It’s broken, and it’s ok

I recently learned about the Japanese art form Kintsugi. It’s shifting and reshaping the way I see adoption. Kintsugi is based on the idea that we can find strength and beauty in imperfection. When a ceramic object breaks, the kintsugi technique involves using gold to put the broken pieces back together. The result is unique; each crack filled and reattached with gold resulting in a piece that embraces flaws and imperfections and ends up stronger and more beautiful than it began. 

My mom survived the San Francisco earthquake of 1989 while visiting the city. I was a third-grader, and watched the news from the exact opposite coast in Maine. It was the first time I realized the earth could literally shift and crack open beneath our feet. 

I met my son when he was two days old in a hospital room in Florida. That was the first time the ground shifted under my own two feet and my whole world cracked wide open. I ached for my son’s mom, the woman who gave him his liquid brown eyes and soft buttery skin. It was agonizing watching the distance grow between us knowing the gorgeous boy I held in my arms had lost the only home and safe place he’d ever known. I knew the entire earth had shifted beneath us all and that the cracks were permanent. 

Our son turned four in July. The best words to describe him are passion and joy and motion. He jumps backwards off the couch and gives the tightest hugs. He’s busy, and hilariously ticklish. Just try wiggling him into a pair of pajamas and you’ll see what I mean. He laughs from way deep down in his belly and his smile lights up the entire room. We like to joke that he has two speeds, turbo and off. He simultaneously wears me out and fills me up every single day. Our lives would be so ordinary without him.

He doesn’t look a thing like me. He has the most soulful, deep brown eyes, and the richest shade of chocolate brown skin. He has a wide smile, and gigantic feet. We’ve always talked openly with him about his birth mom, and his story. But he’s four and sometimes he still asks about about “when he grew in my tummy” or wants me to point out the hospital he was born in our little Illinois town. There are these broken places in his story that I can’t make whole. I can’t answer the doctor’s questions about his extended family medical history, or tell him who his sense of humor and love of Cheetos or table salt comes from. I can’t whisper stories about his birth mom’s growing up years or sing her favorite songs as I hold him tight and rock him to sleep at night the way she could. And I can’t change the fact that we don’t share a single strand of DNA. 

I can’t remove the fault lines in our stories, but I can pick up my paintbrush and start painting. Every time we dance together in the kitchen, a brush stroke. Every time I pick him up when he falls, a brush stroke. Every time I pay attention to what he needs, a brush stroke. Every time his face breaks into a wide smile and I see his first mama’s face, a brush stroke. Every time I hold him close through aftershocks and tremors that inevitably come after the quake, a brush stroke. I can’t heal his beautiful first mom’s heart but I can love her, keep my promises to her, always have a place for her around our table and in our family. Brush stroke, brush stroke, brush stroke. I can’t bury away the years of infertility, or pretend loss doesn’t exist. But, I can pick up my paintbrush and lean into the beautiful mess; the friendships formed, the voices of the triad around me that are a result of that brokenness.

And sometimes, I’ll lay down my paintbrush. I’ll hold my son close as we trace the grooves of our heartbreak and run our fingers along the deep trenches. I’ll let him feel and remember and know that every scar tells a story and our story makes us who we are. I’ll teach my son, and myself, that the broken places don’t have to be fixed to be beautiful. That it’s the broken places stitched back together through disappointment and celebration, friendships formed, and the gift of a thousand ordinary days that makes us strong. I will never cover or hide the broken, bumpy, or imperfect of our stories. I will showcase it, celebrate it, hold it close, weep over it, and fill it with gold. In the end, broken and filled and remade is what makes us whole. 

Friend, adoption will break you. But, it will heal you. It will crack your heart wide open. It will stitch you back together. There will be deep loss. There will be unimaginable joy. You’ll never be the same. It will teach you that beauty exists in broken and weary places. That rocky and thorny landscapes are where the wildest flowers grow. It’s not just beautiful, it’s not just broken. It’s full of nuance and depth, it’s splintered and stitched back up. It cracks your heart wide open, and then if you let it, it fills it with gold. 

We’re 4 years in, and I’ve found it’s a dance between the beautiful and the hard; they’re partners. One doesn’t go without the other and I would never want them to. But both, together, they make a damn beautiful waltz. Together, they make something that was stronger than before. Something that tells a story; one of brokenness and one of hope. One of gold that was forged in the fire.

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Written by Christina Vance. Christina loves mornings with lots of sunshine and coffee with lots of cream. Saved by grace and passionate about adoption. She’s married to her college sweetheart and is a mama to four. Most of all she loves linking arms with other women to walk through the struggles and joys we face bravely together.