When I was five years old, my school's strings teacher gave a small presentation to my kindergarten class and at the end, the students were invited to try out the instruments.  When the violin first sat on my shoulder and I curled my hands over the fingerboard and around the frog for my first tentative note, my life shifted. I went home that evening and demanded to be enrolled in violin lessons. That decision made at five to play the violin ended up setting the course for the rest of my life.

I tear at and peel the flesh from my fingers to my knuckles until I bleed. I try to offset my disinterest in nearly everything by doing as much as I possibly can until I collapse from exhaustion. I keep my mind and muscles at bay for as long as I can.

But the biggest thing that changed was how I saw my incompletion. Incompletion in terms of being human doesn’t exist. Real women having breasts or curves isn’t a thing. Being a woman is being strong yet sensitive It’s being empathetic, kind and understanding yet knowing when to call someone on their bullshit. It’s being a giving, loving, nurturing soul. I am all of those things, with or without symmetrical parts.

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold. As a Philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object rather than something to disguise. We have to understand that no one or no situation is ever truly broken beyond repair. When we give our brokenness to God, He can repair us and fill our brokenness with light, hope, faith and love. God has the ability to take broken people and broken situations and make them more beautiful.

I must tell you this before I share my story. I have been broken—my family has been broken.

I was struggling along my way to figure out what I was doing with my life, career-wise, as well as what the heck I was doing as a wife and mom. I felt torn and all over the place.