It was early 2020 when it started. Everyone in the world held their breath as an unknown danger spread across the globe.

That is when the isolation began, and the earth shattering silence of the deep and dark…

But unlike most of the rest of the world, my isolation wasn’t because of the pandemic, it was out of fear and an abundance of caution to keep me safe from the dangers that existed within my life.

But in speaking up and speaking the truth, I found myself silenced.

I was not, am not, able to write about the truth of what has been happening and so for nearly 2 years, the deepest words that would normally be here have been stopped up behind a dam, slowly churning and filling me with dark, freezing currents of uncertainty and anger and fear of what is yet unknown, until I worried the dam would break and wreck destruction on anyone in my way. My once bright light was hidden and dwindling as darkness crept closer until there was nothing but a small flicker left. But what will be, will be.

A Friend found this blog and secretly began reading until she had gobbled up everything and confessed how much these words moved her, and at the same time another Constant friend sat up late into the night with me helping me to diffuse the imminent threat of destruction by letting me release some of the pent up pressure, as he has many times, but somewhere in the middle of those two, the flicker became a small flame, and the small flame was fed some kindling.

But how could I come back here and write honestly when I see how far I have come from the woman who first started writing it?

The woman who started The Kintsukuroi Life is dead.

Maybe that sounds dramatic but the truth is that she doesn’t exist anymore. That version of me was married to a man for whom I felt love, compassion, and devotion even when he didn’t deserve any of it. That version of me had just become an amputee and I didn’t know what my life could look like, if I’d ever work again, let alone if I’d ever dance again. That version of me began trying to find beauty in the deep and overwhelming brokenness I felt never realizing how deep that brokenness was or how much devastation it would bring to find out. And so that woman began to write and started a journey that led here. And at some point along the way, I became almost unrecognizable to myself before I finally realized that the old me was gone and I felt transformed.

What I couldn’t see, though, was what my constant always could.

What felt to me like a transformation was a process of breaking and mending, the broken pieces of my true self were mended time and again with lacquer and gold while some pieces crumbled slowly over time, unable to be glued back into the whole, their places filled with gold, until I began to see the woman I am now.

For a long time, I agonized over whether it would be right to go through and retract pieces here that reflect the old me, to start a new blog and leave this one to collect dust in the public domain, or to withdraw everything I’ve ever written here and start with a blank slate. In the end I realized that while I feel deeply that I am a different person than I was before, it was the person I was before who brought me to where I am now and helped me become who I am now except that it isn’t that who I am now is someone new.

My true self might have been hidden away but she was always there… I was always there.

The woman my Constant always saw, was always amazed by, and always inspired by is who I am today, but he has always seen her and known her even when I didn’t. The old me needed to die and fall away, without a doubt, and I wouldn’t resurrect her with all her faults for anything, but I can still honor her even in her brokenness and lack of understanding.

I can honor her because she survived…

I can honor her because she protected me…

I can honor her because she kept getting up and kept moving forward…

And I can honor her because she died, piece by piece, each empty place being mended with a little more gold, so that I could live and shine again.