Mending the fire
- Larisa - LoQueArde
- Nov 12
- 2 min read
Not everything starts from zero.
Sometimes it begins from what’s broken.
A thread, a gesture, a fragment: that too can hold something alive.
This story found me in a documentary about Lacan,
and it still hasn’t finished drying.
Some time ago, in one of the documentaries I watched about Lacan, a story appeared that stayed with me forever (I’m kind of a Jacques-fan, I admit 🤭).
In that documentary, some of his patients and students spoke, and fragments of Lacan himself —alive, teaching— were interwoven throughout.
Among all of that, someone told a story I still can’t forget.
They say Lacan —the psychoanalyst— once offered a handkerchief to a patient.
She was devastated: her sister had died, and she didn’t even have the strength to speak.
Lacan handed her a cloth handkerchief. Old. A bit torn, with loose threads.
She thought it was a mistake, but she accepted it anyway.
When she got home, she washed it, dried it, and began to mend it.
She said it happened almost without thinking —as if the thread itself was showing her the way.
While sewing that handkerchief, she felt she was repairing something more than just a piece of cloth. The most incredible part: it’s the same patient who tells the story.
Crazy, isn’t it —how, in the end, she’s the one who figured that Jacques out.
🔥 Allegory for Lo Que Arde
I think about that a lot when I talk to people who want to build something.
A project, a business, a brand.
Sometimes we don’t start from a clean or ordered place.
We start with an old piece of fabric —with something that isn’t whole.
And the task isn’t to buy another handkerchief:
it’s to mend the one we already have.
Wash it, patch it, thread it anew.
Building, sometimes, is just that:
repairing what can still hold warmth.
And doing it while your hands tremble,
because faith doesn’t come first —it’s made as you sew.
Maybe that’s why I love that story so much.
Because it’s not about perfection —
it’s about movement.
About keeping on mending,
even when the thread doesn’t quite match.
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