Ring the bells that can still ring.

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything.

That is how the light gets in.

– Leonard Cohen, Anthem

I have been reflecting on how our life experiences affect us and how often these events can be considered as breakages that can leave horrible, ugly, messy scars. I hear about adults carrying baggage from their life experiences that weighs them down and stops them from enjoying the journey of life. I read articles about adults being covered in mud, a metaphor for the life experiences that have affected them in a negative way, and each time I hear or read these metaphors I think about the extraordinarily beautiful Japanese art of Kintsugi (golden mend).

When a pot or cup or bowl or any item of pottery is broken, the object is mended with lacquer resin laced with gold or silver so that the cracks where the pieces have been joined shine and sparkle and add value to the object in a beautiful way.

How wonderful is that?

How empowering to see our breaks and damaged parts healed with gold or silver and adding to our value as humans rather than seeing ourselves as flawed or scarred or imperfect or worth less than before our life events brought us this experience. Believing this, does not mean that I think trauma or tragedy makes us more beautiful, but I do believe that these experiences change us and we have a choice as to how we live that.

We could easily choose bitterness, anger, regret, or denial, and we can reject our flaws and imperfections, wishing them away or covering them over with a layer of self-protection. Or we can rely on distraction and keeping busy to avoid dealing with them at all.

OR…

We can choose to see these experiences as our shiny, sparkly gold or silver seams and embrace them and welcome them as part of WHO WE ARE.

I have had many an experience that I could consider defines me in my life. I’ve had experiences that I could consider have chipped me, scratched me, cracked me and broken me and, in the past I would have stuck with a strongly held belief that my scars were ugly and made me unloveable. I would have used them as excuses for not being able to trust life, to hold on to victimhood, to not take risks or to open my heart in case it was dropped and broken.

Now, and it hasn’t been easy by any stretch of the imagination, I fully cherish the experiences that have influenced me. They are what makes me unique. They have given me wisdom and have influenced me in choosing my mission to empower others and support them to embrace their flaws, cracks and  broken pieces with tender love and care. Perhaps it has come with age. Or perhaps it has come with letting go.

I don’t know.

What it has brought me though, is peace and wow does that finally feel good!

In telling one of the experiences in my life that affected me deeply in the Pay It Forward Series; Notes to my Younger Self Volume 2 which will be released in paperback on March 8th this year (Kindle version on March 1st), I hope to bring comfort, wisdom and inspiration to others around the world. I want them to see my sparkling golden seams and know that they too, like me, will heal and learn and grow and perhaps just find their life mission along the way.

For further information about the book launch and conference; Destined for Bigger Things on Friday March 8th head to The Pay it Forward Series; Notes to my Younger Self Facebook page or my Shine Sparkle radiate Facebook page where I will be posting information and doing some LIVES in the forthcoming weeks.

Loads more information to come about the Retreats I have planned this year also…it’s an exciting year for me and I am sparkling inside like a jolly yummy Cava

As always, I would love some feedback and welcome your comments so please, please do respond lovelies!