I was recently touched by an article I read about the Japanese art of Kintsugi. This is when a broken piece of pottery is mended using a lacquer mixed with a precious metal. The intention is not to hide the crack or repair on the contrary it is to become part of the appeal of the object. At the time I was feeling particularly fragile because we were dealing with yet another emotional upheaval in our small family and I felt once again at breaking point. I thought of this image as a rather intriguing metaphor for families with ADDED EMOTIONAL NEEDS (AEN).

It was of course not the first time I had felt broken by the reality of being an AEN family. It can be a difficult journey at times identifying the information, resources and extra support you will need to navigate the seas of education, health and the social development of your child with AEN. This can be particularly true if you are trying to do this all in a foreign language, culture and without extended family and friends. There have been times that I feared we may drown but generally we resurfaced to fight another day.

I thought of family as the vase, a vessel in which to take us safe passage from childhood to adulthood. Of how, we as parents try to keep the vase in tact in the hope of safeguarding our children’s journeys. Generally we’ll try everything not to break the family home – the vessel of protection because we love our children. As part of this role Parents will do anything to keep the family and individual children safe from perceived hurt or harm from the outside world. When you are an AEN family somehow that fear may seem exaggerated which may indeed be perceived or real. The fear of breakage is that much more acute.

And then there was the repair – the beautiful bonding that somehow makes the vase or vessel stronger and more appealing. Like huge scars that form when we heal. The experience makes us different but there is also something more… something added.

Yes we are a family with AEN and our fracture lines may make us feel fragile but we are incredibly strong. We break we mend, we are pulled together by the bonds that bind us and we will survive the journey – possibly with a couple more leaks along the way!

This article is dedicated to families everywhere because lets face it we all have Added Emotional Needs sometimes.

 

 

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Kintsugi (金継ぎ) (Japanese: golden joinery) or Kintsukuroi (金繕い) (Japanese: golden repair) is the Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-e technique. As a philosophy it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.

As a philosophy kintsugi can been seen to have similarities to the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi, an embracing of the flawed or imperfect. Japanese æsthetics values marks of wear by the use of an object. This can be seen as a rationale for keeping an object around even after it has broken and as a justification of kintsugi itself, highlighting the cracks and repairs as simply an event in the life of an object rather than allowing its service to end at the time of its damage or breakage.

— Christy Bartlett, Flickwerk The Aesthetics of Mended Japanese Ceramics

 

 

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Lynn Frank is a coordinator for Passage, the Parent Support Group for the English-speaking community in Luxembourg. If you would like to know more about our work contact us at passage.parents@gmail.com