Buy Yourself Flowers

Now that spring has poked its head out to say hello, it’s made me fall in love with flowers all over again (a yearly occurrence). There’s something about them that just makes me feel hopeful and I find that having flowers in the home brings a real sense of freshness and vitality to the room. Symbolically, flowers can hold many meanings and regardless of where they are in their life cycle, can bring some helpful metaphors into our own lives.

So here are three flower-related wellbeing tips: 

? Buy yourself flowers! This is something I’ve started doing more recently and I’m sure I’m not the only one. It suddenly struck me one day, why do we need a special occasion to have flowers at the table? If anything, I appreciate them more when my day is a little more ‘ordinary’.

? Preserve them! You can do this by hanging them upside down just when they are starting to wilt a bit. To do this, dry the stems then tie an elastic band around the bottom of them. I usually then attach a piece of string or ribbon and hang them from a curtain pole or washing line (indoors). It normally takes about 2-3 weeks for them to dry and then it’s up to you how you use them! You can leave them hanging, put them in a nice glass bottle or take the petals off and add them to a bath, make potpourri or use them for arts & crafts.

? Surprise yourself! Sometimes it can be fun to choose the first bunch of flowers that you notice or that you’re most instinctually drawn towards and then look up what they symbolise afterwards. It can be an interesting thing to reflect on – did it represent how you were feeling at the time? Or perhaps they represent something that you want more of in your life, in which case, could this have been your unconscious trying to communicate that to you? You can find a list of some floral hidden messages here. 

By Molly Phillips, Mental Health Advisor

Posted on: 7th April 2021