Kintsugi

Kintsugi (translation: golden mend) is a Japanese art form in which the repaired seams of broken pottery are not hidden, but accentuated and given greater value. Created in collaboration with the talented and delightful Akemi Jill Rogers, ceramicist.

While there is a season for sitting still and grieving what has been broken, there is also a time to do something about it. This is that time. Mending is a work of great care and compassion...rebalancing the broken pieces, filling the gaps between, and inviting the scars into a place of honor in our story.

The high-maintenance pursuit of perfection is overrated. The most powerful stories in our lives emerge from those places where we were broken, sometimes into very tiny pieces, and have found wholeness once again. In the process of healing, scars take on deeper names like compassion, understanding, grace, and courage. They are the gold in our lives, like the gold seams in this cup. We certainly don't have to be thankful for painful things that happen, but we can eventually be thankful for who we become because of those experiences.

Every scar has a story to tell, if we have a heart to listen. Our listening can offer space for healing. Not to fix or to learn something, but simply to be safe people who can hold the story of another with care. It's in sharing our own stories that we practice courage and break a little freer from all that has kept us silenced. We cannot do these things alone.

They are gifts we can give each other.