It was Sept. 27 when the vase I held dearly shattered.

For a moment, I could only stare at the fragments scattered on the floor. It was almost amusing how something I once thought so strongly of could fall apart so easily. In that moment, reflections of every sharp piece — fragile, messy, hideous even — resembled my own state. The state I found myself in after every crash, so visibly broken that all I long for is to feel whole again.

Growing up, the concept of healing felt like a contradiction: both familiar and foreign. Familiar, because the word soon became the solution to every step. Yet foreign, because despite its haunting presence, reminding me of the destination, I still stumbled — uncertain in the steps I took, but certain in the path I was supposed to follow: the contrast of knowing yet failing to understand. In healing, I knew its definition, but not its meaning. After all, how could I? Society often fabricates the harsh reality of recovery, being told to “move on”, “be strong”, and “just let go” as if it is simply an act of forgetting. But trauma does not work that way. Pain lingers, painfully so. In every visible crack built by dysfunctional families, messy breakups, or patterns of abuse, often we are told to forget the pressure that caused us to break, to cover our wounds, and rebuild our functions to what they once were. We praise strength as silence: smiling through discomfort, performing stability, pretending the wound is gone because it is invisible.

The portrayal of healing as “the goal” is engraved in our broken systems, sustained by the dialogue of overcoming trauma. However, the meaning gets lost in shallow words, never diving deeper into the reality that true healing often holds.

Generally, the embodiment of healing mirrors perfection: a vase crafted with perfect material, flawless shape, and a strong foundation. Expecting that recovery means hiding the ugliness of our cracks, painting over the slits, and only showing what is beautiful. Yet, why is strength only judged in a form that embodies perfection? Why must we perceive healing as masking the parts of ourselves that fail to come back together?

In trauma recovery, we often long for “before”. Before the fight, before the loss, before the version of ourselves that stopped feeling safe. Unable to accept the fragments of us destroyed.

The day I attempted to piece my vase back together, I began to realize the impractical expectations I, and many others, often associate with healing.

Kintsugi (金継ぎ): the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by joining the pieces with lacquer and dusting its cracks with gold. This centuries-old technique follows the philosophy of wabi-sabi, which finds beauty in imperfection, impermanence, and simplicity. The tradition embraces golden cracks, believing that imperfection is what makes those pieces more beautiful. Instead of concealing the fragments, it highlights the vase's flaws, turning what we often see as unpleasant into something worth being valued.

During the process of rebuilding pieces of my vase, I began to associate the fragments as parts of myself I deemed broken, the pieces I may never get back from all the broken promises, lies, infidelities — the betrayal. The exhaustion of holding myself together when the home I thought I could seek comfort in fell apart. There is a particular kind of ache that follows heartbreak, one that hums beneath the skin. I remember sitting in that ache, surrounded by the fragments of something that once felt whole, trying to understand how love could turn into absence so quickly. In this, I realized the layers that often stay hidden under society is a polished version of recovery. The parts we often evade when the world demands our pieces to heal.

Healing, I realized, is messy. My space did not come unscathed: my clothes were stained with gold, my fingertips roughened by dried glue. It was a process covered in fragments and residue, the kind that leaves room for frustration and disappointment, soiled with the remnants of effort in attempting to rebuild what is broken. It is never clean, always disorderly, but at least it is real.

Healing is also difficult. At first sight, breaking and mending a vase seemed simple, but we must never forget appearances can often be deceiving. Healing, too, is easier said than done. It asks for careful coordination, deliberate choices, and most importantly, resilience. Not every attempt succeeds; some pieces need several tries before the foundation holds, while some cracks do not align the way we expect. It is important that we ground ourselves in the reality that first attempts are rarely ever our last.

And finally, healing takes time. No amount of lacquer can bond the pieces unless you give it time to dry. The glue needs space to thicken, to strengthen, to set. We often overlook the patience healing requires. Some days I wrote till the pages bled with ink, while others I sank in the comfort of my sheets. But above all, most days I allowed myself to cry. Healing from trauma is not linear: it is tedious, uncertain, and many times hopelessly painful. You bleed a little when you pick up the pieces. You make mistakes. You try again, and again.

Just as Kintusgi is not about restoring the vase to its original state, healing is not about returning to who you were before the pain. It is about becoming someone new, maybe with the cracks still visible. The vase, once broken, will never look the same– but maybe– it is not supposed to.

This is a reminder that scars, cracks, and imperfections do not make you damaged; they make you human. There is beauty in seeing what once broke us, beauty in the evidence of our resilience, beauty in accepting the new and incomplete— to know that it is okay to sit in the chaos and say, “This is fine.”