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By B.L. Ochman @whatsnext

“Hope for the Flowers” has been around for 50 years. Its message of hope and transformation is exactly what we need right now.

I had the great pleasure of interviewing “Hope for the Flowers” author Trina Paulus, explaining how her allegory of transformation came to be. Read to children for 50 years, it’s also a profound, multi-layered parable for teens and adults. Once you read the book, you are unlikely to ever forget it.

“Hope for the Flowers” tells the story of two caterpillars, Stripe and Yellow, seeking the best way to live their lives. It tells of their search for life’s purpose through striving, longing, loving and letting go.

Hope for the Flowers: Trust in Change?

Along the way, they join tens of thousands of caterpillars fervently struggling to reach the top of an endless column. Should they climb over others to reach the unseeable “top of the pile?”

Or should they let go of what they can see to trust there is something beautiful beyond?

Paulus, at 86, is an idealist and activist, and she is hard at work on two sequels to “Hope for the Flowers.”

Celebrating its 50th anniversary, Hope for the Flowers has been translated into Spanish, Dutch, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Persian

Hope for the Flowers by Trina PaulusHope for the Flowers, by Trina Pauls[/caption][Hope for the Flowers, on Amazon and at your local bookstore, by Trina Paulus. Published by Paulist Press, 1973, ISBN: 978-0809117543, 160 pages.]