Pooh speaks.

“What day is it?” asked Pooh. 
“It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.
“My favorite day,” said Pooh.” 

- A.A. Milne

So much has changed for me in the last two years. The other day I thought...maybe I used to be braver, maybe I used to be driven by a need for validation, maybe I used to be loved by more, maybe I used to value what I made rather than who I am?

For sure sobriety slowed me down and pulled me into myself but when I turned 46 this month I couldn't find the place inside of me that used to be able to celebrate. I tend to feel quite off during even year birthdays, but it was something more than that.

All the questions began flowing. 

The last few days I've had debilitating vertigo. I can't walk down stairs without assistance because the stairs look like they are moving and I can only sit up for about an hour before I have to rest for two.

I can manage the symptoms, I've been here before and know what to do, how to lay my head on a stack of pillows, how to breathe through the nausea, but the FEAR was that I would be locked here, locked inside this world of dizziness.

A timeless sentence inside my head.

Inability to connect to anything around me.

If I put my head in one certain position I could scroll Instagram mindlessly and I felt all the old feelings of less than come flooding back. I saw other people who have birthdays around mine being celebrated and adored. It was so overwhelming.

Just a few weeks ago I would have told you that I was the happiest, calmest and most settled in my body that I can ever remember feeling. How am I here in the land of dizzy melancholy?

Then I remembered Pooh's words (Pooh is helping me write the Scavenge course).

“What day is it?” asked Pooh. 
“It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.
“My favorite day,” said Pooh.” 

My favorite day. It is today.

When I got dizzy all I could think about was another day, tomorrow or the next or the next. When my birthday came around I got lost remembering years past of gatherings with friends, staying up late into the night, surprises and giggles.

The reason I was so gently happy a few weeks ago and all through the summer was because I was right there. In that day. In that hour. In that minute.

I would stand in the kitchen sweating as I boiled down apples for applesauce or turned fresh zucchini from the garden into fritters for the freezer.

I was in my life. Fully.

Simple, ordinary tasks. Today.

What I found is this: when you are fully embodied in today, tomorrow and yesterday fade away allowing you the gift of timelessness.

Scavenge came to me from these hot summer days filled with inspiration and the good kind of longings. The days when the sun would soak into my skin and ideas would flow in like I was a portal for something outside of myself.

I captured sun beams, grew tomatoes, ate fresh herbs in all my food and was dirty every day.

It was my favorite day every single day.

I was a scavenger foraging for the gifts all around me.

Life was one part metaphor and one part literal (just as this program is) and the mundane of sweeping a floor after four dozen ears of corn had been carefully cut from the cobs was the sweetest reward and a tethering to my 'harvest.'

Scavenge is making a pie crust from scratch and turning it into something incredible and it is the story inside of the pie crust; the time, the patience, the risk, the surprise, the wonder. Then of course, that first warm bite when the sugared fruit spills from inside the crust onto your fork.

Scavenge is presence and wonder. From an outfit that feels like the most you possible to turning a cereal box into a postcard for someone who might need a little bit of love.

Pooh will speak and I will surely listen. 

Today my friends is my favorite day because it is the eve, and the eve is longing mixed with being here, right here. Before the adventure begins. The tingles of anticipation for the day that will become today. And it too, will be my favorite.

On this eve, I invite you to grab an invisible net and catch any thoughts that try to take you out of the wonder of today.

When I feel stuck and worry that I'll be dizzy forever that gets scooped up into the net making space for me to notice the sweetness of my kid who comes to lay his head on my shoulder while my head is stacked up on the pillows.

I get to be in life with this amazing kid who has the most tender of hearts. Today. Right in this very moment of time. 

There will be pie and dressing up and foraging outside and drives to nowhere. Let's go on an adventure of the simplest, most ordinary kind.