THE MEMOIR NOTES #13: Breaking Secrets Over Our Knees

The Art of Healing: Writing Our Stories + Kintsugi as Tools for Reclamation and Meaning-Making

The Memoir Notes is a series of real-time notes inside Heart’s Content documenting my process as I write a memoir. I share story drafts with my private community in each month’s intimate, bonus newsletter for paid members as well as some of my favorite tools and recommendations from the month.

“We all need a way to express or make something out of experiences that otherwise have no meaning. If what you want is clarity and meaning, you have to break the secrets over your knee and make something of those ingredients.” — Abigail Thomas.

I’ve been intentionally breaking secrets over my knee to make meaning for a long time. It all began with a multi-disciplinary summer arts program I founded in the late 90s, aimed at introducing marginalized youth to a variety of arts experiences, including theatre-making and talking circles. This transformative program, aptly named "This Is Who I Am," brought together a dedicated community of artists, counselors, and volunteers who wholeheartedly collaborated with the students.

Participants in the program were deeply involved in every aspect of the production. They wrote and performed monologues, poetry, scenes, dances, and songs, showcasing their talents and expressing their innermost thoughts. They also contributed to the visual aspects of the performance, designing and painting the set, program, and lobby displays.

Throughout the process, the students bravely shared their hopes, fears, and dreams, allowing us to glimpse into their lives. The culmination of their hard work and vulnerability was met with thunderous applause, tears, and gratitude from our audiences.

This experience taught me many things beyond the scope of today’s writing, but for today, I want to focus on how it introduced me to the art and process of meaning-making. A process that began, unceremoniously, at my dining room table.

This Is Who I Am (2004)

Initially, I was unsure how to honor both the individual stories and the larger communal narrative we were crafting. I struggled to transform their diverse experiences into a cohesive production. My approach at the time was to lay out all their story pieces on my dining room table and rearrange them, shuffling them ( wax on, wax off) until a larger, healing narrative emerged. What proved crucial was the compassionate attention given to their stories which opened a portal of meaning-making. I believe this process speaks to a universal need within us all.

A few weeks ago, and decades after those transformative summers, I found myself back at my dining room table, back in the process of laying out multiple memories and stories to see the larger picture and to make meaning once again. This time, the stories were my own.

I will probably get teary writing this next bit to you. This is no surprise to the people who know me. I’m a crier. But it’s a grateful cry.

The photo above is a representation of the cumulative work of three years of writing memories and stories from my own life. I put each story title on an index card, and laid them on the table, just like I once had with the theatre program. I needed to see and feel the full picture from above. I’d been immersed in the micro and needed the macro. The cards on the table reflect titles of lived stories that I can now begin to piece together in the larger telling of my own story.

All those memories, all those stories. Personally, it feels like a really big deal. The decision again and again to show up and do this work. Choosing courage and persistence. It is no small work this work we do to heal.

I’ll admit that I wanted to throw myself a confetti parade. You know what I mean? I am celebrating this major milestone and sharing it with you. I hope it encourages you to persevere in your creative and healing work. It is.worth.it.

The courageous act of revisiting our past experiences is a form of recognition and repair. First and foremost for ourselves and our hearts. By then sharing our stories, we acknowledge our past wounds and traumas, but we also demonstrate to others the resilience and strength in moving forward. We find healing and integration by reconstructing our narratives, reclaiming the difficult parts of our stories, and communicating their newfound beauty. We offer hope to each other in this work when we allow our story to be witnessed.

How timely then that I recently had the privilege of participating in a Kintsugi workshop alongside a group of inspiring women.

Kintsugi, or "golden joinery," also known as kintsukuroi or "golden repair," is a profound Japanese art form that involves mending broken pottery with urushi lacquer mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum.

What makes Kintsugi remarkable is its philosophy: rather than concealing or discarding the broken pieces, it celebrates them as part of the object's history. The repaired pottery becomes a symbol of resilience, embracing imperfections and highlighting the beauty of flaws. Kintsugi treats the process of breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to be hidden or ashamed of. This is exactly what we do when we write to heal.

