November is National Care Giver’s Month. I spent much of my life serving as caregiver for others, specifically my mother and younger sister, both of whom were diagnosed paranoid schizophrenics. Caring to that level for others took a toll on me. It would take several years to realize that equally if not more important, I needed to become a caregiver to me.

In the town where I live, as happens more often than I care to think about, brush fires raged through acres and acres of our nearby forest and mountain range. Homes were destroyed. Lives shaken at best, lost at worst. It seemed as if Mother Nature had again gone mad, inflicting pain and devastation without a care for consequences.

When the fires were finally extinguished, smoldering charred earth and dead trees remained. The smell of smoke permeated the air for days following, a constant reminder of life lost.

But a local art community took it upon themselves to care for the fallen. These talented few performed a miracle of sorts by resurrecting the lifeless limbs of so many trees and making them whole again. They did so through the Japanese art of kintsugi which uses a precious metal to bring together pieces of broken pottery. Rather than charred and scarred, these beauties burned by the fires, now had their wounds laced in gold.

Touring the trees, now works of art, I became struck by their visual representation of the essence of resilience. From their own madness, they became magical.

There’s a lesson here for each of us in terms of coping with traumatic events. Rather than ignoring or divorcing ourselves from painful pasts, there’s wisdom to embracing whatever came before. Viewing our histories – especially the not-so-pleasant – as precious and of great value is powerful. Our perceived failures and moments of pain are our greatest teachers in life. Why hide them? I love this kintsugi approach of seeing the beauty in our cracks and celebrating those flaws.