The Flower of the Music World
Where do you go to remember? What rejuvenates your soul? Make sure you balance out time to align, to remember “Who You Are”
Throughout my childhood and into adulthood, my mom would call me “The Flower of the Music World.” I never thought much of it—it was something that rolled off her tongue so naturally, and I never questioned why it felt so true. I’d just smile and let the colorful description hold me.
I never used the phrase to describe anyone else—until last Tuesday. It flowed out of me like lyrics lifting from a song. I was describing someone who could hold the complexities of grief and hope through the expression of utter joy. The words caught mid-air, and I repeated them back to myself: “The Flower of the Music World.” It felt so natural, like being called home—to myself, to my roots.
Like many, I’ve been carrying so much: grief, rage, fear, disbelief, and despair. I’ve been walking around like a sleuth, trying to figure out what to do, how to help stop the unbearable pain. Does anyone care? I’ve been searching for a flicker of activated hope that could pierce the relentless cruelty of each day. Every night, I’d lay my head down feeling the slow siphoning of nectar from that flower. The divine balm that once fueled me was being depleted—drained by the distraction of helplessness. I was exactly where the gray-scale empire wanted me: hopeless, disconnected, and burnt out. The flower wilted. The music struggled to come through.
Then Thursday morning came, and the Full Moon ushered in her call toward alignment. She cracked me open in a parking lot and whispered, “Who are you?” Tears poured as deceptive fear and paralyzing defeat faced off against the underdog forces of activated hope and unwavering trust. Right there, on the battlefield of my mind, my heart called out loudly—like a referee demanding attention: “Who are you?”
The capacity to answer that question came in the remembering—and allowing my actions to follow. It meant returning to what makes the nectar stick: my core values of time and integrity. I’d been giving away my time as a consolation prize, trying to prove my worth. My integrity was being pulled toward others’ expectations. I needed space—desperately—to feel my way back to myself. To offer that flower the resources she needed. To allow the music to reach my soul again.
That space opened up on the crowded floor of the North Charleston Coliseum. In a sea of people, I felt it all: connected, aware, alive. The music was an invitation to hold both grief and hope in the same breath. A reminder that it’s in the simplest moments that joy returns—slipping in through the portal of presence. In that space, uncertainty transformed. It bent through a prism of emotion and crested into an explosion of euphoric realization: We are alive. For this, I am certain and what an opportunity we have in this moment to create the world we all desperately need.
It was a brief, fleeting moment—but it answered the question: “Who are you?”
The Flower of the Music World.
I walked out alone, yet surrounded by the energy of activated hope.
I told myself:
Hold onto this feeling. Take a snapshot. Remember this Picture of Nectar.
Where do you go to remember?
What rejuvenates your soul?
Make sure you balance out time to align, to remember “Who You Are”