CB HIRO: You Were Always The Flower

Gretchen Schauffler Apr 23, 2026

“In the middle of Hiroshima, something bloomed. She said it was me.” — G

In 2022, an astrologer told me I was living through a once-in-a-lifetime transit. Pluto — the planet of transformation, destruction, and renewal — was squaring Venus, the planet of prosperity, value, and beauty. A 248-year cycle. She called it a soul journey. A transformational opportunity not everyone gets to live. She described it as the dying of the old and the birth of something entirely new.

That’s the spirit behind CB HIRO.

In the last week of December 2021, I became 100% certain that Color Baggage was an offering — not just a business, but a calling. I started to cry and told her what an intuitive Jungian consultant had said to me earlier: “I grew a new root.” She didn’t miss a beat. “Exactly,” she said. “I see it as a flower growing in the middle of Hiroshima.”

Then she asked where I lived. When I said Portland, Oregon, she told me to brace myself. She showed me where the lines of Neptune — the planet of inspiration, dreams, and spiritual attunement — and Mars — the planet of energy, action, and desire — intersected in only one place in the entire world, drawn toward my spiritual transformation. Portland, Oregon. I didn’t even know what to say.

I never do, when the universe confirms what the soul already knows.

What I didn’t realize until later was that the pattern itself had been softly telling this story all along. When I drew the outline of the flamboyant tree — the Flame of the Forest, the symbol of confidence and bloom — it kept turning into a ginkgo leaf.

Someone pointed it out. So I Googled it. And there it was: the ginkgo tree is known for extreme longevity, with some specimens living over 3,500 years. And six ginkgo trees survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima — less than two miles from the epicenter — and bloomed the following spring again. Are you kidding me?

That’s not a coincidence. That’s the pattern knowing its own name.

We live in a world that treats devastation as an ending. We are told that after destruction comes only grief, only loss, only the long work of starting over. CB HIRO pushes back on all of that. What if the thing that felt like it destroyed you was simply clearing the space for the bloom that was always coming?

The ginkgo doesn’t mourn the bomb. It blooms in spite of it.

That’s not resilience. That’s prosperity in its truest form.

CB HIRO settles into a space the way a long-awaited bloom settles into a garden — suddenly, completely, and with a fragrance that makes you wonder how you could ever live without it. You don’t notice everything it holds at once. You notice it when the room feels expansive — when the walls remind you that you are not starting over. You are blooming forward.

Their symbolism is a source of empowerment and guidance — and that’s exactly what this wallpaper is meant to be. A declaration on your walls that prosperity is not a goal — it is a state of being. As you expand and bloom, your overflow naturally nourishes others, completing the loop of giving and receiving. True abundance, like the ginkgo, cannot be bombed into silence.

So let CB HIRO take over your space. Grow your new root. Trust the transit. And bloom in the middle of everything.

Root through it. Bloom anyway. Overflow freely.

CB HIRO — because the most extraordinary flowers grow where nothing was supposed to survive.

Gretchen Schauffler Apr 23, 2026