A Symbol of Resilience - An Introduction to Succulent

Succulent plants don’t just survive; they flourish in scarcity, holding water, color, and life where little seems possible. They are a symbol of resilience.

Original Succulent 2015

The Yarns About Life Succulent series uses one artwork as a metaphor for how people, teams, and companies grow through patient, documented change.

Succulent is more than a single piece; it’s a map of how we grow. These Yarns About Life trace my journey from teenage knot artist to hospitality leader, and now to a maker who documents change one coil at a time.

Reimagined Succulent 2025

The question underneath each story is simple: How do we project and recognize value and growth and continue to reimagine ourselves?

Across six blogs, I explore practical tools and tales that turn resilience into something you can actually see, track, and tend:

1. Motorcycle Rims - A story of how one small unlikely object - a used motorcycle rim become a life long symbol of growth in my art.

2. Reimagining Westin, Part 1 - A behind the scenes look at how Westin slowly shifted from reinvention to shared standards.

3. Reimagining Westin, Part 2 - How 20,000 pages of manuals, 5,000 standards, helped position the rebirth of Westin.

4. Your Book - A simple, powerful tool: a personal “book” that documents your professional achievements and growth. This isn’t about ego; it’s about evidence. When the room forgets your value, your book helps you remember—and advocate for yourself with clarity.

5. Month in Review - A monthly practice of writing down what you actually did, learned, and survived. This is resilience on paper: a way to see progress when your days feel like a blur. It helps to notice the small decisions that slowly remake a person.

6. Annual Performance Review - Reclaiming a dreaded ritual as a real growth conversation. I share how to use the annual review as a mirror, a map, and a negotiation tool—so it reflects your true contribution instead of reducing you to a single score.

If you’ve ever tried to document and demonstrate your value, resilience and growth in a high‑heat workplace, these stories are for you. From the practices that helped demonstrate the value of a brand to small practices, quiet tools, and real examples of how we keep reimagining ourselves.

In returning to the original 2015 Succulent, I stripped away the old stuffing to find the core. Reimagining the piece a decade later taught me that resilience and growth isn’t only about adding; it’s about the courage to pare back, listen to what wants to emerge now, and trust that even years later, we are still growing, still valid, and still beautiful in our reimagining.