It all started many years ago while sharing comfort with a friend who just experienced the death of someone close.  What does one say?  How can we dare imagine that life can go on - we have no proof?  The amazing transformation of a caterpillar, a lowly worm, into a glorious flying creature is also hard to believe.  But because we have actually seen a butterfly we can hope for other transformations invisible to the eye.  In face of loss beyond words I would draw a card with a caterpillar, a cocoon and a butterfly illustrating a favorite text, “Life is changed, not taken away”.

The next push came with the sixties.  The air was full of the call for revolution, many were for tearing down the whole old order hoping for some sort of magical  Phoenix to emerge from the ashes.  I wanted change.  I wanted a more just and beautiful world too, but I could not believe that destroying all that came before would produce a Phoenix or a butterfly.

There's more,  much more to the story of how Hope For the Flowers came to be - but somehow two caterpillars, Stripe and Yellow, crawled out of a little yellow book as butterflies.  For a quarter century they have been flying around the world carrying hope for the flowers and for millions of people.  So here we are, let the 25th Anniversary celebration on the Web begin!  Enjoy and cry a bit at the beauty and pain of relishing and protecting the “more of life!”