*Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum.
*Karen is a life and fitness coach I started working with in 2020.
My insides cringe when I think of the word “broken”. No matter how many times Karen and I talk about it, my body, my brain… resist the idea of brokenness… I mean, sure… some things are literally broken, and I can deal with that… my patio, my shovel, my nephew’s arm… even our healthcare system. I can talk about that kind of broken with ease.
But, me, broken? You, broken? Heck no. We are good. We ARE GOOD. Just fine. Aren’t we? I don’t know about you, but I sure thought I was. I was good. I was fine.
I might lose my shit on my kids every once and a while, buy a pair of jeans to fill the void of connection in my marriage, and constantly wonder if I had enough friends, enough vacations, if I was providing enough enrichment activities for my kids so they could get into a good college, make good connections, be successful enough to make a likable facebook post…
So… maybe… I cried a little. Sometimes on the outside. Sometimes on the inside, but mostly I just felt a little lost, a little spun, and a lot distant from the girl I once was and the woman I knew I could be.
I was fine, though. I mean, I was good. I had all the things: a nice big house, a beautiful family, awesome friends, a rad dog, a career, beach vacation posts on my Instagram, who could ask for more?
At work… I did the things that “good” employees do- got there early, stayed late, read the articles, tried the latest strategy, volunteered (yes, you can volunteer at your work)…
Oh, and maybe I yearned for the award that would tell me I was good enough. Good enough to go home at a decent hour, relax on the weekend, stop trying so hard for a bit. I cycled between exhaustion, bitchiness, inspiration, awesomeness, blaming, venting and seeking… I signed up for a PhD program… maybe if I was a doctor, that would be enough. I could finally sit down. I told people that I went back to school because I love learning (and I do), that I wanted to open some career opportunities (and I want that too), but deep down, I was so uncomfortable in my own skin that I had to just keep moving to get away from the itch. And when the itch got unbearable… I just blamed the itch away. Blame the school, blame the district, blame the parents: Too many independent studies, these parents just don’t get it, the district keeps adding one more thing to do… but the itch, it didn’t go away. The blame didn’t put it out.
With my kids… I was awesome! I cooked, I coached, I did homework, I coordinated camping trips, I made chore charts and healthy lunches, I counted 1-2-3 like the book said to….
I also spanked and yelled and cussed and guilted. Maybe not so awesome. Oh, and I worried. I worried a lot. And when I worried, I would try to control my kids because if they were under my control, they would be ok, right? Nothing to worry about. I worried about their friendships, I worried about their academic skills (why are the other boys reading so many more books than mine?), I worried that they wouldn’t make the tournament roster, that their phone would rot their brains, that they’d get addicted to junk food, then pot, then coke, then meth… OMFG, did I worry! Meanwhile, I put my worry out in the world and tried to tell them how to be so they could avoid all the pitfalls I had painted in my mind. I seemed to have forgotten that they are humans with their own brain and body, and they very much have their own survival instincts, desire to have strong friendships, and enjoy successes… you know what I’m saying. I wanted my kids and me to win a race that didn’t even exist outside of my mind… my worry put a match to that itch. Full inferno.
So naturally, I wanted my husband (now ex-husband) to scratch that itch, put some lotion on it, whatever to make it go away. Well, how do you think that went? When he didn’t know how to do it, I wanted my family to do it; when my family were puzzled, I went to my friends, and they were like, WTF is your problem? The natural next step was of course to buy really expensive jeans, yoga pants, boots and hit the bars, you understand.
Not surprisingly, the jeans, yoga, and bars didn’t quite fix the itch either, and by that time I had alienated my husband, my friends, my family, my kids and I was still really, fucking itchy.
I thought I knew what the itch was… couldn’t people just cooperate? Listen to me, stop asking for more, start telling me I’m awesome and their favorite, make me feel whole?
As you might have guessed, they didn’t cooperate. They were focused on their own lives, can you imagine that? No one was interested in filling my inner world for me. Shit.
So I did what any former athlete (2nd place Coed Softball) would do, I got a coach. My work with Karen felt weird at first. She challenged me (and I had worked so hard to be so rational and awesome to avoid anyone being able to challenge my thinking). I got pissed at her. How dare this be my fault? The people aren’t cooperating. The people aren’t doing their best! Do your best, I do! But after every coaching lesson, I walked away with one little gem of wisdom and a slight sense of peace and confidence. And that was enough to keep me coming back for more.
After hours of going in circles about what I needed other people to DO so I could be ok, we drilled down to what I actually wanted to feel to feel ok. Did you catch that? It was a feeling, not a doing. I’d already done it all, but I wasn’t feeling that great.
I wanted to feel peace- just to be able to chill the fuck out without a bottle of wine first
I wanted to feel satisfied that I had done enough, was enough, that I didn’t have to keep trying so hard
I wanted to feel love because I was a good person, a good mother, a good wife, a good teacher
I wanted to be free of worrying if people liked me, if they thought I was good enough… wait…if I thought I was good enough, fit enough, clever enough, pretty enough, so I could just be present and feel some joy.
