Will You Stop and Smell the Roses with Me?

When we allow the soft animal of our body to connect with a flower, everything can change.

I realize now I have always taken the phrase “stop and smell the roses” literally. And I assumed this was a phrase that had been around for centuries, but a quick Google search shows that this quote most likely originated in the 1950’s from the autobiography of the famous golfer at the time, Walter Hagen. He said, “Don’t hurry, don’t worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way.” Popular usage of the phrase began to surge in the 1970s, when I was a teenager my formative years, just past the age of “flower power.”  

Most people take this phrase, stop and smell the roses, as an idiom for slowing down and enjoying life—and that is true—but I can see now I always took it more literally. When I stop and bury my nose into the soft petals of a flower and take in their fragrance, my world shifts. For that moment, I am a soft bellied animal with memories, feelings and emotions all triggered by that one smell, tumbling back through time while simultaneously sensing the present moment more vibrantly. For that moment, when I connect with the flower, all my worries and plans for the future slip away, and a deeper, even ancient way of knowing seeps in.

I’ve come to realize this phrase has been a signpost for my life, a guiding force, for how important the flowers would become in my life.

Will you come and smell the roses with me? The flowers don’t just speak to me, they will speak to anyone who is willing to slow down and get to know them. I am offering a four-week online workshop to explore how this simple phrase is a much deeper invitation than it appears. It is so important—for ourselves, our communities and our entire planet—to remember and revive the reverence and respect our ancestors had for these flower beings who are so much older than we are. They have so much to teach us.

Come and step into the flowers’ world with me, as we explore our entwined evolutionary love story, learn about their radical intelligence so different from our own, and empower ourselves to use our intuition and imagination to hear their messages.

To learn more about my workshop, Guidance from the Flowers, and to register, click HERE.

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Thank you to Mary Oliver, for her poem, Wild Geese, and the much loved line, “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

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