Kintsugi as a Metaphor for Addiction Recovery
Kintsugi is the ancient Japanese art of repairing broken pottery using lacquer mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. Rather than hiding the cracks, it highlights them—making them a beautiful, integral part of the piece’s story. And that, my friend, is recovery.
Here’s how Kintsugi mirrors the journey through addiction:
1. The Shattering: Addiction as the Breaking Point
Addiction doesn’t politely knock on the door; it kicks it off the hinges. It cracks the soul, splinters relationships, and reduces identity to fragments. Like a shattered bowl, the person feels useless, discarded, unfixable. But here’s the truth: the break isn’t the end—it’s the beginning of something sacred.
2. Honoring the Cracks: Radical Acceptance
Kintsugi doesn’t pretend the bowl was never broken. Similarly, recovery requires you to look your pain in the eye. No shame, no cover-ups. The scars—relapses, rock bottoms, lost years—are not erased. They’re embraced. They become the roadmap back home.
3. Gold as Grace: The Recovery Process
What fills the cracks? In Kintsugi, it’s precious metal. In recovery, it’s just as valuable: honesty, community, humility, truth, service, connection, spirituality. These are the gold threads that stitch us back together. Recovery doesn’t return you to who you were—it creates someone stronger, wiser, more whole than before.
4. Each Piece Unique: No One Path
Every Kintsugi repair is one-of-a-kind. No two bowls ever break the same, and no two recoveries do either. The journey might include 12 steps, therapy, faith, trauma work, medication, sweat, tears—or all of the above. But each story, no matter how jagged, has beauty baked into its particular shape.
5. The Bowl Is More Valuable After It’s Broken
Here’s the soul-shaking twist: a Kintsugi bowl is worth more after it’s been broken and repaired. Recovery doesn’t just restore—it transforms. You become not “as good as new,” but better than ever—a living testimony that healing is not only possible, it’s powerful.
6. Fragile and Strong: Holding Both Truths
The bowl will always have cracks. You’ll always carry the memory of what you’ve been through. But those golden lines? They don’t just hold you together—they make you shine.
Journal Prompts Based on Kintsugi:
- What are some of the “cracks” or wounds I’ve tried to hide?
- What are the golds of my recovery—values, truths, or experiences—that are helping hold me together?
- How would my story change if I saw my scars as sacred instead of shameful?
- What beauty has come because of my brokenness, not in spite of it?
- What pieces of my past am I still afraid to reclaim and honor?
- If my recovery were a Kintsugi bowl, what would it look like? What would it tell the world?
