The Flour Box Holiday Giveaway

For about seven or eight years now, December has been a flurry of blog posts dedicated to The Annual Twelve Days of Giving, hosted by myself, Lila Loa, and a tribe of like-minded businesses from Cookie Land. With the support of our best cookie friends, what started as small series of giveaway posts, quickly grew into something bigger than we’d ever imagined, and each and every year we perfected the process until it became almost easy to pull off.

It seems like finding a groove would guarantee an event that would go on forever, but by 2019, I just wasn’t feeling it. Before I knew it, it was 2020, and despite having a relatively smooth year, I still struggled to conjure up the joy and delight of the early days. As I found myself rolling into 2021, I felt fortunate that I’d been spared some of the worst things to come from the now infamous year,  but I couldn’t even pretend to feel like “sharing joy.”

Truth be told, I was a little hesitant to share these feelings. My “optimistic” side hates admitting that sometimes things suck. With so many people going through such hard times, it almost feels selfish to admit that I’m also struggling and don’t have much left to give. I’ve spent years training my mind to find the best in every situation I find myself in, but, I still have that streak of cynicism. Maybe that’s why, as 2021 brought what became the absolute worst year of my adult life, I found myself thinking, “That’s what you get for thinking you somehow missed the curse of 2020.”

Under normal circumstances, Georganne and I start organizing everything  around the beginning of September, but, this year, we kept putting it off. By October, we found ourselves at Cookie Con, and still hadn’t started. You’d think the decision to skip the biggest blog event of the past seven years would be more memorable, but I still don’t remember exactly when and where we decided that we couldn’t handle it this year. But that’s what happened. It felt like the world needed a little peace and quiet, as well as she and I. So, without an announcement, or really any pomp and circumstance at all, we quietly threw in the towel.

I’d like to say I mourned a little, or even thought about it a bit, BUT, to be honest, my headspace and emotional capacity was so limited, that once the door was closed, I didn’t think about it much…until one day last week. Out of nowhere, Georganne and I started getting messages. Some came to just one of us, and others in a group text. To our surprise, our friends and supporters had noticed that we didn’t show up this year, and began reaching out to make sure we were okay.

Sometimes things happen that are hard to put into words. There’s something  profoundly meaningful in knowing that people notice when you’re not around. It’s small gesture, but knowing that people care enough to reach out, completely changed our perspective, and just like that, we were ready to try again. So, here we are. Battered, bruised, and a little weary…but also filled with gratitude, hope, and excitement about a very unorganized, and probably typo-ridden slew of giveaways, that are straight from the heart, as they were always intended to be.

So, here it goes! To get the ball rolling, we’ll start with Anne Yorks, owner of The Flour Box, and quite literally one of the most patient, light-filled humans I’ve ever known (seriously-she rode hundreds of miles in a car with me, patiently ignoring me spiting all over her as I learned to talk with newly fitted teeth aligners.)

a Rafflecopter giveaway