I often touch on social issues, and occasionaly very personal ones, on this blog. Earlier today I did this, writing not only on behalf of my children, but of every child of a disrupted family that has ever overheard adults dismissing them as worthless and hopelessly damaged because of it.
My dears, it simply isn't true. Disruptions can come in many forms, whether they be the death of a parent, the deployment or other long-term job assignment of a parent, and of course, divorce. But hear me, children. You are not broken beyond repair.
When a potter is creating a bowl, he may drop it and break it. If it is unfired, the clay is put in a vessel of water, mashed up, and remade. This can't be a comfortable process, if you are the clay, but healing is possible.
There may be scars, and a case of utter abandonment by a parent is doubtless a pain that will never entirely vanish. However, there are also many familes that are re-shaped larger, odder, and with perhaps three or four loving parents rather than just two.
However,the children need support, not snide sniping at those parents who are trying to make the best of the situation as it is. There are few ideal outcomes in this world. As someone said to me recently "I realized that twenty years of bad marriage was doing more harm than cutting loose." Sometimes life takes a left turn, and a family has to talk, try to keep communications open, and they will heal.
There is no broken beyond repair. I know I am defying some accepted truths: that a person cannot change. I do believe it is possible. I think that trust can be re-formed, and extended perhaps into something that is even more beautiful than the orginal, as the Japanese art of kintsukuroi shows. When a broken pot, which would would ordinarily be discarded as hopeless, is healed with gold to create a work of art.
We are art forged in the fires of pain. It is our choice to take that pain and create something beautiful with it, or something ugly and vindictive that wants to create an unending cycle. Just because your background was unpleasant, is no need to apply that to everything you see around you.
Dream, my children, and fly on mended wings. You are kintusukuroi, and you are loved by many.
Art from brokenness
Note: I do not approve anonymous comments on this blog. If you can sign it with a name, and keep it reasonable without name-calling or public airing of private details, then it will be approved. I choose to not point fingers, you can only point at yourself.