Kintsugi
金継ぎ “golden joinery”
The Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, so the fractures are not hidden but honored.
Gold in the Cracks
A memoir by Dr. Peter Verdin Coming soon
“I carried this for twenty-five years.”
The same wiring that made my body elite at everything measurable was quietly breaking the parts of life no scoreboard could hold.
Read the opening chapter
San Diego, 5:30 a.m. — delivered to your inbox.
The book
A story buried for twenty-five years—and what happened when it stopped staying buried.
This is a memoir of childhood sexual abuse buried for decades, and of the nervous system that kept telling the story after I stopped using words.
It is also the story of fatherhood, performance, collapse, and the decision to stop mistaking a wound for a personality.
I wrote it while the pieces were still moving—for myself, and for anyone carrying a weight they have never been able to name.
It is a story I wouldn’t change. It made me who I am.
“I am still healing. Pieces are getting put back together, seams still showing. That is the point.”
The architecture of the memoir
This book lives between two words.
One names the repair. The other names the fear that time will run out before the gate closes.
Torschlusspanik
German “gate-shut panic”
The fear that the door is closing before you have made it through.
This memoir lives in the distance between them: the fear of running out of time, and the slow work of making the breakage into something you would never trade away.
The first chapter is yours
Start reading where the story breaks open.
The prologue lands in your inbox. Release updates come later—only when there is something worth saying.