Rupture and Repair
Rupture.
And repair.
We break.
And we heal.
We come apart.
And we come back together.
The yin and the yang.
More novelty, and more stability.
More chaos, more order.
Winter comes. And then spring.
Originating sometime last century in the worlds of psychotherapy and attachment theory, the phrase ‘rupture and repair’ grew to signify the transforming nature of relationships: that each one involves breakages, dissatisfaction and damage. And that each can involve fixing, resatisfying and undoing the damage.
Rupture. And repair.
Taken away from our parents and then returned to them.
The betrayal by a loved one; and the reunion and recommitment.
In a sychotherapeutic relationship: the dissatisfaciton with a therapist and then the working-through, the continuation of the work, gradually growing our ability to hold a healthy relationship together.
The decision not to run from the relationship this time, just because it got hard.
The decision not to avoid completely the problems in the relationship this time, but to face them.
The only way out, one might say, is through… and onwards… and upwards.
Each of us steps out into the world from safety and stability, and as we do it, we are ruptured.
Run ragged by the world.
Unravelled at the seams.
Fragile, battered.
And, if we are careful, we come back somewhere and we repair.
The miracle of our antifragility is that we don’t come back the same from a rupture and a repair, but stronger.
More capable.
More able to face what will come.
Too often in our modern lives, we forget the cycles we are part of.
We act as if all year can be spring or summer, with no autumn or winter.
We push ourselves and push ourselves and push ourselves until we can’t avoid the ruptures in our selves or our lives.
But we never pause to repair.
To refuel.
To renew.
We plant the fields over and over and over, never giving them a fallow year.
Until the crops don’t grow any more.
And so.
Take care.
Take a moment to pause: remind yourself to repair.
Remember that strange feeling of the holiday, somewhere away, somewhere different. The freshness that comes.
Remember the unlikely joy to be felt when forced by a national lockdown to stay home.
Remember the confusing aliveness felt after a day at home, with the people you love, doing nothing. Except being together.
The feeling, perhaps, of four people repairing after a week of ruptures.
Life is no life without ruptures.
It is small and suffocating.
But without repair we will gradually unravel until we come apart at the seams.
One of the most powerful reflections for me in the last year or so was to take a moment to ask this question: when you were a little boy or girl, where did you repair?
The image that came to mind for me was clear and beautiful. And whilst I can’t return to being a small boy with a mother’s arm around me, I can have an arm chair, and a story, and warmth. Every day.
And as I have these things, the threads can be rethreaded, at least a little.
Before I step out into the world again.
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PS Read my latest long-read article in the Leading With Honour series, here: The Transformational Practice of Telling the Truth (Leading With Honour II)
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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online. (I cheated a little on this one - took about 15)
Buy the 12-Minute Method series of books, written 12 minutes a week over three years, here.