3 Steps in the process of life changes that you might be experiencing now
Masked grocery runs where nobody makes eye contact. Shops closed by mandate, shops closed by choice, shops running delivery-only. If the ground under your business feels like it keeps shifting, this episode gives you a framework for making sense of it. Vonda and Lori walk through the Change Curve — a model developed in the 1960s (and adapted from the stages of grief) to explain how people move through significant change — and apply it to what flower shop owners are living through right now. First, though, Vonda's advice from a recent staff meeting: everybody take a breath.
Stage one: shock and denial
The first stage of the curve is shock and denial — and the hosts don't exempt themselves. Lori remembers first talking about the virus while on vacation with Vonda and her husband Mark, when it all seemed far away: feel bad for those people, now what's for dinner? The minute she got home, it hit hard and fast. Their web director, Kammi Martin, came back from an unplugged family trip to find the world upended and wondered aloud whether she should be worried.
The point isn't embarrassment — it's that shock is often due to a lack of information, and knowledge is what moves you through it. As Lori puts it with a quote she loves: "we do not fear the unknown. We fear what we think we know about the unknown." Communication is the antidote at this stage — restating what the changes are, why they matter, and supporting people through their feelings.
Stage two: anger and depression — and the case for grace
Stage two brings anger, suspicion, skepticism, and frustration, and the hosts have seen all of it. Some shop owners have been attacked with messages essentially saying "how dare you stay open," even when the owner is working completely alone and agonizing over the decision. Lori and Vonda's plea: stop comparing choices. Every state, county, and even zip code has a different mandate, and every family has different health realities — both hosts have loved ones with compromised immunity, which shapes their own choices. As one shop owner quoted in a Society of American Florists article said, the internal struggle to do right by your business, employees, and community "is real, and it changes every day."
The other prescription for this stage is community. Lori has been hosting virtual lunches and happy hours with Flower Clique members — no agenda, just connection — because the natural default in hard times is to retreat, and retreating feeds the spiral.
Stage three: acceptance and integration
The stage everyone wants to reach is where you start working with the changes instead of against them — and plenty of florists are already there. The hosts point to members building DIY kits, marketing to homeschooling parents, running virtual flower classes like the wine-and-design events people used to attend in person, and creating shower and birthday-party kits for the smaller celebrations likely to come first. Social media matters more than ever here: keep posting, even if it isn't flowers, so you stay top of mind and your following knows where to find you when this is over.
Give yourself a date
Two pieces of advice anchor the episode. A Flower Clique member once told Lori: when you're going through something, physically mark a date on your calendar, grieve and vent until that date, then stop looking back. And after Vonda lost her husband, someone told her to allow herself one hour a day to feel sorry for herself — then spend the rest of the day on what's next. Both hosts are clear that the stages aren't linear; something can trigger you straight back to stage one, and that's okay. Feel it, set the timer, then return to the work.
Key takeaways
- Change follows a predictable curve — shock and denial, anger and depression, then acceptance and integration — and knowing where you are helps you move forward.
- Give other shop owners grace: every market, mandate, and family situation is different, and nobody is making the open-or-close decision lightly.
- Connection is everything — check in with someone in the flower community every day, and choose empathy ("I'm right here with you") over sympathy.
- Set a deadline for grief: mark a date, feel everything until then, and then turn forward — with permission to revisit in small, timed doses.
- Stay relevant now with consistent posting and creative offerings so customers know exactly where to find you on the other side.
Sponsored by:
Flower Clique
Flower Clique Prep School
Real Life Retail Florist