I decided around Christmas (yes, of last year - which feels like eons ago already) - during a groggy, fatigued bout of the flu - to surrender.
Instead of writing that 2025 recap that had been on my physical and mental list for weeks (what I SHOULD do), I decided that what felt right to me was writing up more of a look forward, something to assist me in manifesting the kind of growth and change I want for myself and Molly Oliver Flowers in 2026. And, that I could, then, put it off till January! Bliss.
Convenient? Yes, given my convalescent state, my brain fog, I did not have energy to write something before the year’s end. But this decision to forgo the requisite ‘Year End Post’ felt right. Like a new internal alignment, but also external - with the season, with my surroundings, and with what I need now and how I want to operate as a human, business owner, in this present day and age.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: running a ‘sustainable’ business has to be about more than just thinking through and making decisions about the sourcing of your raw materials (in my case, flowers, vessels, ribbon, candles, paper goods, etc.), and, where they ultimately end up…
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Let me set the scene.
Here's what was happening near my mother’s home where I was holed up in bed, a snap from along the road where I like to walk:
Yes. A blanket of snow had (finally!) fallen just days before the holiday - such a gift. A bright white broad brush reminder that we are in fact living in and amongst nature. And that winter is a time of hibernation and reflection and restoration, despite the algorithm’s needs. It forces you to stop and be in awe. To slow down and pause. To stay inside, or, to talk a long walk to take it in. You can’t summon this beauty on a phone. Our phones can’t provide the feeling of moist cold air, the smell of fresh fallen snow.
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But as I was saying…
Sustainable business should strive to honor the human body’s needs and limitations, as much as the earth’s. It should incorporate our mental, physical and financial wellbeing. It has to be as much about the wellbeing of the people who work at and for a business (including the owner) - as it is about the wellbeing of the earth. I know that this is not a new idea - this is something indigenous cultures understand and understood starting many lifetimes ago. Something we have largely forgotten (as a culture driven by white / patriarchal power, of course). Something we desperately need to remember and get in the business of getting back to.
The recent revelations surrounding the founder/chef René Redzepi of the Michelin-starred restaurant Noma - heralded as a pinnacle of sustainability (through local sourcing, energy cycling, etc.) and global gastronomic art for years - provide a stunning, and sadly not so surprising example of the ways in which striving for perfect waste reduction and seasonal sourcing will and should never, ever, be the high water mark of ‘sustainability.’ That we are very much missing the point when we isolate a business’s environmental practices and efforts to reduce impact on the planet from its operating principles and practices - its worker health and safety.
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And so, back to my sad tale of late 2025 influenza interrupting the daily grind: forcing my fatigued, post-flu mind and body to summon the creative energy and stamina to produce a coherent, engaging and grammatically correct synopsis of 2025 was not in the cards and perhaps will never be again.
As a small business owner in this era of social media, you often hear a clanging voice (multiple clanging voices) in your head: “It’s been months since you last wrote a journal post.” “You can’t only send marketing emails.” “You must …” (fill in a thousand blanks).
The algorithm will never be satisfied; there is never a time to “clock out” on your punch card (and there’s no real punch card) because so much of what we do is maintain a virtual storefront whose open hours are beholden to a 24/7 machine and hundreds of different sleep and wake cycles and circadian rhythms. Gone is the 9 to 5. Customers or colleagues can ping us an hour of the day; the message could disappear if we don’t respond. Disappear if we do. I’m guilty of it too; the boundaryless-ness of it all. It’s a real challenge to try to set and maintain some sense of 90’s-esque normalcy surrounding communication and responsiveness. Remember answering machines? “We’re closed” signs? Le sigh.
Part of why I love to send Amaryllis to our subscription members is just this - an opportunity to slow down. After weeks and weeks of fresh seasonal flowers (and varieties changing weekly as well), we ultimately hit a dearth. Not enough coming out of the one or two greenhouses we might purchase from. A bit of boredom with the same flower we can source. But also, the value in remembering that all things take time to grow. And so, we potted up the annual amaryllis in December - this time, ‘Green Wave.’ They spent about a month studio-side and then were shipped off to members with just the beginnings of green shoots in January. Subscribers then get to play witness to the slow process of growth, day by day, even hour by hour.
