Not long ago, as I was reading through the preface of From Pain to Purpose, I noticed something that made me wince: a repeated word. My first thought was sharp and unforgiving — this is unacceptable.
That one word pulled me back in time, to the classrooms of my childhood. I can still see the bright red ink of my teacher’s pen circling errors, striking through phrases, leaving my once-beautiful books looking like battlefields. Every page bore the scars of correction, and every mark felt like proof that I wasn’t good enough. Writing became a place of pressure and perfectionism, rather than joy or expression.
For a moment, I felt that old weight pressing on me again. The urge to criticise, to erase, to make flawless.
But then I paused.
Mistakes, for so many of us, have long been associated with shame. We internalise the belief that to get something wrong is to fail, that errors diminish our worth. For me, every red pen mark became a silent message: try harder, be better, don’t get it wrong again.
Even now, as an adult and an author, that inner critic can rise quickly. Seeing a repeated word was enough to awaken it. But the truth is — life itself is full of repetition, imperfection, and rough edges.
What if, instead of seeing mistakes as failures, I saw them as opportunities?
That thought shifted something in me. The repeated word was not a catastrophe. It was a reminder that writing — like living — is imperfect, fluid, and unfinished. Our flaws don’t erase the beauty of what we create; they are part of it.
This realisation brought to mind the ancient Japanese art of Kintsugi. When pottery breaks, it is not discarded or hidden. Instead, it is repaired with lacquer mixed with powdered gold. The cracks are not masked but illuminated — transformed into shimmering veins that make the object even more beautiful than before.
For me, Kintsugi is more than an art form; it is a way of seeing. Our lives, too, bear cracks and scars. Trauma, loss, addiction, and failure can fracture us in ways that feel irreparable. But through compassion, presence, and intention, these very fractures can become the golden lines of our story.
This is the heart of From Pain to Purpose. It is a book that does not deny pain or imperfection, but embraces them as catalysts for transformation. Just as Kintsugi celebrates brokenness, so too can we celebrate the ways we have been mended — not despite our wounds, but through them.
In noticing that repeated word, I realised something deeper: I am no longer the student made small by red pen corrections. I am growing more and more into myself, learning to recover not only from pain but also from the grip of perfectionism.
Things did not happen to me; they happened for me. Every scar has been part of the mosaic of who I am becoming. And in choosing compassion over correction, I am allowing those cracks to shine with gold.
An Invitation
So, what if your mistakes and scars were not signs of failure, but golden threads of your story? What if the very places you thought were “unacceptable” could become your most meaningful teachers?
That is the invitation of From Pain to Purpose.
It is a book for anyone ready to stop seeing life as a battlefield of red marks and start seeing it as a vessel of gold-filled cracks — a story of resilience, wholeness, and beauty.
