January Icebreaker: Rose, Thorn, Bud

My goofy twin brother K actually introduced me to this little thought exercise coming out of 2019, and I noticed Canadian Living mentioned it in their January 2021 issue. 

I'm sharing it here cuz it's a good way to review a rough year, at the very least you can use it for your back-to-work icebreakers or a journalling exercise.



Here's mine for 2020:

Rose - absolutely my sweet nephew D born in the summer. I will never tire of being an Auntie, and I'm so grateful that my sister and brother-in-law are such good parents. I personally think babies always give you hope, even if you don't want them for yourself! D is niece/nephew no. 3!!

Thorn - I choose to be opaque here and not mention my actual thorn, but to offer a quote from David Whyte's Crossing the Unknown Sea which captured the feeling of my 2020 thorn:

"It's all right, you know, to support yourself with something secondary until your work has ripened, but once it has ripened to a transparent fullness, it has to be gathered in. You have ripened already, and you are waiting to be brought in. Your exhaustion is a form of inner fermentation. You are beginning, ever so slowly [...] to rot on the vine."
- David Whyte

Bud- moving to a new city in November 2020! When things eventually start opening up again, we will have much to explore and a new city to frolic around.

Above: this is the rose garden at the Vancouver campus of UBC! I can neither confirm nor deny that I have thrown a bird funeral here sometime in the last decade.



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