Kintsugi
Our focus this week — Dec 24-31: “The Puzzle of Love”
Today’s MotD: Kintsugi. Today we look at “Kintsugi”, the ancient Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer and embellishing the seams with gold, silver, or platinum powder. We can use it as a metaphor for any of us who may be dealing with or have yet to process our broken heart(s)—which may have been broken more than once.
From Japanese Daily “At its core, Kintsugi is a celebration of imperfection. It aligns with the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi, which finds beauty in the imperfect, the incomplete, and the transient. Kintsugi reminds us that brokenness is not the end—it’s an opportunity for transformation.”
To clarify…when we say “broken hearts” we’re not just talking about in romantic relationships, we’re talking about any time our hearts were hurt in any relationship: parents, siblings, children, extended family, friends, work, neighbors. We’re talking about any time where we experienced heartache due to being on the receiving end of unkindness, anger, injustice, abandonment, hatred, disappointment, and so on.
So…how can we mend a broken heart ? Excellent question. For starters, we can stop resisting it and be with it, acknowledge the ways our hearts have been broken over the years.
From here, because I’m unsure of the next steps, I thought I’d go to AI (in this case DeepSeek) for their take on it using “kintsugi” as a metaphor for healing a broken heart. I thought about editing it to make it more in my own words, and yet what DeepSeek presented is whole and complete just as it is.
Step 1: Gather the Pieces (Acknowledge the Break)
Don’t sweep the shattered feelings away. Carefully collect them—the grief, anger, and sense of being unlovable. Sit with them. You cannot mend what you do not first acknowledge is broken.
Step 2: Affix with Gold Lacquer (Reframe the Narrative)
Here is the alchemy. Mix your “golden lacquer” from truth and compassion. Ask: “What does this break actually say about my worth?” The answer is always: Nothing. The flaw is not in you, but in the connection, circumstance, or the other’s capacity. Your lacquer is the realization: “I was always whole. This pain proves my capacity to love, not my lack of lovability.”
Step 3: Let the Bond Solidify (Allow Time & Space)
The new bond needs stillness to harden. Give yourself the quiet space of no contact, if possible. This is not a punishment, but a necessary pause for the repair to set. In this stillness, the new, truer story of your resilience begins to hold weight.
Step 4: Sand and Polish (Reintegrate Your Strength)
Once solid, gently polish the repair. Re-engage with the world. Do things that make you feel capable and connected—a walk, a hobby, time with someone who sees your gold. Each small action smooths the sharp edges, not to hide the repair, but to let it shine without catching on the past.
Step 5: Display the Art (Honor the Whole Story)
The final act is to place your mended heart back on the shelf of your life, not as a hidden flaw, but as a central piece of art. Your history of breaks and repairs is not a record of damage, but a map of your unique, unbreakable spirit. The golden veins are proof: you loved, you lost, and you chose to make yourself more beautiful for it.
The Kintsugi Truth: You are not less valuable for having been broken. You are a one-of-a-kind masterpiece, whose greatest beauty is found in the graceful, golden evidence of your own repair.
Essentially we’re encouraged to embrace our broken heartedness and to allow ourselves to experience the beauty, awe, and enlightenment of our transformation as we put the pieces back together to form a newer, higher vibrational version of ourselves.
How about you ? Have you ever experienced a broken heart ? Did you process it or close that part of your heart down? Are you open to transforming that experience into something that makes you more awesome and enlightened for it ?
BTW…Here’s the before…the front and back view of today’s puzzle piece and the pretty ceramic box that holds all my numbers from which I randomly choose each day’s puzzle piece number:
Peace & Blessings,
Maureen
The Mandala Lady
🔆 transforming soul whispers into mandalas and channeled messages for clarity, peace, and love
ABOUT THE 2025 Mandalas of the Day
Throughout the year, I’ll be building one large (48”x48”) Tibetan-styled Mandala one piece at a time…one puzzle piece at a time, that is. The mandala design and the reversed puzzle side were printed on artist-quality watercolor paper. The forward facing puzzle side was printed on a 48”x48” wood panel.
Each day, at random, I’ll be painting in watercolors one of the 365 watercolor puzzle pieces, that by the end of the year will become Archangel Mandala #4. Read more about the Archangel Series. The word/message for each piece will be inspired by Melody Beattie’s book “52 Weeks of Conscious Contact”.
Ultimately, the message of this mandala is about how we are all uniquely part of the one.
Mandala of the Day 