by Gretchen Martens

Kintsugi, or golden repair, is the ancient Japanese art of

repairing broken pottery with powdered gold. Breaking and

repairing are essential to the beauty of the piece, not a flaw

or a mark of shame. And kintsugi artisans work with pride

and love.

breaking and mending

can you tend to your woundings

with loving kindness

What if we learned to embrace our own process of breaking

and healing? What if we could learn to see the scars, visible

and invisible, as marks of strength and resilience?

embrace the repairs

as shards of your sacred Self

strong as tempered steel

In doing the inner work of kintsugi, with pride and love,

might we not see that the more challenging the journey, the

more beautiful we become?

trekking the rough road

the futile search for wholeness

joy in brokenness

Kintsugi was written by Gretchen Martens and originally published in House of Healing, the 13th book in the House of series. You can publish a copy here.

Gretchen is an adventurer. . . . an author, artist, mystic, energy healer, retreat leader, and spiritual companion. Drawing on her early years as an archaeologist, she describes herself as an archaeologist of the Soul, seeking out spaces that speak to the culture of place and the origins of our shared humanity. She finds herself drawn to places wild and remote, where people live simple lives of resilient happiness. Having (finally) embraced the life of an expat, she is permanently living in the small village of Placencia, Belize, steps from the Caribbean Sea.

Gretchen completed a certificate program in eco-ministry with Seminary of the Wild in March 2022 and she finds that the natural world speaks to her daily now. On Earth Day (April 22) she launched The Wild Canopy, a community for healing, exploration, and growing consciousness in the emerging tradition of wholistic spirituality. In Placencia, she is birthing Belize Healing Arts, a women’s collaborative working to help women heal and girls grow up happy, healthy, whole.