Beautifully Broken: Strength in the Cracks
The cracks you carry aren’t proof that you’re weak. They’re evidence that you’re human — and still here.
Authentic by Design Series - Part 3
There are seasons in life that shatter us.
The loss we didn’t see coming.
The dream that fell apart.
The version of ourselves we thought would always be enough — until it wasn’t.
We try to hold it together, to stay composed and capable, but inside we feel fractured — quietly collecting the pieces, unsure if we’ll ever feel whole again.
Most of us are taught to hide our cracks. To patch them up, smile, and move on.
But pretending doesn’t heal anything.
It just keeps us lonely in our pain.
The Beauty of the Break
There’s an ancient Japanese art called Kintsugi — repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted in gold.
The artist doesn’t disguise the cracks.
They fill them.
They make them shine.
The idea behind it moves me every time I think about it:
The piece isn’t ruined.
It’s remade — more beautiful for having been broken.
When I first learned about Kintsugi, something deep inside me exhaled.
It gave me permission to stop pretending I was fine.
Because maybe the point isn’t to “get back to normal.”
Maybe the point is to let the gold in — to let the light outline where we’ve been changed.
What Broken Really Looks Like
If you’re in a hard season right now — grieving, uncertain, exhausted — I want you to hear this:
You are not the only one who feels like a mosaic of what used to be.
Broken doesn’t mean you’ve failed.
It means you’ve felt deeply.
It means you’ve risked and cared and shown up for something that mattered.
The cracks you carry aren’t proof that you’re weak.
They’re evidence that you’re human — and still here.
I’ve had those seasons too.
Moments when life stripped away all the things that used to make me feel capable, leaving only what was real.
And though I wouldn’t have chosen the breaking, I’ve learned that it’s where strength is born — quietly, patiently, beneath the surface.
Learning to See the Gold
Healing isn’t about pretending the cracks don’t exist.
It’s about learning to see what’s growing through them.
Every time you forgive when you could have hardened — that’s gold.
Every time you start over after failure — gold.
Every time you let yourself be seen in your pain instead of hiding it — gold.
These are the repairs that make you radiant.
Not polished. Not perfect.
But real.
The Connection We Long For
The moment we stop hiding our cracks, we begin to connect in a way that’s real.
The truth is — people don’t bond over perfection.
We bond over honesty.
Over the quiet nod that says, “Me too.”
When we share our stories, we don’t just lighten our own load; we hand someone else a map through the dark.
Your openness might be the thing that reminds another person they can make it too.
Reflection
What parts of my story have I been hiding out of fear that they make me “less than”?
What gold have I discovered in the process of healing — wisdom, empathy, or courage I didn’t have before?
How can I start seeing my cracks as evidence of growth rather than damage?
Final Thought
We don’t get to choose all the ways life breaks us.
But we do get to choose what we do with the pieces.
And maybe, just maybe, the cracks aren’t what disqualify us from beauty — they’re what make it possible.
You’re not broken beyond repair.
You’re being remade — into something honest, strong, and profoundly human.
The light doesn’t need your perfection.
It needs your presence.
And it finds you, every single time, through the cracks.
