We all know the rhyme:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
I’ve known that rhyme my whole life, but lately I’ve been wondering:
What if Humpty Dumpty was wrong?
Not about the falling part. We all fall.
Things break. Plans fall apart. Bodies change. Relationships end.
Dreams get interrupted. Life rarely unfolds exactly the way we expected it to.
But I’m no longer convinced that being broken means we can’t be put back together again.
Some of you may remember my beautiful fused-glass bowl that shattered. I loved that bowl, and when it broke, I thought that was the end of it.
It wasn’t.
My friend, Jen, repaired it using the Japanese art of kintsugi, where the cracks aren’t disguised or hidden. They’re highlighted. Traditionally, the broken pieces are joined in a way that makes the repair part of the beauty of the object.
When I got my bowl back, something surprised me.
It wasn’t the same bowl anymore.
In some ways, I thought it was even more beautiful.
You could see exactly where it had broken. Its history wasn’t erased. The cracks had become part of its story.
And at the repaired places, it had been reinforced.
That got me thinking about us.
And especially about my own body.
The immunotherapy treatment I received almost killed me.
I became incredibly sick and experienced 21 different side effects, including severe pancreatitis that lasted for months, along with joint and tendon problems and so many other issues that they are honestly too numerous to list.
For a long time, I didn’t recognize my own body.
Things that had once been easy became difficult. I didn’t know which symptoms would go away, which ones would linger, or whether I would ever feel like myself again.
And yet, slowly, something has been happening.
One by one, things have been getting better.
Not overnight. Not all at once.
But little by little.
A year later, I can feel parts of myself returning.
And lately I’ve started to feel a little like the Gloria Gaynor song:
I Will Survive.
And surviving has made me think about something else.
So much of the plant-based space seems obsessed with How Not to Die.
How to avoid disease.
How to lower risk.
How to extend life.
How to control every bite in the hope that we can somehow outrun mortality.
I understand the appeal. I lived that way for years.
But after everything I’ve been through, I’m no longer convinced that avoiding death should be the organizing principle of a life.
Because you can become so focused on not dying that you forget to live.
You can spend your days measuring, restricting, worrying, optimizing, and trying to make every choice perfectly healthy—while life itself is happening around you.
Maybe the better question isn’t only:
How can I live longer?
Maybe it’s:
How fully am I living right now?
Am I laughing enough?
Am I doing things that matter to me?
Am I spending time with people I love?
Am I taking chances?
Am I having fun?
Am I making memories?
I still believe in taking care of my health.
But I no longer want my entire life to revolve around preventing my death.
I want it to revolve around living my life.
Maybe that’s another kind of kintsugi.
My body has been through something enormous. I don’t get to erase what happened. I don’t get to pretend there weren’t cracks.
But healing doesn’t always mean returning to exactly who you were before.
We spend so much of our lives wishing we could go back to the way things were before something happened.
Before the diagnosis.
Before the treatment.
Before the loss.
Before the mistake.
Before the disappointment.
Before the fall.
But maybe the goal isn’t always to get back to “before.”
Maybe sometimes there is no going back.
And maybe that doesn’t have to be a tragedy.
Maybe we put ourselves back together differently.
We learn things we never would have chosen to learn. We discover strength we didn’t know we had. We become more compassionate because we know what it feels like to hurt. We stop taking certain things for granted. We become clearer about what matters and much less interested in what doesn’t.
I don’t believe every painful experience automatically makes us stronger. Some things simply hurt.
And I would never tell someone they should be grateful for suffering.
But I do believe that what happens next matters.
We can spend our lives trying to hide the cracks.
Or we can allow them to become part of the person we are becoming.
My bowl will never look exactly as it did before it shattered.
Neither will I.
And maybe that’s okay.
Because when I look at that bowl now, I don’t just see a beautiful piece of glass.
I see proof that broken doesn’t have to mean ruined.
I see something that survived being shattered.
Something repaired.
Something changed.
Something still here.
And if you’re feeling a little like Humpty Dumpty right now—like you’ve fallen off the wall and no one seems able to put you back together—maybe the problem isn’t that you can’t be healed.
Maybe all the king’s horses and all the king’s men just weren’t the right ones for you.
Maybe you haven’t found your kintsugi artist yet.
Maybe you haven’t found the person, the treatment, the practice, the community—or even the part of yourself—that can help you begin putting the pieces back together.
Or maybe you simply haven’t given it enough time.
Healing can be frustratingly slow. Sometimes so slow that while it’s happening, it doesn’t feel like healing at all.
So if you feel shattered right now, please don’t assume your story ends at the bottom of the wall.
You may not go back together exactly the way you were before.
My bowl didn’t.
Neither did I.
But different doesn’t have to mean worse.
Sometimes the places where we’ve been repaired become part of what makes us beautiful.
Maybe Humpty Dumpty wasn’t beyond repair.
Maybe he just hadn’t found his kintsugi artist yet.
Love & Living Fully,
AJ
What I Did For Fun
I went to Portland to speak at their wonderful Vegfest and got to visit with the legendary Mary McDougall.
While I was there, I had the best gluten free vegan iced oatmeal cookie I ever had!
🐾🦴🐶From The Puppy Files🐾🦴🐶
This week’s PUPdates
The 3 days I was up in Portland Charles said both Shiloh & Trixie slept on my side of the bed each night.
Here are some photos of them from their doggy day care, where they go to make friends.
