The first bowl went straight into the bin. Not a dramatic artist crisis or a lesson-in-the-moment. Just plain garbage, and I know it. Resin everywhere, crack still open, gold powder doing absolutely nothing useful.

The second broke while I was gluing. The third looked like it had been repaired by someone wearing oven mitts in the dark. The creation stage of oopsmosis at its best, where getting things wrong becomes a method.

I used the trash bin a lot throughout my life. I used to have a whole creative life running quietly underneath the science one. And then I suppressed it and pretended it never existed.

My science career had rigorous credentials and a future that made sense on paper. And I broke it on purpose. The structure was committed to the wrong shape, and nothing of what I actually was could come through it.

Rebuilt in the form of a business a few times now.

So by the time I’m sitting here with resin on my yoga pants, failing miserably at kintsugi for the third time in a week, you can see that the bin and I are like old friends having a drink after work.

Maybe you don’t know about the resin. But you know the bin.

Kintsugi repairs broken ceramics with gold. I came to it, chasing only the shiny lines. Little did I know that I could not escape the philosophy behind it.

What the beautiful finished mugs don’t tell you is that the repair fails. A lot. That sometimes there’s not enough glue (others, way too much), and you press the pieces together, and when you let go, the crack is still there. Slightly gilded. Fundamentally open.

And you do it again. And it breaks again.

At some point, something shifts. Not the bowl. You.

Because repetition does exactly what it promises: it wears down every rational explanation until the only thing left is the thing you were avoiding. The bowl doesn’t care about your resistance. It doesn’t ask how that makes you feel. It just breaks again, waits until you take action to fix it again (maybe for good).

Here’s what I learned, across the bowls and the careers and the art I pretended didn’t exist: the crack is information.

I literally know this. I spent years studying how plants carry history through invisible mechanisms. What gets expressed, what gets silenced, what finds its way through regardless (that’s epigenetics). The brands came later, but the mechanism is the same.

Not wabi-sabi’s version, imperfection is okay, you’re enough, breathe. Not kintsugi’s Instagram version, your damage is your beauty, lean in. Mine: the crack tells you something your polished version was actively hiding.

Following the cracks isn’t about finding what’s broken. It’s about finding what got left behind.

The painting. The science career. The creative self pressed into the seams and called impractical. Nothing that’s actually yours belongs in the bin. Especially not the weird part.

I’m a brand strategist now (still makes me giggle a little), and I watch people do exactly this. Come to visibility work chasing the golden lines. The coherent, professional, finally-ready version of themselves. Press the seams closed. Polish the weird parts. Use the wrong glue and call it a brand.

The crack is still there. Slightly gilded. Fundamentally open. Just expensive now.

I’m not promising effortless alignment and money. (I am not a witch. Although.)

What I know is this: the woman sitting here with gold powder on her keyboard and resin on her yoga pants, teaching people not to bin themselves, she’s only here because she stopped pretending the bin was the right answer.

You break it on purpose when you’re ready. You rebuild along the lines that are actually yours.

Let it be open.

Then break it all open.