What scars make us

It was Barbara Bloom who made us aware of the magnificent art of Kintsugi, "When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history, it becomes more beautiful." As a philosophy, Kintsugi treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.

At some point or another, we've all suffered damage, we've all had breakage but what do we do with our scars and mended places? So often, we keep quiet and hide away the emotional welts and inflamed patches. We keep our scars out of sight lest they be offensive or traumatising to others or even ourselves. Perhaps this is then the reason, when we are confronted with hurt in future, we forget that we can deal with this. We forget that we've put this thing called "pain" to bed before, we have this resource in our history. Maybe if we dusted our scars with gold and showed them off as art, we would celebrate them for what they've tought us, we might even just remember how far we've come to get to exactly this point and how extremely strong we are for achieving that alone.

Sure, scars are not for comparing and certainly there shouldn't be a competiton but what if we admired our and others' scars as a testement to where we've been, to how far we've come and all the things we've survived. Easier said than done, but behaviour is learned and that means that this action too, can be learned.

When you are struck down, look at that scar and celebrate it, celebrate in the knowing that you have won this battle before, and you will again. When anxiety rips at your heart and hurt sucks at your precious strength, hold onto your scars. You've got this.