The Little Bloom Book

The Little Bloom Book is about how observing the life cycles of my plants taught me to better listen to myself. - M The Little Bloom Book offers gentle ways to explore and grow as you continuously unearth complicated feelings, emotional blooms and trauma.

During the early months of the COVID19 quarantine, photographer, suicide care advocate and public speaker M. Abeo experienced the shift and rough transition in their life that most people did when everything shut down. The plates they had been spinning for so long, as cogs in the hamster wheel of capitalism and white supremacy work culture - all came crashing down. In the moments of darkness, it was their plants that helped them realize they weren't doing the best job at taking care of themselves or their big emotions. It was through their Blooms that they found a natural process of healing that was manageable and easy to understand. This book contains stories, lessons and plant care based steps to assist in better taking care of our own blooms. The goal is that by sharing their lived experience, others will be inspired to sprout new ideas and perspectives around healing their own mental health.

M Abeo (they/he/she) is a Mental Health Advocate, TEDx Speaker, Podcast host, Producer and Photographer from Seattle, Washington. In 2017 M started the Faces of Fortitude project: A portrait series documenting the images and stories of people touched by suicide in any way, be it loss, attempt or first responders. The project initially began as a side project to help M in their own healing of losing their only brother to suicide when he was just 26. In just 7 years it has grown into a body of work that shows resilience and fortitude of the human spirit, as well as the light and joy that can be found in the darkest of moments. Their goal is to create communities of survivors across the globe that understand the importance and power hidden in the act of difficult conversations and sharing our stigmatized stories - in the hopes of creating a system of mutual-healing. M currently travels around the US and beyond, sharing keynote presentations and workshops about the power of learning to Unearth your Trauma, as well as working on a fine art portrait book and a new gallery exhibit entitled, The Faces of Fortitude Experience.