Tomas Navarro is a psychiatrist and the founder of a consultancy and center of emotional well-being. He lives in Genoa and Barcelona, Spain. In this uplifting paperback, Navarro salutes the ancient Japanese art of repairing damaged and broken things. This craft is called Kintsugi ("golden joinery'). We can only marvel at the creative ways in which kintsugi masters bring objects back to life.

With ample doses of creativity and delight, the author takes this spiritual process of renewal and transformation and applies it to the lives of individuals who have been broken or emotionally wounded. His book is tailor-made for those caught in the grasp of enduring pain, the suffering growing out of loss and grief, or wounds connected with familial anger, divorce, and a wide variety of traumas. He provides a method to rebuild our lives and to sense the ways in which adversity can work for us.

Pain, suffering, disappointment, fear, and unexpected change hurt but properly managed, they can help us to grow. Navarro urges us to develop strategies for repairing what is broken in us and presents a helpful list of 15 actions designed to put this process into motion. (See excerpt.) He includes short profiles of people who have successfully managed their challenges and includes practice suggestions that are easy to incorporate into daily life.

For example, in the chapter on "Repairing Your Life," he advises that us to: Take a step back. Think differently. Take action. Don't give more importance to death than to life. Channel your pain. Manage your memories. Watch out for compensatory behaviors. Allow yourself to cry.

Kintsugi does just what the author wanted it to do — it reframes pain and suffering into sources of personal transformation.