Nora Knight, the author of The Flower of Life, came to United States from Russia in 1995. Economical situation in Russia was very poor at that time and people struggled, sometimes with no food in the grocery stores, sometimes with no pay to afford to buy that food even if the store shelves had a few items. During that time the author got inspired by spirituality, unconditional faith, hope, and love that Russian citizens carried in their hearts. She found that these qualities aided them during their rough times, in war or in peace. The author wanted to capture and share this profound experience with her readers, and that is how The Flower of Life was born.

Life rewarded the author with many wonderful opportunities. Nora ended up finding herself working around children and had been introduced to the community of people who went through traumatic events in their lives experiencing emotional pain. She had learned from being around those people that buried feelings automatically come up when someone else shares the same emotion we are suppressing. When those feelings come up, the pain might take us to very uncomfortable levels.

As she learned deeper about the traumatic effects on one’s life and about the importance of expressing feelings and emotions, she discovered that events of such intensity, which evoke a state of extreme helplessness and fear, overtax any human being’s ability to cope with emotional pain. She wanted to create a literary work with a character who's emotions, spirit, will to live, beliefs about herself and the world, dignity, and sense of security being affected by trauma, to bring the reader beyond the suffering through the world of her feelings, which leads the reader to fully enjoy the fruits of courage at the end of the story.

Nora wanted to make the reader see for the first time that which the reader was always looking at*. Since most of our suffering nowadays takes place in a family and divorce reached epidemic proportions, the author felt that the best setting for the story would be a family drama. She had visited a Trauma Intensive Care Unit to learn more about the feelings triggered by trauma events, which are captured in The Flower of Life and bring the reader on a very intense adventure to all the facets of emotional turmoil. The story takes a reader into the depths of awareness of a beautiful energy within us, within life itself, as well as delights the reader with unexpected turns of life. It speaks that we can not loose when we realize that everything we have to go through is designed to teach us holiness*.

The author does not consider herself religious, but she believes she is a spiritual person. Spirituality means awareness to her. Some of you might ask if she is not religious, why did she bring God into the story. Why do people struggle so when their head is under water? Because they are gasping for air. A story is meant to comfort someone who is gasping for more than an air. The only way, the author feels, she could bring the story up to that level was by placing a higher power in her story. You might ask her then, what does she know about God?

Those who know do not say,
Those who say do not know,
Which of you knows the fragrance of a rose?
Everyone knows.
If I would ask you to put that fragrance into words-
All would be silent.*

*Italicized phrases inspired by the words of Anthony De Mello.