Kintsugi

Tomorrow, the Truman Medical Centers Behavioral Health Clinic will host an art show at its Healing Canvas location at 300 West 19th Terrace in Kansas City, Missouri. The show is titled Creating Hope. And, as you can imagine, the theme excites my Phoenix self very much. Even more exciting: The artists participating in the show will be both people who work at and with the behavioral health clinic. I must admit, I am less excited to see my own work on display than I am to see the work of the people who come to the behavioral health clinic for help. So many of them have been through so much, and to experience how they have defined hope despite such struggling and suffering is nothing short of a blessing. Most of them, by their very presence in this world, are living, breathing miracles. The pride and love I hold for the people I work with—staff and client, over the phone, inpatient and outpatient—defies words, let alone measure. They are my people. It is why I simply smile and shrug when people ask WHY I work where I work, HOW I can do what I do. These are my people. They inspire me.

The two pieces I have submitted are based on Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery. The artist uses lacquer mixed with a precious metal such as silver, gold or platinum to glue the fragments back together. In this way, the breaking or shattering of the vessel becomes an event that merely happened in its history rather than its destruction—a chapter in its tale rather than the story’s end.

Although I had seen Kintsugi pieces many times in my lifetime, I first became aware of what it was about ten years ago when I first moved to Missouri from Maryland. A friend of mine at the time, who tended to sing along to the radio when he was feeling particularly happy, kept singing a song “Shattered” by OAR. He sang one particular line as, “How many times must I pray to my shadow?” but what I heard in the song was, “How many times can I break ‘til I shatter?”

My inner kid believes that lyrics we mishear and sing aloud are actually messages from our innermost selves—like when I thought Donna Summer was singing “toot, toot, aaaahhh—beef, beef!” in Bad Girls. My innermost self wanted burgers, no question. (When I thought ELO was singing “Wrapped up like a douche with an aroma in the night” in “Blinded by the Light,” however—I…I just don’t know… My guess is that will be the punchline to cheer someone up at my funeral someday.) I wanted to know what the correct lyrics in “Shattered” were—both could  have make sense in the context of the song—to figure out whose innermost self was talking and what they were trying to say. So I Googled the lyrics to find out. This in turn, led down a rabbit hole of wandering about the Internet, where I read article after article about Kintsugi.

I hadn’t heard the song before my friend, and I haven’t heard it since.

The Universe later reminded me of Kintsugi when I was on the hunt for a song I had heard on the radio and wanted to add it to my catalogue of music to get caught up in when I create art. The name of the track is “The Ghosts of Beverly Drive” by Death Cab for Cutie. The title of the album: Kintsugi.

We listen to it all the time when we create art, particularly because it both catches and haunts. It’s one of only a handful of songs I’ve ever encountered that both my Phoenix and Raven selves can appreciate.

Most, if not all, of the therapists at the community mental health center where I work have inspirational sayings posted in their offices. And it was shortly after that song found me that I noticed a few of those sayings were about Kintsugi as a metaphor for healing—particularly the way trauma and other circumstances can break us and the process of healing enriches us.

Each of us is creative in some way, but somewhere in the process of growing up, we lose sight of that part of ourselves, trick ourselves into believing we are not—or even never were—capable of making something out of nothing. But it is that act—that making something from nothing—that makes us who and what we are. We think and therefore are. We create our values, which in turn create us. We become the dreams we wish to see in the world. That power allows us to make and remake ourselves time and again, whether to heal, grow or simply change. And the force behind that greatest of human powers is hope.

It is why it should be no wonder why I work in community mental health when I walk among you during the day. It is because hope means nothing unless you can give it to someone else. And it is by holding and helping to nurture hope for the people I work for and with that I acquire inspiration. It is because I want each and every person to understand the simple truth: Whoever you are, whatever you are, wherever you are—you are enough.

Do you see?

It’s okay if you don’t. I am not through yet. Hope, by its very design, never ends.

By building ourselves up after the breakdown, we become what we were, are, and always will be—beautiful. And by helping one others to rebuild and build anew, we become what we could never be alone—eternal.