This is one of the only line drawings in the 100 day project that I made in ink - which is always a little nerve-wracking because your hand must be steady and the quality of the lines drawn need to be a bit more certain than when you are working with pencil. 

The drawing was made from a photograph I took of flowers at the bat mitzvah of a friend’s daughter. It was the first bat mitzvah that I had ever attended and I was in awe of the ceremony and the preparations made by this beautiful young girl, her family and the community that supports her. 

And then separately in the same week, another friend found out she got tenure - which felt like another really big thing to celebrate. So this drawing was made with a capital ‘C’  for celebration in mind. Big thanks for such big, epic milestones.

And looking back, it’s interesting to see what flowers were in the bouquet. Many of them are flowers that appear in some of the other Gratitude Blooming cards…like the rose (which covers our themes of choice, vulnerability, and grace), a gardenia (our theme of gentleness), an iris (our theme of impermanence), and the delphinium (our theme of infinite possibility). And there are other flowers in the drawing that aren’t in our cards but perhaps appear here to inspire you to take a close look and see what other themes come up for you ... and those flowers are the tulip, the gladiolus, and the calla lily…

The theme of celebration does feel like one that has many facets to it. Have you noticed that at times like those, those big celebrations, how large and flowing gratitude can feel? Even as I recall the moments that inspired this card, I can REALLY remember how joyous I felt for my friends.

So when this card appears, I always think of it as a reminder of that BIG feeling of gratitude that is almost imprinted on us from those moments of celebration we’ve experienced in life.