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Kintsugi and the Beauty in Broken Things

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'Hidden Damage'  Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering  There is a crack, a crack in everything  That's how the light gets in. - Leonard Cohen Kintsugi ("golden joinery" or "golden repair") is the Japanese art form of repairing broken pottery with gold. It treats the breakage and repair of the item as part of its history, its journey, its existence. Rather than hiding the damage, it brightly illuminates the repair, inviting the world to see its improved beauty. Just like pottery, we humans can crack, splinter, break, shatter. These knocks remain part of our being and, whilst a brave face might create a temporary disguise, nobody can hide forever. At least I couldn't. To heal, I found I had to expose. Kintsugi treats the crack as merely an event in the life of the object, not a reason to end it. Kintsugi knows that something is more beautiful for having been broken. As someone who considers them

Best of Bermuda

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It's been a few weeks now - as it usually is between my blog posts and I know I must change. I will change. I have to now! Because I've been named in The Bermudian Magazine 's Best of Bermuda 2017 awards as Best Columnist/Blogger. And when you're neglecting your blog as much as I am, the guilt is accentuated when you win an award for something you're neglecting. Yes, I've been writing columns about Pepper Spray and Women's Rights , which I must admit is much more frightening than blogging about the inner workings of my troubled mind. I received very good advice once, "Don't look down." This applies equally to tightroping over a cliff as to when you've written an opinion piece and are terrified of the comments (read: trolls). I've been struggling with mania for months now, which is the opposite to my usual long bouts of depression. But I know the causes: it's lack of sleep, it's too much caffeine, it's lots of stress,

The Ballad of March Forth

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Power. After a year’s unintended break, I am drawn back to The Year of Celebration . Today, on my late father’s birthday, I pored through emails, articles, photographs, essays, newspaper clippings and videos. I feasted on his life. The portion I spent with him and the portion before me. I don’t reserve that purely for his birthday of course, but on March 4 th I always celebrate him, because often I just can’t. Sometimes, even now, the pain is too great and to remember him is to remember that he’s gone. And when I lost him, I did everything I could to lose myself. I learn ed many things from my dad. He was my greatest teacher, both in life and in death. His life story rivalled the best of any Shakespearean drama, but if I could condense it into one soundbite, his birthday sums it up: March Forth. It’s not just a date in the calendar, it’s a direction – to do something, to go somewhere. My grief and depression following his death was the launch pad for The Year of Celebration