*You know what the science says… we really want feelings, not things. We want the feeling that comes along with hitting a home run, or the peace that is there at the ocean, or the satisfaction of making it to the top of the mountain. Getting dropped off by a helicopter isn’t the same thing. The view is, but the FEELING isn’t.
I started to scratch that itch, and it wasn’t pretty, but it got good sometimes. I did coaching with Karen once a week. It was $100 bucks an hour, (this was big money for a gal like me- I had always been too cheap for one latte a week- seriously), but the takeaways were too good to stop. Guess what every single gem I received from my coaching had in common?
ME. I had to look at myself. Karen would gently and not so gently remind me, “You are really the ONLY person YOU can control”. Really, Karen? There’s more…You want love? Love yourself. You want peace? Let the shit that’s bothering you go. You want to stop being resentful and exhausted? Stop doing things you don’t want to do so people will like you. People don’t like resentful people, and even if you were perfect for doing all the things, some people still wouldn’t like you!
Crack
I had to learn to tell the truth. The hard part… I thought I was telling the truth. But there’s a big difference between “I don’t want to do the fundraiser because I have to help my kid with a project this weekend and I don’t want to do the fundraiser because I need a day off to NOT be Mrs. Bacon, 5th grade teacher.” The latter is the truth. I told white lies all the time in order to preserve the image that I was really busy and needed nothing, not a break for sure.
Crack- I was a liar. Shit. Little lies to others became big lies to myself- hard to make progress when you are lying to yourself.
I had to learn to say no… like without lying. It was hard at first, I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. But, Karen gave me some amazing frames. “I love the students, and I really appreciate the people who hustle this fundraiser, but I need a break, and I can’t do this one.”
Whoa… that felt good. Let me try that again.
Crack filled with gold.
I took my learning to the trail… literally and set out on my annual camping solo camping trip. Back when I was still working on being perfect, I had decided to take a few days to myself (ridden with guilt) away to camp, move at my own pace and reset. I go to the same place every year. Most of the time, I do the same hikes each time, maybe adding one new path per trip. But I kept getting lost on the trails. I was hiking in an area with signs everywhere, a place I’d been before, and I got lost 3 times in a row in three days on 3 trails I had done before. I tacked on 1-3 miles on top of 9 mile hikes… and I am 45+ years old, it hurt! How did this happen you are thinking… Well, ok, this is embarrassing, but I’ll let it ride… When I was hiking, I was doing a couple things… first, I had created a race in my mind… how fast could I possibly do this hike? (I was not training for any races, I had nowhere to be after, no one was waiting for me). I made a fake race. And the other thing that is even more embarrassing, but I think I may not be alone here… well, in my mind at the time I firmly believed that locals don’t need maps, don’t need to ask for directions, and don’t need to slow down from the fake race to look at a sign. OH MY Truckee Local Ego!
Crack
I think Karen peed herself when I told her this story. After changing her pants, I think she may have said, “Remember when we talked about slowing down? Not worrying about what other people think? That life isn’t a competition…” Well, my blistered feet and bruised ego helped me remember now. The next hike I went on, I made sure to slow down… so much so that I was blocking the trail and happened to run into some women that were trying to figure out the fork the same that I was. I told them I was standing still until I was certain which way to go, and they laughed and said they were too… they had gotten lost earlier in the hike and had already added 2 extra miles. I was not alone, sometimes everyone is in too big of a hurry to slow down and check their direction. We laughed and grinned, but really our hearts touched with mutual compassion and understanding.
Crack filled with gold. Beautiful!
Over the last couple of years, I’ve taken Karen’s hard questions and guidance along with that of several thoughtful podcasters and authors, and I’ve continued to break down the former me. What I love about Kintsugi art is that you can choose what to break and where to crack, and you can choose what kind of gold to fill it with.
I’ve chosen to chip away at the part of me who thought the size of my house was a symbol of my worth, my degrees a sign of my status. I’ve taken a sledgehammer to my identity as a teacher, and a wife, and a mother. Those identities aren’t who I am. I am a human. Imperfect and amazing. With moments of utter disaster and moments of brilliance.
I am better broken because now I take risks because I’m not afraid of failing anymore. Some of the risks have been good and some bad, but I am still here, learning and loving. I am better broken because I take time to feel my feelings long enough to let them teach me and then let them go. I am better broken because I can see my cracks, I don’t hide them from myself and others, and I can fill them with gold.
In my Kintsugi life I continue to make mistakes. Sometimes I go overboard with boundaries or confuse being authentic with being judgemental. I catch myself telling stories to protect my ego, and I still dig up things that I am in denial about… the conscious mind isn’t always ready.
But my Kintsugi life is beautiful… In my Kintsugi life, I feel peace. I feel loved. I feel connected. I feel that I am enough, and it feels fucking amazing!
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