This message hit me deep, right to my core. It is all about falling apart, making mistakes, and coming back together stronger than before. I keep coming back to it, so I wanted to give it a proper home here.
We tend to think the goal is to pass the test. Fix the problem. Get it all 
figured out and then finally be done. Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön talks about how it does not actually work that way. Things come together, and then they fall apart. Then they come together again, and fall apart again. That is what living life and being alive is. The healing is in making room for all versions of it. This falling apart also encompasses the deaths of our old versions along our path. There is something sacred in honoring who we were in that version of us that grows and finds new ways of being. These dark nights of the soul or deaths along the path of becoming authentic and the more higher, truer versions of ourselves should be honored or getting us as far as they did.
Take a breath with me
Pause for a minute. Feel how everything is always changing. Nothing stays the same, not your body, not your relationships, not your seasons of life. That constant shifting is moving through you and around you whether you are on board with it or not. It is quiet and it is huge all at the same time.
Now take a deep breath. You are the space where the “coming together” and the “falling a
part” are always dancing with each other. You are holding 2 sides of tension in the same breath that always exist. Instead of fighting it, be still and honor it. Let yourself be the beautiful puzzle that keeps putting itself back together, over and over again.
Meet the Never Not Broken Goddess
I am not sure there is a more powerful archetype than this one. Her name is Akhilandeshvari, a lesser known Hindu goddess whose name is often translated as “never not broken.”
She is the goddess of coming together and falling apart, again and again. She represents healthy destruction, the kind of breaking that clears the way for something new. The giving something up to gain something better. Transmutation. She is the face of unexpected change. And here is the part I love: she does not break and become weaker. She breaks apart so she can come back together as a more powerful version of herself.
Her power does not come in spite of her brokenness. It comes because of it.
We are never not broken (and that is okay)
So much of our programming tells us broken is bad. That we should hide the cracks, keep it together, never let anyone see us fall apart. But what if broken is just part of the cycle?
Every time we fall apart there is potential for unlimited growth, to come back new. The pieces do not go back together the same way. They come back stronger, more flexible, more us. Our brokenness turns into our strength.
So what does that actually look like in real life? Let’s walk through five pairs of opposites, because I think the power of being never not broken lives right in the middle of them.
1. Falling apart and coming together
Think about everything that had to line up for you to be here. Pieces of the universe came together in just the right way, for just this window of time, to make you: mind, body, and soul.
And sometimes that “self” we have built comes undone. Sometimes it hurts, like a heartbreak. Sometimes it is necessary, like a dark night of the soul. Either way, something is coming apart. How many of these have you had?
But here is what I have learned. Falling apart is like compost. It looks like a mess, but it is the richest soil there is. Right in the middle of the breakdown, a seed gets planted, and Akhilandeshvari is right there watering it. You know the saying, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”? If we tend to that seed, what grows back is a self that is more solid than the one before. Out of chaos and darkness comes creation.
2. Answers and questions
What if the magic is not in having the answer, but in the question itself? Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel taught that a question carries a power the answer never does.
I think the space between breaking apart and coming back together holds that same power. You can feel it in meditation, in that pause between breaths. In the quiet between thoughts. In the silence between the question and the answer. In those flow moments where you lose track of time. There is a sacred energy between opposites that neither side can hold on its own.
The problem with answers is that once we have one, we usually stop asking. Being broken open does the opposite: In that cocoon stage everything is up for question, the beliefs you had before and even the new ones waiting on the other side. And that is a good thing. There is no answer that cannot be questioned again. Change is constant.
3. Chaos and order
In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.
— Carl Jung
When life is comfortable and predictable, we rarely meet our shadow, those hidden parts of ourselves we would rather not look at. It usually takes falling apart to find it, because that is when we are the most open and vulnerable.
If you can embrace your shadow in those moments instead of running from it, you come back together more whole. More fully yourself. You get access to all of your gifts, not just the pretty ones. And you have integrated one more piece of yourself that was never meant to be set aside in the shadows.
It works both ways. Sometimes we need chaos to shake us loose, so we are not white-knuckling the one thing we have built our whole life around. And sometimes we need to bring order to the chaos, so the worst parts of us can be transformed into the best parts. Life is not black and white. Most of the magic happens in the gray.
4. Silence and action
Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.
— Rumi
There is a strange, sacred stillness when you hit rock bottom. You are stuck between what you hoped would happen and what actually did, between past mistakes and a future you cannot see. And right there, if you get quiet enough, a little voice starts whispering: you can always begin again.
Rock bottom gives you something no other place does, total freedom from certainty and expectations. There is nothing left to protect. And when you work with that instead of against it, you finally get out of your own way. Forget comfort. Forget what everyone expects. Courage gets to lead. The void is where the magic happens.
The part of you that caused the fall gets replaced with something stronger. And the cycle keeps going: we fall apart, we let go of what we thought we knew, and we come back together more resilient and flexible than before.
5. Wisdom and silliness
Here is the truth: we are never fully whole. Even the new you that
comes out of a hard season is still a work in progress. Even the new answers you found can be questioned all over again. And that is exactly what makes us beautiful. We are perfect in our imperfection.
Life is an endless path. The places that feel like finish lines are really just rest stops for anyone who understands that the journey is the whole point. That is why the line between wisdom and foolishness is so thin.
And that is also why a good sense of humor might be the healthiest thing you can carry with you. Sometimes life feels like one big cosmic joke and we are the punchline. Nobody has it all figured out, and nobody ever will, and honestly, that is kind of funny. Learn to laugh at it.
Carl Jung said the soul asks for our folly, not our wisdom. I love that. When you can make peace with always becoming, always falling apart and coming back together, you start to find wisdom in the silliness and something sacred in the mess. That is where being never not broken becomes your superpower.
Repair with gold
This always reminds me of the Japanese art of kintsugi. When a bowl or cup breaks, instead of tossing it or hiding the damage, the artist repairs the cracks with lacquer mixed with gold. The breaks become the most beautiful part of the piece. Its history is honored instead of hidden.
That is what I want for you. Your cracks, your scars, your wrinkles, are not something to be ashamed of. They are where the gold shines.
Coming back to center
Next time life falls apart on you (and it will, because that is how this works), try not to see it as failing. Ask yourself what is ready to be rebuilt. Let the old version crumble and trust that the new one coming together is stronger. The roots deeper, and blooming into whatever it needs for the next journey.
Be gentle with yourself in the in-between. That quiet, messy space between falling apart and coming back together is not a punishment. It is where the transformation happens.
=> For more on making peace with the hard seasons, read Darkness Is Not Evil and Rejuvenation & Restoration.
This post was inspired by an article from Fractal Enlightenment on the power of falling apart and coming back together.
