A Facebook friend inspired this reflection. She’s been using AI to enhance her photos; creating images that are more beautiful, yet to my eyes, less soulful.
And yet, I can see the gift it’s giving her: a gentler reflection, a reminder she’s still beautiful after surviving deep emotional wounds and trauma.
It reminded me of kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer mixed with gold. Instead of hiding the cracks, kintsugi makes them beautiful; turning damage into something luminous.
I understand this.
Five years after being gaslighted and eventually discarded by a wounded man, I’m still mending my own spirit and rebuilding my sense of self-worth.
My work, in the therapy room and in my own life, is a kind of healing journey.
Not to erase the scars, but to line them with gold.
To make the wounded places luminous.
If you’ve been carrying cracks in your spirit, you don’t have to mend them alone. Sometimes the gold leaf is in our conversations, our breathwork, our bodywork, or simply in being truly seen without judgment.