I often feel like I’m broken: my brain spinning in chaos and my heart feeling like it will never mend. There have been times in my life that I wasn’t sure I was going to survive. The moments of pain and heartache feel like years, and I felt torn in a thousand pieces. However, as often happens, the broken pieces come back together stronger and more beautiful. The strength is in surviving the chaos and the resilience it takes to put the broken pieces. This healing process reminds me of the art of Kintsugi - taking broken pieces and fitting them back together in strength and beauty.
Kintsugi Art: Embrace Your Imperfections And Flaws
Kintsugi is an ancient art from Japan that puts broken pottery pieces back together with gold. This long-standing tradition in Japan embraces a pottery object’s imperfections and flaws rather than disguising its history of breakages and repairs. As a result, what was once broken is now stronger and more beautiful and valuable, and each crack is filled with gold. So the brokenness makes it better.
Don’t miss this: the process of the art is using the broken pieces to make it more beautiful instead of hiding the brokenness. Through highlighting the broken pieces, the pottery becomes new, stronger, more beautiful and more valuable. And yet, we hide our brokenness because we believe it makes us less beautiful, weak, and less valuable. How do we emulate Kingutsi in our lives?
Your Imperfect History Makes You Who You Are.
Everybody goes through challenging moments in life that leave them feeling broken, but if you had the chance to change them, would you? Would you do anything differently? Would you still be who you are today without those challenging moments?
Instead of thinking about how broken you were, think about how strong you were to move through the pain.
That’s the concept of beautifully broken.
The Beauty Of Feeling Broken
When you neglect the parts of you that need repairing after a traumatic experience, anxiety, and worry can compound, resulting in your mind getting lost in negative spirals. All you can think about is how broken you are and how unworthy you are.
These negative spirals and feelings of hopelessness, “I can’t ever get out of this,” affect the way that you see your past, your present, and your future. You think you can’t do anything because you are broken.
Even though it’s hard to see when you are in the midst of it, the brokenness makes you more valuable to yourself, your family, and your friends in the long run.
Embrace The Powerful Mindset Shift Of: I Can Get Out Of It.
I want to encourage you to think about yourself as a piece of pottery that breaks. And then we put you back together with gold and with emotion, beauty, healing, and kindness. We put you back together to be who you need to be now in this new stage of your life.
When you look at your brokenness as something that can become incredibly valuable and incredibly beautiful, instead of “oh my gosh, I can never put it back together.” It helps you feel more at peace. Which helps you become less reactive to the uncontrollable triggers that arise after a traumatic experience.
Mattie Cummins is a brain-loving neuro-social worker/journey coach/counselor and owner of Cerebrations LLC. She specializes in helping clients with neuro-issues and anxiety live their best life through functional coaching and brain education. By empowering you to harness the power of your brain and body connection, Mattie can help you understand what is happening in your brain, rewire your thoughts and reactions, and find your best life.
