are no cracks, no weakness? As if it never happened?
I don’t think so.
Perhaps the normal state is when our renewed strength is challenged, yet remains stable.
This does not mean we are unbreakable. Wouldn’t that be nice?
But we are whole again.
Whole with beautiful golden cracks.
The empowering and discouraging truth
Whole doesn’t mean finished. How could it be?
There is no finished state of life.
Not for nature, not for humans.
While my knee is on the mend, I am just now moving into protection mode as the shock wears off about the financial reality and compounded debt I’ve discovered as I’ve been doing my 2017 bookkeeping and preparing taxes for the extension deadline.
We are constantly in flux between healing one thing or another.
This can be discouraging or empowering. You choose.
It’s key to not get stuck in any stage, especially shock, like the broken pieces of bowl I left sitting on the shelf for months.
Give each stage it’s time to be, then move on.
Stuck is different than immobility. Immobility has purpose.
For instance, my knee swelled up immediately to protect itself and stabilize. Then I stopped moving for a few days to give the knee time to adjust and start rebuilding once it settled down. The swelling needed to recede in order to actually heal, so that I could move again.
Stuck is uncomfortable because you feel “broken.”
You’re not. You’re just not making progress toward wholeness.
Once you start, the healing accumulates. And so does the resilience.
You come back easier, sooner, faster.
You don’t get stuck in a stage.
You glide through the healing process with energy to spare, focusing on recovery. Recovering wholly and soulfully.
So that even amidst the continuous and constant healing process of living, you feel glued together—not broken.
1 Blessing adapted from original by John O’Donohue from To Bless the Space Between Us, a beautiful compilation of blessings to consecrate life’s transitions and heartfelt moments