a complicated relationship with optimism.

Hope floats. My teen years were the late 90s and pop culture philosophy from light-hearted movies about life filled my “quote book”, a separate journal where I scrawled out lyrics, phrases and prose. For some reason this film with Sandra Bullock has always stuck with me. In particular, the closing wisdom: “Beginnings are scary, endings…

hope grows.

the black rose represents hope and rebellion. its associated with death but its elegant black beauty can also mean rebirth and rejuvenation. in sobriety, it’s seen as a symbol of strength and resiliency; a beautiful bloom grown from darker days. it’s for these reasons and more that i chose the obscure, romanticized flower as a…