When we think of physical healing, we might think of the way in which our body is able to repair a cut such that the skin is restored to its original condition. For example, if I accidentally nick myself while chopping vegetables, I simply bandage the wound and within a few weeks the cut isn’t even visible. When it comes to psychological healing, we might unconsciously have this image in mind. In this model, we may have had an original wholeness, we get wounded, we repair ourselves, and we restore ourselves to the former whole state.
However, achieving this image may not only be impossible but unwanted. Most people find that, in the long journey of healing from wounding, trauma, or brokenness, they are substantially changed – even transformed. We often become more mature, sensitive, compassionate, wise, and accepting, among many other areas of growth. If we attempt to return to a so-called original state of wholeness, we’d have to leave out all this wonderful learning.
What image, therefore, might serve us better? About ten years ago, I was walking down a long hallway at the San Francisco airport in which contemporary Korean pottery was being showcased. At the end, I stopped in my tracks upon seeing the work of a young artist named Yee Sook-Young. Yee’s sculptures consisted of the shards of maybe five to ten broken vases welded together with gold leading. The composite shards created a tall, surprising, multihued new form, with veins of gold rippling throughout. Upon seeing it, I immediately thought it was an excellent image for healing.
In picking up the pieces from being broken by a life event, something new emerges, something beautiful and larger than we were before, something surprising. The form is comprised not just of the pieces of one’s former self, but new experiences, ideas, and relationships that get incorporated, so that the new self is more expansive, complex, and infinitely more interesting. This image of healing thus allows for the discovery of wholeness, but what that wholeness is will not resemble anything before it.