If you read the Saturday Spotlight yesterday, shining on Kelly Strandemo, you will read a little about Kintsugi.

This is a pottery technique of letting the scars become beautifully exposed. Embracing those “flaws” to create something even more beautiful, more stunning, more resilient.

Metaphorically, we need this technique for ourselves too.

We often feel we need to hide those scars, those “flaws”, those “imperfections” - from others and from ourselves.

What is perfect anyway? Who determines this? Why?

We have such negativity with these words, and yet they allow for the uniqueness of each of us to be revealed.

We often hear “a flawed technique”, or “an uneven performance”, or - fill in the blank.

What if we simply Kintsugi ourselves? Recognize and embrace those scars, marks, imperfections, and add the gold dust to enhance the resilience?

I know, easier said than done.

First step: a breath. And exhale.

The scars and so-called imperfections both physically and otherwise are the roadmap. It reveals where you’ve been. They are where the stories are. They are what the stories are. They are the life force that resides in your body, in your voice, in your spirit.

My roadmaps are complex and detailed!! Sometimes they lift and get irritated; sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they seem to blend in and relax, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes it frustrates me, exhausts me, angers me. Sometimes it gives me pause. Sometimes it lets me rejoice.

You don’t have to do a complete overhaul all at once. A little Kintsugi one breath at a time will hopefully reveal to YOU how truly beautiful you are. Sometimes the resilience of a scar is always there. It just needs time to convince YOU that it is, indeed, resilient, and reliable and magnificently YOU.

We acknowledge the scars and the flaws as we can. As you have often heard me say, delusion of any kind is a form of stress management. Ignoring something, making excuses for something, blaming,…all kinds of stress management. We need those things sometimes. Until we don’t.

But the beauty of you? We need that too. YOU need that too. You need that gold thread to weave through the parts and reveal how resilient you truly are; how REAL you truly are; how LIFE FILLED you truly are; how UNIQUELY you are breathing and vibrating.

Find the other humans and artists who recognize those scars and “flaws” as something to rejoice and work with, as opposed to those who will continue to poke at them and try to get rid of them. Find the team that continues to help you thread together your parts; who reflects the magnificence that you are and perhaps simply can’t see yet, but will; who works with you and challenges you to see and build and construct more of YOU.

with fondness & fierceness,