It’s my birthday tomorrow. I love birthdays. Not for the presents, not for the cake.  Not even for the mass amount of attention I create with my over the top excitement of celebrating a day JUST FOR LITTLE OLD ME…although I do hugely enjoy that feeling of child-like, giddy joy this special day brings.

I love birthdays because it’s a chance to reflect…not only on the past year but my lifetime to date. It’s a chance to celebrate earning another candle on my carrot cake muffin with cream cheese icing and acknowledge the lessons, accomplishments, bumps, lumps and dreams yet-to-be-come-soon to a birthday girl named Patty.

It’s been an amazing year and an even more amazing lifetime. Always interesting, never boring – should have that tattooed on my forehead!  A playground full of adventure; with many paths of great fortune and fortitude. Blessed beyond the moon and stars with optimism, imagination and love.  I am a very lucky girl.

I was thinking about how I wanted to mark this birthday – beyond the usual kick ass awesome sauce break it down and boogie till you just can’t boogie no more party at the Patty Love Shack.  I thought about totems, tokens, mantras, magic, symbols, self-expression and emotions.  I thought so long and hard I decided to take a break and go look in my tickle trunk in the basement for some inspiration.  I opened the dusty trunk to see all my life’s treasures.  Year books, report cards, my porcelain doll collection, Bobo my first teddy bear; my Brownie uniform covered in badges (Brownie of the Year, 1969…just saying) and then I saw them. Small inconspicuous vaults stuffed full of secrets, stories and life lines scribbled in colourful ink, locked – and the key thrown away.  There were dozens and dozens of them, different colours, some 1 year, 3 year and even a 5 year chronical of my most private thoughts.   I’m smiling, because for one who has held onto struggling with words for most of her life, I find it ironic I started writing in a diary at age ten. I sat that night after discovering them and read till 4am. I laughed out loud, I cringed, I remembered, I wept, I held the child me close to my heart. I haven’t finished reading them all yet, it’s taking precious time as each line is so lush, so pure, so real with reflection.  They are my birthday gift to me.

May 31, 2016

Dear Diary 

Today is an awesome sauce day! I fed my squirrels this morning and Mervin let me pet his perfect little head.  In one week my book is really real – it feels unbelievable to me that after over three years and a lifetime of living, my words are going to live in ink. It still boggles my molecules when I remember thinking that my “at a loss for words child me” thought that her weirdo, backwards, upside down, inside out from another planet dyslexic, being wasn’t good enough, wasn’t worthy of being heard.  I’ve come along way baby and I am proud of myself. 5 GOLD STARS!

 Tomorrow is my birthday – I’ll be 54 years wild!  I feel like my effervescence is explodiating, my passion for loving life fuller and fluffier and my “who gives a flying fuck” freer then ever as I skip along this extraordinary path – one day at a time (thanks Mom).  I am insatiably curious, amped up to tackle bigger adventurous; covet more emotional experiences, and just want to gobble up every little delectable, kaleidoscopic molecule of being around me. I want SMORE with extra sparkles on top! I want to push beyond my boundaries and go further, do more, be more, live more, and all that blabby blab blab said, take a moment to breathe and acknowledge just how lucky I am and how ever grateful I am for all the magic I have in my life.

 Dear Diary, you’ve been an incredible friend to me. A place to be real, long before I realized how utterly essential that is to being happy and being myself. I cherish your pages and I’m busting with anticipation to share with you all the crazy adventures yet to come. Till tomorrow xx Patty