When I first began working with roses, I found it very difficult to relate or even imagine one. I found it unsettling. I simply did not like them.

My first roses were never roses.

I remember one reading in particular where the closest I could get to imagining a rose was seeing a decal of a rose plastered on the side of an elephant shaped vase.

In short, I struggled with roses.

But I got really curious about my dislike of them and using my intuition and energy healing practices I explored three important stories in my life involving roses in order to heal my relationship with them.

First, when I was growing up, my father grew roses. We had huge rose bushes along the side of the house and many more planted in the front yard. My distaste for roses was colored by the grief of moving from that home and of losing my father at a fairly young age.

Through curiosity and using my tools, I was able to work through both of those tender challenges.

Second, when I was young, I fell into a rose bush and several thorns became embedded in my back. I had to see a doctor for help in getting them removed. The message I received: roses were beautiful, but painful.

The story embedded through that experience was that roses were dangerous and something to be wary of. Again, I turned to my tools to create a relationship with roses that wasn’t colored in pain pictures.

Third, when I was a young teenager, I asked my beau for a rose on Valentine’s day. He presented me with a beautiful, very long-stemmed rose. It stood out among other roses other students received that day and brought me a lot of uncomfortable attention.

I remember him telling me he was surprised I asked for one because they weren’t practical. Only, having grown up with them, I thought it was easy to pick one or more. I thought I had asked for a very simple, uncomplicated, inexpensive gift. Naively, I had no idea at the time that roses were increased in price for that day or that it could be a challenging gift for him to provide. It honestly never occurred to me that everyone did not have roses growing in their yards.

I harbored a lot of shame after that realization. Shame that made it hard for a very long time for me to ask for things I wanted. Again, I used my tools to transform the shame that colored my ability to work willingly with them.

After one meditation session resolving all those issues, I was euphoric. From then on, I was able to imagine not only roses but to see them transform as I filled them with energy. I also found myself able to accept that sometimes roses for healing purposes, do not appear as roses and that really broadened my ability to be accepting and creative in my energy work and readings.

I now rely very strongly on the use of roses in my work, preferring them over other methods such as working with pictures, or sometimes even symbols. I can safely say that I use roses every time I do energy work, every time I meditate, and I probably use them every day.

What’s also important to realize is that most of those things I worked with during that session, were not things that seemed to plague me daily and yet, they informed my behavior quite a bit when confronted in using roses.

This is so common in all the things that hold us back. The issues that cause is to not live to our full potential, are often things we don’t recognize and aren’t thinking about. Working symbolically with roses, symbols, pictures and the map of our energy field can reveal these things and provide a way to clear them and to release all manner of barriers to what could be possible.