Rose Resilience

You may not know that June is National Rose Month. I didn't know it either, until my friend Pam told me. 

I'm writing about it because we have ONE rose in front of our house (in the Upper Midwest). When we moved here it looked kind of sickly, and we didn't think it had much of a chance.

Somehow or other, it bloomed though, and we were really happy to see it. The photo at left shows the last rose we had (in September). It looks a little faded because it was starting to get cold--but the rose hung on until the end of the month.

I keep meaning to wrap the rose over the winter, but didn't last year, and again, it looked like it was in pretty tough shape and I wasn't sure it would last in May. But the leaves filled in and I am looking forward to seeing flowers this year, too.

What's interesting about this is that there was a single rose outside the garden at our old house, too. It bloomed for the first few years we were there, and then stopped blooming, but the leaves always came back.

Before THAT, some friends sent me a rose bush when my son was born, and it kept going for a few seasons. I don't know what happened to it because I left that home when my son's dad and I were divorced.

What all this makes me think of is: resilience. Because you have to be a tough rose to survive a winter up here. I promise to wrap our latest rose in October, but I have a feeling it would likely survive anyway. We think of roses as delicate, but the opposite is true.

Today I'm trying to learn from that rose, because I am feeling vulnerable to everything going on in the world around me.

So I'm thanking our rose for the lesson in resilience, and thankful National Roses Month reminded me of it.

To learn more about roses and National Month, go here.

Hit With It

There are just some days, right? When you get hit by this or that, physical or psychological or mental. Health changes, insensitive doctors, financial problems... and get tired of fighting them all the time.

The last few months have thrown some messes my way and I've been busy trying to catch them. I think about the pre-Facebook and pre-Twitter days and how you mostly could talk in person with a friend or spouse or both and tell them what you were going through - and they could tell you.

Social media makes us all into pretenders sometimes - or more than sometimes, I think. So you get on and see everyone telling you they are happy, happy, happy. And it just isn't true, but it looks that way. So many of us feel even more isolated.

That's why the quote I found last night in the back of The Atlantic resonated with me - and why I think it might with you. There are just days when you're going to get hit with it, whatever that it may be. Reading this (I hope) will make you feel better, or at least less alone.

"The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and... it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard you hit; it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done."
--from Rocky Balboa by Sylvester Stallone

That's what I have today. For some words on kids and resilience, try these articles:

Building Resilience in Children--20 Powerful, Practical Strategies

Resilience in Children: Strategies to Strengthen Your Kids

Resilience - Center on the Developing Child at Harvard Uuniversity




Boxing boy: foundin_a_attic