Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome
“Kintsugi is a Japanese word meaning “to repair with gold”, and is normally applied to pottery.
If a piece is broken, say a favorite teacup, rather than being thrown away, it is repaired with gold, and the resulting piece becomes stronger, more valuable, and more beautiful for having been loved and broken.
Michael Leach, a practicing therapist, and I [Joni Sakurada Hotz] have taken this one step further, and applied it to the human heart: A heart that has been broken through any means – love, loss, death, abuse, war, natural disaster, etc. – can be healed, and the person becomes stronger, more valuable and more beautiful for the experience.
This concept celebrates our uniqueness, yet also draws us together, because everyone has had their heart broken. So many times we feel the need to hide our scars, our “brokenness”, but the reality is everyone has scars.
And far from detracting from us, the scars are what shape and create us, making us unique, beautiful individuals, with spectacular, breathtaking hearts.
Even a heart that seems shattered and broken beyond all hope and recognition can be healed, with the end result being a creation unique in all the universe, with the potential to outshine the stars themselves…
Depending on where you are at a particular moment, this may or may not sound true, or even possible, but I swear to you that it absolutely is.
And you have an absolutely unique, beautiful, breathtaking heart, no matter how you feel.”
— Courtesy of Joni Sakurada Hotz, a friend of this page, who wrote these words and created the beautiful art piece in the photo. She sent it to me in a message, and I asked her permission to use it, because if their is just one thing my memoir Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome is about–it is the concept of Broken Becomes Beautiful….
“This is why being broken is so beautiful: it means we have cracks for love and light to shine through, space for the Godiverse to borough and bloom, space to move from who we are to who we will become.” (From the final chapter).
My current breaks are being repaired with gold, and SO ARE YOURS.
My old cracks have become beautiful, and SO WILL YOURS.
Courage ON.
Love you, Reba
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Follow Reba Riley, author of Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome: One Woman’s Desperate, Funny, Healing Journey To Explore 30 Religions By Her 30th Birthday, to keep up with the #AmericaIsKind Challenge
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