the inspired writer

Gerber daisy at Garden Arts, New Smyrna Beach, Florida

Spending the transition from 2009 to 2010 in Florida has been a gift for many reasons. (Sun! Beachcombing! Family time! Reading time! Key lime pie! Soft-serve cones!)

But one of my favorite gifts of this trip is the gift of being with flowers and green after so much Wisconsin winter gray.

As I walk around this little beach town where my grandma winters, I am reminded that the flowers are always, always blooming (even if I can't see them from my usual snow-covered northern perch).

I have been soaking up the flowers this week, both for their exuberance and their sense of brilliant promise. And I have been reflecting on the compost of nutrients, made from generous helpings of receptive surrender, weather-worn wisdom and deep-rooted trust, that allows the flower to bloom. 

The past year was one that stretched my soul to the point of tenderness and brittleness: The four months of ICU-illness of my mom. Then grieving her passing. Thinking we sold our house — then not, but moving on anyway. (Our "old" house is still not yet sold.) Confronting some of the darker dusty corners of my personality (the petty judgmental part, the fearful side, the victim-y pieces, all those jagged parts that like to stay stuck in old patterns and old stories). A full-blown existential crisis about the meaning of life.

And those are just a few of the ways I was stretched in the last 12 months.

It will be awhile before I'm fully through integrating all that has transpired from 2009. But I am looking forward to the promise of the New Year and to having this year be the year when some long-held dreams finally take root. (The launching of a new website with new offerings. A trip to England in May. The lovely place by the water that we now call home where — once the snow melts — I can kayak out my back door.)

As I look the year ahead, it is the wise and joyful energy of flowers that I want to take with me as beacons of promise for the journey ahead.

Wishing you all a 2010 that is filled with new blooms of possibility, joy and love!