On the surface, that might sound a little shallow, vapid, or like the kind of cliché a flower shop owner would throw around to drive sales.
The problem is, it might actually be true.
Let me take you back to the beginning.
We started mod + liv for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that neither Amy nor I knew exactly what we wanted to do with the second half of our lives.
Back in Colorado, we'd owned a business that managed vacation rentals, operated a design studio with four interior designers, and ran a construction company. It was a lot After selling the business, we packed up our four kids and moved to Bellingham, Washington. It didn't take long to notice something about the Pacific Northwest. Things actually grow here.
After years of trying to coax plants out of the dry, stubborn soil of Western Colorado, we found ourselves living in a place where you could actually stab something into the ground and watch it take off.
Amy was hooked.
Before long, we had raised flower beds of epic proportions, and she was involved in a local wholesale flower co-op, growing and selling flowers. What started as a hobby was becoming something considerably bigger.
Eventually, we had to ask ourselves a question: Are we going to get serious about this?
That question was about more than making a living.
We'd also spent the previous four years doing some pretty serious personal work. Lots of individual therapy, couples therapy, and some uncomfortable examinations of ourselves and our relationships. We'd learned a great deal about connection, accountability, and what it means to really show up for another person.
We weren't the same people who had left Colorado.
And we didn't want to build the same kind of business.
We wanted to do something beautiful. Something creative and authentic. Something that allowed us to support other people's stories, rather than simply providing a product or service.
Flowers and design were what we chose.
And that's where things got interesting.
As the flower orders started coming in, we suddenly had a front-row seat to some of the most remarkable displays of thoughtfulness, generosity, and love.
People from all over the country were ordering flowers for people here in Bellingham. And behind almost every order was a story.
Sometimes it was the death of a parent. Sometimes a beloved dog. We've even had a llama involved.
Other times it was a graduation, a birthday, a friendship worth celebrating, or a romantic gesture.
We've watched people try to repair broken connections, apologize for mistakes, celebrate new beginnings, and remind someone that they haven't been forgotten.
We've delivered flowers to people in hospice, where the purpose wasn't to fix anything or make a difficult situation better. It was simply to give someone something beautiful to look at as they passed from this life to the next.
Think about that for a minute.
Someone, somewhere, decided that another human being deserved a little beauty in their day. And they did something about it.
That's the part of this business I didn't see coming.
We thought we were opening a flower shop. What we actually opened was a small window into the ways people care for one another.
And it's changed us.
Watching all this generosity has made us want to be more generous ourselves. It's made us think about the people in our own lives and how often we let opportunities pass to tell them what they mean to us.
We give away flowers all the time now. Sometimes it's a whole arrangement. Sometimes it's just a single stem.
And here's what we've noticed: even one flower can completely change someone's entire demeanor.
It's almost ridiculous how reliably it happens.
Sometimes it's how we communicate something that words can't quite capture.
I'm thinking about you.
I'm proud of you.
I'm sorry.
I love you.
You're not alone.
A bouquet won't solve someone's problems. It won't bring back a loved one, repair a marriage, or make grief disappear.
But it can remind someone that they're seen. That they matter. That someone took a moment out of their day to think about them.
And maybe that's where the happiness comes from.
Not necessarily the flowers themselves, but the connection they represent.
So, can flowers really deliver happiness?
Long of the short...
The evidence is in.
We think they can.
And as it turns out, we get a pretty good dose of it ourselves just by being the ones who deliver them.
By Steve | mod + liv
0 Comments
There are no comments for this article. Be the first one to leave a message!
0 Comments
There are no comments for this article. Be the first one to leave a message!