In many ways, writing to heal mirrors the essence of Kintsugi. When we face our past by writing our difficult stories we are acknowledging our fractures and participating in the sacred act of mending them. Like the golden dust used in Kintsugi, our words become the golden glue that binds our shattered stories together, and if we are patient, transforms them into something beautiful and meaningful.

“The cracks in the pottery form a dramatic landscape. When the gold color is added along the joins of the broken parts, the lines look like lightning brightening the darkness, a golden-colored river, or a branch reaching into the firmament. New scenes are thus born in the pottery.” - Nakamura Kunio

“Lightning brightening the darkness.” A golden thread of healing. New scenes are thus born. Insights appear and light the way forward.

capturing lightning

We learn that the places that were broken in us are indeed made more beautiful through our loving attention, reclamation and repair, and the meaning-making process. We learn that we get to choose the meaning, not someone else.

Instead of hiding the fractures, we illuminate them. Instead of burying the past, we highlight our stories of pain and resilience and say, “Look here, right here… This happened to me. This is my story. I stand here today, not defined by my past but empowered by my journey of self-reclamation. These once-painful experiences now glisten like gold, illuminating a path of healing and transformation.

“A broken piece that is put back together has more of a story, “ writes Vaneeth Risner, “and is stronger and more resilient than something that has stayed pristine.” She goes on to say, “ “The breaking of what once was… the layered and time-consuming process of putting it back together, the mending it with gold, all contribute to its value. ”

Is this not exactly what we are doing, my friends, when we face and feel our difficult stories? Are we not made all the more beautiful in our intention to love ourselves even more in the places that were broken? Are we not made stronger when we internally and courageously face the places and people who temporarily broke us? Do we not shine golden in our willingness to heal and share our story instead of hiding it?

In Suffer Strong, by Katherine and Jay Wolf, Jay adds:

“The story of kintsugi—this style of pottery—may be the most perfect embodiment of all our trauma-shattered lives... Instead of throwing away the broken beloved pottery, we’ll fix it in a way that doesn’t pretend it hasn’t been broken but honors the breaking—and more so, the surviving—by highlighting those repaired seams with gold lacquer. ... It’s stronger and even more valuable because of its reinforced, golden scars.”

Our workshop leader told us that once repaired, the pottery cannot be broken again in the mended places. Read that again.

After facing and writing into the broken places, I have discovered the “lightening brightening the darkness.” the slow and layered process of gluing my story together with gold. Wounds are alchemized into golden scars. Scars we do not hide but highlight for the benefit of ourselves and others. Sharing our painful stories allows us to turn brokenness into the beauty of deep acceptance. We get to become lightening, brightening the darkness for ourselves and others.

Dear one, be brave. Break the secrets over your knees and make your meaning.

Remember that you need not go it alone. We were never meant to. If you like, get on the waitlist for my next writing circle, simply respond to this email with your interest and I’ll answer. If you found some inspiration in this email, consider sharing it with a friend.

To our sacred repair, beloveds.

XO Mary

3 Things Worth Sharing:

1. Check out how my Kintsugi teacher, Brandi Babin, uses her workshops and Reclaim Journal to support women. She continues to donate these journals to women’s shelters and victims of domestic abuse.

2. “Sometimes, it seems safer to shut that tender, feeling part of ourselves down, to shy away from the suffering we encounter. But right now, this world needs nothing more than our strength and our softening. If we can’t feel the agony as well as the ecstasy there’s no way we’ll ever heal it.” - Laura Lewis

3. Poor Humpty Dumpty needed a story of Kintsugi. Click the photo for more images of Hahatango’s work.

   hahatango

   

   A post shared by @hahatango

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WHAT TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN OUR NEXT POST:

Contemplative Labyrinth Activism: How sacred activism differs from traditional activism and what it might mean to be a contemplative activist in a hurting world. Plus, I’ll offer resources for the upcoming World Labyrinth Day on May 4th in case you’d like to participate in your area and join a rolling worldwide wave of peace.

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