Your Harvest From Heartbreak

9/29/2021

person standing at top of hill in vineyard at harvest time

Have you or are you experiencing heartbreak? With the perspective of time, you may look back and see that although it darn near shredded you to bits, all kinds of good sprang from a hot mess.

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The Grape Analogy

For years I’d had a fantasy of being a master somm (wine expert). These are the folks who have such trained palates and are so dialed in to world geography that they can take a sip of wine and tell you where on the planet it came from.

Living in a special pocket of the world by Lake Michigan, one of the five Great Lakes (the sixth largest freshwater lake in the world for those who like geo- facts), the water proximity provides extraordinary growing conditions for produce, including grapes.

In the spirit of this interest, I’d dedicated one day a week over six years working with the owner/winemaker of a premier winery helping guests learn about wine.

Through this experience, a greater appreciation for the land, lake, and weather patterns that affect it all deepened.

Glossy wine magazines and fancy glasses aside, an industry insider described the essence of the trade as simply farming:

Knowing the importance of land in the growing equation, I learned that tough growing conditions like rocky soil stress vines

Counterintuitively, this leads to grapes that, at harvest, can produce the best wines because

Roots need to reach deeply into the earth to gain the nutrients and water necessary to produce superior grapes, not possible lollygagging near the surface

The Quote

When I realized there was an inspirational life quote in those grape facts, I set out to shoot a photo that could work with the yet-to-come words.

Grapes and their vines don’t grow in a visually ordered way as suggested by the lush packaged bunches you've seen in a grocery store. Like most of us at times, they can be a compositional mess.

Accompanied by a crowing rooster in the distance, a travel mug of lukewarm coffee and wet sneakers from the morning dew, hours were spent in a vineyard to find the grape cluster that would best illustrate the words that eventually came:

"Like remarkable wine, challenging situations that force your roots deeper create a more exceptional you."
CATHERINE LENARD

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Your Harvest

When life presents you with a hot mess and heartbreak, the status quo is disrupted. Those circumstances provide the opportunity for a time out that allows introspection — going deeper within yourself.

It’s during those times that a greater aspect of yourself is allowed to come forward, building strength while bringing the essential nutrients needed to expand and eventually mellow into the harvest of a fuller, deeper, richer expression of you.

To Your Personal Harvest,