I Felt Hopeless Today…So I Planted Roses.

This morning on the ​treadmill, surrounded by CNN on all of the ​large TV screens that line the walls of the gym, I struggled.
Not only for breath, no, this morning I struggled to hold back tears as I watched the survivors—the kids from the Parkland school shooting eloquently voice their disappointment.

They had taken the long bus ride to the Florida state capital​ of Tallahassee to plead their case for gun control to the legislators—who listened but agreed to keep things the way they are.

But don’t worry. The Florida state legislators declared pornography a ‘public health risk’. Guns? Not so much.

This issue has felt hopeless for…well, forever. For as long as I can remember.

But as I’ve watched these incredible teenagers mount their #Neveragain campaign, a tiny sprout of hope has surfaced. Would they be the ones who could turn this previous unturnable thing around?

Things feel different this time.

But today, as I left the gym in the review mirror, that tender sprout of hope started to wither.

What could I do to keep this hope alive? Besides sign petitions, call my congressman, send money and march?

What could I do? What could I do?

I know this sounds crazy but I decided that I needed to plant rose bushes.

Why roses you ask?
Because it’s still the dead of winter (even here in LA where the high today was a brisk sixty degrees) and in the dead of winter rose bushes look dead.

They are unimpressive in their bare, thorny, ugliness and if you were just dropped here from another planet and someone told you that in a few short months those dead bushes would be covered with the most beautiful and fragrant flowers imaginable, you would marvel at that transformation.

You would ask me how that’s possible and I would tell you, you curious alien, that some things that appear dead—are merely dormant.

I would also tell you that for me, roses always hold the promise of spring.
If hope was a plant, it would be a rose.

So I planted rose bushes today.

And my wish is that by the time they’re in full bloom, sometime in the middle of summer, maybe just maybe that little sprout of hope inside me will have reason to blossom as well.

Carry on,
xox