You Will Bloom Again: Why I Wrote This Book

A painful moment can feel permanent without actually being permanent. Now, looking back at my life, it is easy to believe that what happens after most moments in time, experiences, and decisions isn’t permanent. One day, I woke up, and the things that I thought determined my entire life 5 years ago no longer matter today.

Have you ever had big emotions convince you that this is how life will always feel? You went through one storm, and suddenly that storm defined your entire view of life for a period of time. I still go through these thought patterns, because sometimes big things feel really big. When you’re hurting, it can be almost impossible to imagine anything beyond what you’re experiencing right now.

This is especially true for children. As adults, we can look back at something like being teased for our individuality, having someone steal our favorite crayon, not having anyone to sit with at lunch, or playing alone at recess and think, That seems so small compared to everything life will eventually bring. But for a child, this is their entire world. They don’t have decades of experience telling them that friendships change, schools change, feelings change, and life will look completely different someday. They’re living it for the first time, and their entire world revolves around what adults often consider “minuscule” moments when looking back. 

Here’s the thing: When something hurts deeply enough, it can feel permanent. 

That’s one of the reasons I wrote You Will Bloom Again. The idea came from a conversation with my younger cousin, Ava. I asked her what lesson she thought I had taught her in life, and without hesitation, she said, “Keep going. Don’t give up.” That sentence became part of the heart behind this book. I dedicated You Will Bloom Again to her as a reminder of something I hope she always carries with her: The light exists within her.

Sunflowers have always been my favorite flower–something about them made me feel happy inside whenever I saw one in full bloom. When I learned that they grow by facing the light, I made it the metaphor for my own life. There have been plenty of seasons when I didn’t feel like facing the light, when hope felt dangerous, and when something good felt terrifying because I knew it could go away again. For over a decade of my life, I thought it was easier to expect another storm than to trust that the sun will continue shining. When I woke up in a psych unit, I realized that I wasn’t the only one who grew up feeling this way.

We don’t always fear the darkness itself; sometimes we fear trusting the light.

In You Will Bloom Again, Ava the sunflower is afraid of the light. She’s experienced a bad storm followed by a very dark night, and she’s afraid to fully embrace something good because what happens if the darkness comes back? What happens if she lets herself be happy and then gets hurt again? 

The sunflowers help Ava understand that hope doesn’t mean knowing nothing bad will ever happen again. Hope means believing the darkness isn’t permanent. There will be another sunrise, and when the sun is out, we can turn toward it. That’s the message I wanted to give children—not that life will always be happy, that difficult things won’t happen, or that we should rush through sadness and tell children to “look on the bright side.” Instead, I want us to teach children that big feelings can exist alongside hope.

You can be sad and still believe things can get better. You can be scared and still believe you’re going to be okay. You can have a hard day without deciding that your whole life will be hard. That distinction matters because sometimes we try so hard to make children feel better that we accidentally teach them that difficult emotions are something they need to escape.

We can sit beside them, listen, and say, “I know this really hurts right now.” We can make room for the emotion without allowing the emotion to define their entire future. Maybe we say, “You don’t have to know how it’s going to get better yet. We’ll figure it out together.” Maybe we ask, “What do you hope could be different someday?”

I love that last question because hope isn’t about pretending the present doesn’t hurt. Hope is the ability to imagine that the future can hold something different.

That’s where the practices in You Will Bloom Again come in. They’re simple enough for children to understand, but powerful enough that I still use versions of them myself. One is a gratitude practice. When we’re going through something difficult, it can feel like the hard thing is the only thing that exists, so I wanted to give children a way to pause and notice something that makes them feel warm inside. Maybe it’s their favorite person, a pet, a song, a sunny day, a favorite meal, or something funny that happened. It doesn’t erase what’s hurting. It simply reminds us that there is still good in the world, even when we’re experiencing something difficult.

There’s also a presence practice because sometimes our minds don’t just live in the difficult moment we’re experiencing. They jump ahead. What if tomorrow is worse? What if this never changes? What if something else happens? We can help children come back to right now by asking what they can see, what they can hear, and what they can feel. Again, this doesn’t make the problem disappear. It gives them somewhere safe to stand while they’re experiencing it.

When children read this book, my goal is for them to learn what I didn’t until much later in life:

Hope isn’t pretending the storm isn’t happening. It’s knowing the storm isn’t the entire sky. The darkest nights eventually end in a sunrise. We don’t have to force the sun to come up, and we don’t have to know exactly when it will happen. We can simply keep going until the light returns, and when it does, we can turn toward it.

When Ava turns toward the light, she begins to bloom into all of the wonderful things that are a part of who she is and all that she can be. That’s why I named this book You Will Bloom Again.

I think children deserve this message. Actually, I think all of us do.

You Will Bloom Again releases tomorrow, September 1, 2026, and I’m incredibly excited to finally put it into the hands of children, parents, educators, counselors, and anyone who wants to help a young person navigate a difficult season. More than anything, though, I hope this book becomes a starting point for conversations because sometimes the most important thing we can give a child isn’t an answer. It’s the belief that their story is still being written.

If you’re supporting a child who is going through something difficult, here are three questions you can try:

• What feels hardest about this right now?

• What do you wish could be different?

• What is something that makes you feel a little warm inside?

You don’t have to fix everything or make the pain disappear. You can sit beside them, listen, help them come back to the present, and remind them that this moment is only one part of their story.

Because sometimes, before we can believe we’ll bloom again, someone else has to believe it for us.

And maybe that’s one of the greatest gifts we can give a child: the hope that the light will come back.