- We've shown you how economic growth can lift a region.

Now we turn to a story about what lifts people up.

What if the cracks in our lives were something to be celebrated and not hidden?

Visual artist Eva Crawford is using Kintsugi, the traditional Japanese art of repairing broken porcelain to guide others through a creative experience that turns fragility into beauty.

Producer Russ Hunsinger has that story.

(plate shattering) - Most of us in life will not get away with experience some type of deep flaw and hurt and brokenness.

- The whole idea about a kintsugi experience versus just a workshop is showing people through physical broken pieces how we all are broken and taking them through the process of the slow art of mending and healing.

- This sweet angel, I just love, my husband Bill gave it to me.

- And people are always excited to show what broken piece they brought in.

But once I have them sit with it and breathe and behold it and talk about like the story that's behind the piece, then they start to apply it to their own brokenness.

Sometimes people bring something in that has no sentimental meaning and they break it and they still learn.

But I think the most moving experiences have been when someone has brought something in that has meant something to them.

It belonged to a family member.

- I brought in two pieces that were toys of my grandmother's that I actually also played with as a child.

She was always for me and was always so kind and loving to me regardless of what I had done or who I was at the time.

This meant a lot to be able to take this tiny little repair and it to be a symbol of the things over a span of her life and then my life of mending and healing broken parts.

- We think about like fixing something and making it the same shape it was before.

We're putting it back in the format it was before but truly it is a new creation and that is key to this mending process.

- What I was looking at, I noticed that you could almost, it almost looks like y'all are at the right angle.

It is not broken.

There was a piece that almost didn't look damaged because all of the damage was hidden.

So you can kind of as a person turn that side of yourself to the world so no one can tell that you're damaged or hurt and you seem whole.

And so I think this process helped me think through how that's actually not a place of strength because you're trying to hold it all together by yourself instead of getting help from your friends and family and people who love you.

- When they finally get through the steps, some of them are more messy and some of them are very frustrating.

They get to that final step of applying the gold.

You can see everybody's shoulders relax and enjoy the process of applying the gold.

It's so satisfying, they start to relate to it and then that's what makes the Kintsugi experience powerful.

- I think one of the things that's powerful about it is that you come out of the experience with this physical reminder, not only of the process that you just went through and maybe the event in your life that caused you to want to come do Kintsugi and think about making something beautiful out of something hard.

So now I can put this in my home and think about not just the damage and the hard thing but this new opportunity that I've been given, this new beautiful piece of art.

- It meant a lot to me to be able to fix this but also have a story behind fixing these pieces together.

The flaw being seen and being made pretty and beautiful again has great significance because the repair work is prettier because of the flaw, I think is the beauty and that's what we remember with kintsugi.