Kintsugi human

Unfixed video

Every crack is not an entry point for weakness, but rather an exit point for the light to shine forth. The more cracks, the more light.

-Rachelle Alford

In Japan it is customary to repair pottery by mending the areas of breakage with powdered gold, silver or platinum. Kintsugi or "golden repair" embraces the flaws—the cracks are literally illuminated instead of hidden away. Applying this principle to her own life, Unfixed doc-series subject Rachelle visualizes her own life story as a fractured vessel, each piece telling a story from her humble beginnings—poverty, violence, homelessness, and multiple forms of neglect. For many years she hid those stories away, striving for perfection so no one would see all the broken pieces. She struggled with panic attacks, eating disorders and depression beginning at age nine, became a mom at eighteen, and an ER nurse in her twenties—maintaining the pursuit of perfection for years until her body physically broke. The disorienting, destabilizing, surreal symptoms of Mal de Débarquement Syndrome forced her to finally reconcile with her unfixed life. 

In this special episode Unfixed Focus: Rachelle Alford, invites us to sit before her vessel, listen to the many voices and chapters that shattered and sculpted her into being, and bask in the light that pours forth.