After an injury, she turned to creating floral art. She now competes with the best | Opinion

To say Jenna Sleeman understands flowers is an understatement. To her, each one is a gift, and she feels fortunate to be an architect of floral art in all its beautiful forms.

But though she is about to compete on the national stage, and represent Miami and Florida as one of the top 10 floral finalists in the 2022 FTD America’s Cup in Las Vegas in July, she found her passion through trauma.

“The day before my 40th birthday, I jumped up to get a key hidden on a window sill and the ring I was wearing got stuck on a nail,” Sleeman said. “When my feet hit the ground, I realized there was just a bone. I had lost a finger on my dominant right hand.

”I was in shock, but thinking clearly. I knew that I was responsible for my three small children and one of their friends so I couldn’t pass out. I knew that if I called 911, the ambulance would not take all of us to Jackson Trauma where my husband was coincidentally on call as the trauma surgeon that evening. Ambulances will only take you to the nearest emergency room.

“Heavily bleeding and in shock, I had to think quickly, so I made a tourniquet with my other hand, put the four kids in my car and drove myself to my husband at Jackson trauma with my elbows,” she said.

Her surgeon husband, Danny, is a University of Miami professor and the program director of surgery.

After the accident, as a form of mental and physical therapy, she said she dove into taking as many flower classes as she could.

“I looked for perfection in the imperfections of the petals of the flowers. I used wabi-sabi which is the acceptance of imperfection, to help me understand that it is ok that my hands were not like everyone else anymore. I was fortunate that I could still use them to create floral art.”

Though she has a prosthetic, she said when she competes she cannot wear it as it interferes with floral arranging.

Sleeman is also an educator at The Palace in Coral Gables where she donates her time to provide floral therapy. She has lived in Miami for 24 years since graduating from Emory University’s Business School. Before stopping to raise her three children, she was a senior manager at a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company.

“I was elected PTA president and found myself making centerpieces for the school’s events so rewarding,” she said.

“I couldn’t consider myself spending the rest of my life working without being able to express my artistic self through flowers. When my three children would argue, I always told them ‘let’s pick flowers, not fights’. Nature, flowers and putting flowers together in a floral composition obsessed me.”

Now Sleeman has the highest accreditation in America for floral design—the AIFD.“There are only four florists in Miami that hold this prestigious accreditation and the expertise and skills that go with this certification. I became a Certified Floral Designer, and recently just completed my European Master Certification. I am on the FSFA executive board as Secretary for the Florida State Florists Association,” she said.

She also founded Infinite Gift, a floral arrangement company, in 2008. Her first place awards, nationally and internationally, are numerous.

“I have always been a very expressive outgoing person. Every time I would wave hello and shake hands, I was confronted with the awkward uncomfortable look from other people when they realized I had a missing finger. Flowers and wabi-sabi helped me overcome this fear and gave me strength,” she said.

“Science proves that flowers makes people happy. My goal is to help spread happiness to the world one petal at a time.”

The winner of the Las Vegas event will represent the U.S. in the Interflora World Cup, held once every four years in different hosting countries. It will be in Manchester, England, on Sept. 7-9, 2023.

New alliance seeks mental health writers

In a time when so many of us are seeking understanding, a group of authors have bonded together to help normalize the conversation about mental health. They are encouraging other authors to join them.

The group, called the #SameHere Author’s Alliance, was launched in December 2021 by South Florida author Jason Shapiro.

“These published authors believe through literature, we can connect society by the commonalities of life challenges we all face. We are building a digital library of mental health-themed books, where people visiting our site can use as a true resource,” he said.

Shapiro published his first book, “The Magic of Mayfair,” a coming-of-age memoir that helps readers face their own life challenges, in 2019. In it, he wrote about navigating through his own emotions after finding out about his brother’s schizophrenia diagnosis, and his childhood best friend’s suicide.

Today, he donates his time to the nonprofit #SameHere — The Global Mental Health Movement and works directly with the organization’s founder and CEO Eric Kussin.

He said he founded the #SameHere Author’s Alliance with the partnership of Kussin and Florida based psychiatrist Andrew Pleener. Some of the Alliance’s notable authors include former former NFL running back Leroy Collins, attorney and motivational speaker Brian Cuban, neuroscientist Alex Korb, and NHL great Theoren Fleury.

“We have something special going here,” he said. “We are creating an ecosystem of authors who are helping to normalize society’s perception of mental health and make it part of our daily conversation. This is how we can save lives.”

Visit www.treemouthbooks.com or write to Jason@samehereglobal.org.

This story was originally published March 31, 2022 at 12:28 PM.