The Art of Resilience: From Cracks to Courage Part 1: The Beauty in Brokenness – Introducing the Kintsugi Way

Finding Strength Through Our Cracks

I recently wrote an article for the American Institute of Stress (AIS) e-magazine, Contentment, on the topic of resilience.

 [Go here  to read the full article: We Are All Cracked Pots: Strength and Beauty From Brokenness, (starting on page 18), & several other writings on the same topic from various perspectives.]

I believe this to be a timeless topic and a vital key to a healthy perspective on and response to the inescapable stressors of this life. For the next several posts, I will be sharing on the quality of resilience, offering both my personal perspective and experience, and as a professional life coach.

I hope to stir up your curiosity about your capacity for resilience, as well as discussions in the relational circles of my readers' lives; and offer my professional partnership if such would be helpful for a freshly acknowledged desire to develop your resilience.

Let’s start with defining the term: What is resilience?  

You might be like me, picturing the bounce back effect: a rubberband snapping back into place after being stretched, a tree straightening after being bent in a windstorm. And yet, as we use the term commonly, the basic dictionary definition of resilience is:

 the ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.  

There is also the more specific psychology application of the word, used to mean the capacity of individuals to withstand, cope with, or recover from adverse, stressful, or high-risk circumstances.

Resilience is not about bouncing back. It’s about becoming something more — something beautiful, storied, and whole.

But what if for us, unlike a tree or rubberband, true resilience isn't about returning to our original shape? What if it's about becoming something more; transformed and transported forward by what could have stunted our growth?

Our resilience isn’t defined by how perfectly we recover, but by how intentionally we grow.

What I’m inviting you to consider with me is the object or person whose response to pressure, compression, stress is not just a bounce-back to its former shape or self, but the becoming of something more -  a more beautiful version of its former self; and yet, still retaining the marks left from the induced stress.

To help us visualize this process of positive transformation through pressure, let me use kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer mixed with powdered gold. Instead of hiding the fractures, it highlights them. Kintsugi is a process by which a vessel is returned to its former state before the breakage occurred. The process results in transforming the object by filling the broken places with liquid gold.

Share your beauty from broken pieces story on social media using #CracksToCourage

Psychiatrist and author Dr. Curt Thompson speaks of kintsugi as a living metaphor: an invitation to embrace our brokenness, to allow our wounds to shine, not shame us.

Kintsugi teaches us to celebrate and value the broken parts of ourselves, not disguise them.

I invite you to join me over the next several blog writings, in bringing our curiosity to this unique concept of our breakage being transformed into beauty. To get you thinking, consider this question:

What fracture in your story might hold the potential for transformation?

Comment below or share your kintsugi moment on social media using #CracksToCourage.

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Blessed to play a part ~

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