Kintsukuroi
When a vase breaks and you put it back together, it is never the same. It is filled with cracks. Some say that it makes the vase ugly. Kintsukuroi (kintsugi) is a Japanese method for repairing broken ceramics with a special lacquer mixed with gold, silver or platinum. The philosophy behind the technique is to recognise the history of the object and to visibly incorporate the repair into the new piece instead of disguising it. The process usually results in something more beautiful than the original.
‘Broken dreams’
Sometimes birth doesn’t go the way we plan. All the things that we’ve read, all the videos we’ve watched and the daily affirmations seem to have washed away as the birth becomes a medical procedure rather than the beautiful birth we planned. This could have happened for any number of reasons, medical necessity, a change of personnel, because this baby was always meant to be born via caesarean birth. Whatever the reason, sometimes, it just doesn’t go to plan and you can feel like your dreams are broken.
Sometimes it’s the stories that we hear that cause the break. We may not have given birth, but our hope and dream of birth is cracked. The stories of our mothers, sisters, friends and neighbours. Stories of abandonment, pain, emergency, traumatic birth, awful debilitating pregnancies. Fear fills our thoughts about the impending birth.
“If only the western world could adopt this one principle, the idea that something broken is beautiful, what a difference it would make”
So what of the gold? How do we lay it down? This is the time to surround yourself with the positive stories. Read the evidence based research. Find the people who will talk realistically to you, without scaring you. Build your support network. Find the wonderful midwives and doctors who talk, hear and listen. Debrief that first birth experience, swap the horror stories of others for the positive stories. Find those women’s circles where you can talk honestly, the Positive Birth groups. Talk to your doula, your birth support. Find the gold and start to lay it in the cracks, so that when you look back on your birth experience, you can see that what was once broken has become beautiful.
Contact us here and come join us, as we share our stories, our mothers stories. Learn to be a birthkeeper who lays down gold.
