KINTSUKUROI

This is the Japanese art of repairing pottery with gold or silver lacquer, with the understanding that the
piece is more beautiful for having been broken. It started me wondering what this would look like applied
to a person’s life.

She sat looking back on her life.

So old was she, it was the only direction she could see.

Hardships, loss, regrets, there were so many…

And the ball of golden thread that lay at her feet was almost spent.

Wasted, she thought, amid all her mistakes.

But, as she swam the depths of her past, she saw that,

When her husband had gone to war and not returned,

She had gathered every shard of her shattered heart, tenderly soldering it whole with the molten gold of
their love.

When gossips had lied and her hurt had turned to anger,

She had bathed the wounds with the salve of compassion.

When she had felt the shame of poverty,

She had brought it out to dance in the sun, until it flamed burnished gold.

When a kind word or helping hand was hard to come by,

She had wrapped herself in a silver shawl of her own kindness.

When she found herself too old to work,

She grew a garden and shared it with her neighbours.

When all her friends deserted her in death and her son called her a burden,

She had joined a group, knitting clothes for new-borns and new friends for herself.

When life had become just too much to bear,

She had walked in nature and filled her soul brimful with the wildness of soaring skies and silvered heather
hills.

Now, she saw her life was a precious patchwork of silver, gold and broken,

That together formed the warp and weft of her life and dazzled even on the dullest day.

The gold and silver did not hide the fractures,

But illuminated them; celebrated them.

For it was the broken that made her whole; kept her connected.

Only then, did she understand that life is not about staying small and unbroken.

But to be fractured and mended, time and again.

To stay connected to ourselves and to each other.