Finding beauty within the storm

As you see in My Beautiful Trauma Blog and profile pictures I have sunflowers, which are also the cover of my autobiography. Why did I choose sunflowers to represent me and my journey?

It all started on the 4th of March 2017, I was given sunflowers for my birthday. As soon as I laid eyes on them I was overcome with a sense of joy and warmth while being surrounded by negative vibes. During this this time, I had just started my journey with writing my autobiography. I began to get flashbacks of my traumatic childhood, re-living parts all over again. In ways the sunflowers represented the person deep down inside, that was being swallowed by my intense pain of the feeling of lost and despair. Below the pain, I believe I am a woman of strength, empathy and love. Sunflowers have become my favourite flower with beautiful symbolism to my story.

I wanted to really understand what sunflowers represent in a general sense so I took to the world wide web to learn different cultures interpretations of what this beautiful flower means. This is what made me love the flower more, especially the greeks meaning and their mythology.

In the Greek myth of Clytie and Apollo, the sunflower represents adoration and loyalty. The myth of two lovers forbidden to be together. After one was buried alive by the disapproving father, her lover turned her into a flower that followed him around wherever he went thus giving her the name sunflower who always faced towards the sun (the representation of turning something negative into something beautiful).

Other cultures such as the Chinese believe sunflowers represent a long life, good fortune and vitality. Native Americans believe sunflowers represent harvest, bounty and provision.

For more information check these links out.

https://www.ftd.com/blog/share/sunflower-meaning-and-symbolism

https://www.proflowers.com/blog/history-and-meaning-of-sunflowers