So let go, let go
Just get in,
Oh, it’s so amazing here
It’s all right
‘cause there’s beauty in the breakdown- Frou Frou, Let go
One of the many reasons I love family therapy is that it offers something for everyone- at the least an acknowledgement that all are part of the context and in that way they matter. Its beauty is contained in the realisation that one person’ suffering is not lived in a void and that there is a great impact in witnessing, as it is in experiencing things first hand.
It is about one of these experiences that I am writing today. My younger brother was always the energetic one in the family, the one that would run and jump and kick a ball, literally, all day long. This was happening in a different time and place, when as children, we used to spend every waking hour of our summer holidays outdoors, in the playground. My baby brother was also curious and a real talent at looking for and finding trouble. And so it came that in his year two, year three and, respectively, beginning of year four of primary school my brother had broken his left arm in the exact same place yes, three times!
It is believed in systemic theory that our siblings are our first- and best way- to learn how to care about others than our self or our parents (which at times, at least psychodinamically, are perceived as extensions of one’ self). As for me, growing up, my older brother was the strong, always able (and patronising) individual that thought me to compete, to learn what behaviours got approval in our family and pretty much how to play my cards so I can always be on top. My younger brother, on the other hand, provided me with a different kind of experience: learning how to be there next to someone who might be hurting and needing me. He thought me how it feels when really seeing someone who can’t put up a braver face than mine because, being still young, he hasn’t learned the social conventions around that and he cries. And I am there to see it and hear it and maybe to do something about it. Before it gets to sounding too serious it’s useful to admit that there was a “healthy” amount of teasing and mocking him, of course. Big sister privileges! But at the same time it opened me up to the experience of witnessing and coming together; maybe setting the course early on towards the wonderful and tempestuous waters of therapeutic work that I am sailing today.
I was remembering all of this the other day when I was watching a video about Kintsugi (or Kintsukuroi- as known in Japan), the art of repairing a broken vessel using gold powder and resin glue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lT55_u8URU0 . And I was wondering if this could be metaphorically true for people’ soul, for their psyche. What if Nietzsche was right and what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger or perhaps Hemingway, in saying that we become stronger in the broken places? Or? what if we are forever vulnerable and fragile because we keep on breaking in places we thought we healed and in new ones where we didn’t even know we had cracks.
For tonight, as I am writing instead of sleeping, I think that for me the answer is truly we are much more beautiful after having the courage to mend and piece ourselves back together regardless of how strong or weak we are in those previously broken points.
I believe the real work of art-pun intended- begins after… After discovering a dose of vulnerability and lots of smashing against high fences and closed doors. After life has done its best to take us down a peg or two, even if we didn’t think we were soaring as high as to deserve it. After we had the usually unavoidable pity parties, licked out wounds, had our air fist fights with the heavens, if we choose to believe someone resides there. After accepting that what’s broken is broken and now it’s time to proceed to stick it with the gold of the wisdom acquired through the breaking and mending process.
I am haunted by the idea of beauty in the breakdown after I have read the article of an NHS Director who ended up spending Christmas in a mental institution because something in her, in a certain moment of her life, broke. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mandy-stevens/mental-health-nhs_b_14282136.html Because she was brave enough to talk about her brokenness I, and many more, have found her so, so very beautiful. And inspiring the idea that it doesn’t really matter how hard you break or in how many pieces. Breaking is all right, but that the secret is to get help, seek “artists” that can help you mend and glue back he pieces with care and empathy, with unconditional positive self- regard so that the new creation is truly worth his or her or their weight in gold. And just for now, maybe it’s time to sleep soundly in that knowledge, that broken vessels can be made mended and whole, and at the end they are still very, very beautiful.
Ah, and one more thing… My brother has survived and thrived regardless of his fragile bones. His early experiences haven’t kept him from trying any sport available and yes, getting hurt a bit more. Still, he has developed strong, and relentless in the pursuit of his dreams and it is a pleasure to still witness and participate in the great adventure that is his life. All in all, at least to me, he is beautiful through and through… He is currently expecting his first baby, again offering me and the rest of the family a different perspective to reflect upon- how does it feel when the youngest, the baby, has a baby? Probably more on that later…
