“There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen
After yet another surgery, this time to repair my reconstruction surgery scar on the right side of my face, I knew my physical scars would heal quickly-they always do-but I worried about the deep crack left in my spirit.
Luckily, an unlikely friend stepped in to offer his guidance and support. He made his way into my heart as if it were an old familiar place and helped heal my soul by showing me how to listen and feel. The hurt. The heartache. The hate. To get close to it, taste it and understand it so I could define it before it defined me. He gently touched my soul like a whisper and found the places that were broken. He stayed right beside me until the fractured places became crevices, and then, just thin white scars, barely perceptible to anyone but me.
My friend, a trained practitioner in guided meditation, suggested we go on an inward journey into my mind in order to heal me emotionally and physically. The introspection of meditation was intriguing to me. I’ve always felt like an old soul dwells inside of me, a soul that has lived in a thousand bodies. I fall in love every day with something new and with people I have never met. Yet, everything and everyone seems vaguely familiar.
He guided me into a deserted temple. A diffuse bluish light was beaming through the pillared alley, making for an eerie contrast with the white halo beaming from the brass sculpture on the central altar. I could smell a heavy fragrance of incense and the sound of chimes could be heard in the distance. This place did not feel like a world of fantasy, everything I could see was so real, the material so substantial and yet impenetrable.
I was guided to move and chant, and as I did, my friends and family entered to join me. As we chanted together, I realized that I have a conscious partnership with my friends. The loved ones were there to fill the cracks in all of our hearts, not just mine. I thought of the old Japanese practice of “kintsugi”, or golden repair. This is an ancient ceramic art practice that instructs us to repair broken objects in a meticulous manner to make them even more valuable than before. The cracks in the ceramic pieces are filled in with gold. Beauty appears exactly where the worst faults previously existed and the golden scars add to the living story and value in the container. Like any genuine process of healing, golden repair requires that we first acknowledge and carefully study the exact faults and divisions that damage the sacred vessels of our lives.
I realized that my friends and family did not show up to merely heal me. They were there as my gold, filling up my cracks, making me whole again because each of them had golden qualities and unique love for me.
I emerged a true and different work of art, with my own story and beauty. Thanks to my unique cracks, my scars became what to exhibit. They make me distinct as well as beautiful.
The kintsugi technique taught me the essence of art and that each of my scars and cracks tells a meaningful story. They are reminders of times when life tried to break me but failed. They are the markings of where the structure of my character was welded– with gold.
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