Back in my home country of Vietnam. I grew up in a household where my mother was a well-known paper florist. As a child, I loved to get up early in morning and helped my mom arrange the prettiest most uniform blossoms of each variety, and filling her flower cart with every kind of paper flowers to be sold at the market. She taught me to craft paper flowers and I studied each night of different types of handcrafted paper flowers. As I devoted my time and dedication towards the craft, I always dreamt of opening a flower shop and becoming a florist like my mom.

At the age of nineteen, I left my home country and family to come to the U.S. I kept my dream of becoming a florist with me. I had lived by myself in this vast land of opportunity. There were so many other priorities I taken up in my life and my dream of opening a shop was gone. As, a few years ago, I went through one of the hardest periods of my life. I lost my job, got cheated by a boyfriend, got rejected to my dream graduate school, and fell into a financial crisis. I felt lonely, isolated, hopeless and suffered from depression. Then, I missed home badly. The intense anxiety weighed me down heavily and I felt my life was utterly worthless. The suicidal thought haunted me and I chose a date to end my life. On that scary day, I visited my neighbor who was in her last stage of lung cancer. I cried in front of her like a baby so she started noticing something was wrong with me. She slowly wrapped a paper flower next to her bed and told me that her son made it for her before he died in a car accident. She thought she would die after loosing him but because of the paper flower, she was able to keep him in her heart and moved on. She now wanted to pass it for me so I could live positively when obstacles hit me. "Cherish your moments" she also whispered in my ears. In that moment, I was woke up by her story and recalled my mom's paper flowers. I wiped out my tears and promised her to live my life to fullest. I later started making paper flowers again to honor my neighbor and regain my hope in life. Thus, my dream of being a florist has begun to come back.

Our life is so busy – parents, spouses and children, full-time jobs, and other responsibilities – that sometimes we lose sight of what really matters. We feel overwhelmed, trapped, insecure, and hopeless throughout our life. I created Mpaperflowers with the bold attention is to bring love, care, hope, and joy to people's lives and remind them to cherish life moments with their loved ones. I hope my paper flowers will delight any one who gives or receives a paper floral arrangement from Mpaperflowers.