One Hundred Daffodils: Finding Beauty, Grace, and Meaning When Things Fall Apart by Rebecca Winn

One Hundred Daffodils: Finding Beauty, Grace, and Meaning When Things Fall Apart by Rebecca Winn

An engaging, wise, and uplifting reflection on human resilience and nature’s ability to teach, inspire, and heal after an unexpected life upheaval, One Hundred Daffodils is told through the lens of the author’s personal experiences with grief and heartbreak on her journey toward self-discovery and empowerment. Written with uncommon honesty, One Hundred Daffodils offers readers the kind of relatable connection that we hunger for and love to share. It is a book whose words, like those of a trusted friend, are often raw, frequently funny, reliably uplifting, sometimes painfully familiar, and always vulnerable, honest and wise. Like Hermann Hesse, Walt Whitman, and Mary Oliver before her, the author uses nature as a metaphor, a sanctuary, and a sage teacher. It is a contemporary yet timeless story of a woman’s search for meaning, identity, and purpose. “A shockingly beautiful work of art.” ~ KATIE MARIE, Martinis & Memoirs Blog Rebecca speaks to all manner of spiritual centers, women’s groups and conferences, and other organizations.

Rebecca Winn is a multiple award-winning landscape designer and creator of the inspirational Facebook blog, Whimsical Gardens. Her eye for nature’s beauty and her unique blend of wisdom, insight and humor inspire and entertain hundreds of thousands of readers around the globe each day. Born in Dallas, Texas, Rebecca’s family moved to Europe when she was in first grade, providing her the opportunity to grow up surrounded by the majestic, centuries old gardens of Italy, Scotland and England, which strongly influenced both her garden designs and her writing. Her articles have appeared in regional and national magazines. One Hundred Daffodils is her first book.

In 1995, Rebecca took her love of gardening, her degree in fine art, her many floral design and horticulture awards, and requests from friends, and started Whimsical Gardens, a boutique, residential landscape design firm. In the years that followed, she was recruited to be the garden writer for D Home Magazine, and an on-camera talent expert in garden design for eHow.com.

In addition to 31 top floral design awards and over 300 horticulture awards won in garden club flower shows, Rebecca has won five consecutive TEIL Awards (Texas Excellence in Landscaping) through the Texas Nursery and Landscape Association, as well as a LUXE Magazine RED Award (Residential Excellence in Landscaping). She has served on numerous arts, civic, and gifted education boards, and supports environmental causes throughout Texas and the world.

Here is a brief excerpt from Rebecca Winn’s book, One Hundred Daffodils: Finding Beauty, Grace, and Meaning When Things Fall Apart:

I Am Autumn

Fall is breathing its soft, cooling breath into the nights and mornings now, and I can feel myself noticeably relaxing. The relentless heat of Texas summers can be hard for me.

Each morning in the fall, when I open my doors and the cool breeze washes over me, I feel my energy expand. It’s a little early in the season yet, but as I take my morning walk through the garden, I have begun to notice tiny hints of fall color peeking around edges of leaves, like anxious actors behind the curtain backstage. I, too, am excited for their time in the limelight. What a glorious treat fall color is. It takes my breath away every year. And this year, in particular, I welcome the transformation. It has been a year of deep change for me, and it came at a high price - months of personal upheaval, processing and self-discovery brought on by emotional pain so intense that it felt as if my very life depended on understanding the cause, finding the source and healing it. It started in late winter, as the trees were beginning to bud, then intensified through the spring and into the summer as the leaves unfurled and engaged in their annual process of insuring the survival of their host. We worked in tandem - they nurturing from without, I nurturing from within, scouring the hidden depths of my psyche for understanding. Each of us gathering, storing, distilling, converting, day in and day out through summer’s end. And now, as the breakdowns and breakthroughs are coalescing within me, I feel the self that is emerging is more my true self than I have ever been.

In this way, I am Autumn. The beautiful fresh greens we think of as the natural color of leaves is actually a mask of sorts. It is a sign that the tree is working hard. Green leaves are striving for survival by using the chlorophyll coursing through their veins in the warm spring and summer months. Green leaves are processing and converting sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into a form that feeds the trees, helps them grow and can sustain them through the winter. But as the days shorten, and sunlight becomes increasingly scarce, Nature shifts its focus from gathering and processing food, to integrating and storing what has been gathered, transferring it from the leaves to the roots. As this happens, the worker-bee greens drop away and the leaves’ true colors begin to emerge. The beautiful, vivid colors of fall are not created, they are revealed. Most of the time, we are green leaves. We go about our daily routines, striving for survival. We spend our days and often our nights, coping. Coping with work, with children, with parents, with all the responsibilities that consume our lives, trying to fit in some quality time here and there with our loved ones, and maybe if we’re lucky with ourselves. We are bright, shiny, busy green leaves, doing what we must to insure our survival, until one day a crisis hits, and it’s impossible to continue with business as usual.

In those moments we are stripped of our ability to hide behind our busyness and are forced to be fully present with this new reality and find within ourselves the internal fortitude that previously lay dormant. Our lovely green façade disintegrates, and all those pressing goals and demands that have consumed our time and attention day in and day out diminish, and sometimes completely disappear. In moments of personal cataclysm, something wiser, more resilient, more courageous wakes within us, bringing with it the necessary strength to confront our greatest challenges, no matter how harsh. In those moments, we become Autumn. Authentic, unmasked, raw, real, powerful and beautiful. When crisis strips away our masks and guides us inside to our authentic selves, the beauty it reveals can be staggering. When we are unmasked, we are vibrant, we are radiant. When we are wholly ourselves, it is holy.

Seasons change and so do I, and right now, I amAutumn.