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Funnily enough, here we are now, about two and half months later, and this essay (A draft of which was started late January) is finally getting posted. Am I giving content consumption / white privilege and perfectionism the middle finger? Not so much. Really I was just sick, succumbing to being a body. As you probably know, the flu will really take you out - demand you stop.
It was a fever dream of a Christmas - tea and broth ferried on repeat by my sister and mother to my bedroom where I lay for four straight days and nights, starting Christmas Eve afternoon. Tylenol and Advil also on repeat! I caught up on (and laid to rest) Stranger Things (RIP), and took in The Beast in Me - no other way to say it. Amazing, for the record. The sickness have been worse, and I’m grateful it wasn’t as I failed to get the flu shot this past fall.
I let my mind rest. I let it wander. I ruminated about the recent wedding we’d done at Frankies 457 in Carroll Gardens about a week earlier... How dreamy and small and sweet and fun it was. How I let myself use callas and hyacinth and dianthus and other non-seasonal (well, not grown locally) flowers and fillers. The stems purchased could be - one day - produced in a northern / cooler zone like ours, even at that time of year. They didn't feel summery - they felt like appropriate choices. Like hypotheticals. Wintry. Potential season extender crops for some intrepid farmer not to scared of rising fuel costs.
[Side note, on the subject of gas prices: the context of the current wars the US is fighting in Iran, and in Gaza, and elsewhere clearly cast a suspicious lens on my even mentioning the term 'sustainability...' I want to acknowledge the relative absurdity of writing about how I will personally approach sustainability in my highly privileged corner of the world. Yet, here I am. Making a small offering to this ongoing conversation].
I thought about the ways I’m letting go of old ideals about strict local/domestic sourcing, even in winter. (To be clear - I was never an absolute purist, whatever that means now; the first winter wedding I took on was in January 2013 at the Greenpoint Loft, and I used many local Battenfeld & Sons anemone and local cedar and camellia, but also things sourced from California - gasp!).
I thought about the ways this loosening is allowing me more creative freedom. And that that was a good thing. About how my knowledge and know-how about flowers is stretching through finally letting go of some ridiculous, privileged ideal I set for myself about local sourcing. (I set a sourcing radius of 200 miles around NYC when I launched this business).
I thought about how giving myself permission to purchase and work with flowers that aren’t locally produced or regionally seasonal was making me a more well rounded, knowledgeable and skilled florist.
I thought about how I’d learned - the very hard way - that a steady source of income 12 months out of the year is helpful, even critical, in the current format and stage of my business.
About how a new version of myself had been emerging for months in the aftermath of a very real cash flow crisis (read here for that very real tale if you're interested); a Molly who has become less of an idealist and more of a realist, through the process of running this business. And that the new me will relinquish attachment to ideals in order to hold on to this precious incubator for creativity, self-exploration, growth and community: this business I’ve grown for 14 years, which is made up of and run by people I love to employ and know better and better, and that I learn and gain so much from.
It's really true what I've heard about the final throes of the Year of the Snake... I was feeling a lot of shedding of old selves, old narratives and identities I'd clung to for years, stale understandings of past relationships and of future possibilities. Q4 of 2025, really beginning in fall, right around harvest season, I was really tasting something wholly new, coming from deep within.
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Coincidentally, I’d been asked to think about all of this more formally in early November: I was invited to speak on a panel (in January ‘26), along with some revered peers, at the relatively new, annual “Flowering in the North” conference in Portland, ME.
This would be the 3rd convening of mostly regional northeast flower growers and some florists and floral industry peers (seed suppliers, greenhouse manufacturers, florists, etc.) that have been coming together now through the good work of the University of Maine Extension office.
The title of this Keynote panel was “What does Sustainability Mean in 2026?”
Well, I had a few fresh ideas.
Stay tuned - Part 2 coming soon...