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This Gentle Musings is all about mornings.
We have a hard-won bond, mornings and me.
Sometimes I joke that these letters could be only about overwhelm and mornings (and the marvelous combination when they’re both present) and there would be plenty to write about for months.
If you presently or historically struggle with the mornings, even though you want to love that time so badly, this Gentle Musings is for you. As I share near the end of the letter:
Have you felt something similar to this too? An experience of deep sensitivity as the sun rises? A rebellion toward morning routines? Broken promises to yourself that you will most definitely do yoga at 6:30am? Whirring thoughts, overwhelm, the absence of presence, or a desire to snuggle back under the covers and turn on Gilmore Girls? […] It took over two years before my mornings became an agreement in gentleness: the wisdom of my whims were honored. Reverence was reframed with a dose of playfulness. The grip of my mind loosened and my intuition finally had its say.
This Gentle Musings is part of a series exploring the topic of personal foundations. This is a theme that is woven through most everything that I explore within Regarding Dew, but here are the last two letters in case you’d like to check them out first:
This is a pretty personal one and mentions numbing with food. I’m letting you know so that you can choose to read on or not with that info. I have a hard time mentioning any compulsive behavior without also giving attribution to The Gift of Our Compulsions by Mary O’Malley. From struggles with food to alcohol to sugar to social media to continual worrying and even to what Tara Brach calls ‘the trance of doing’ (and a whole lot more), I’m hard-pressed to imagine someone that wouldn’t benefit from this book.
2016: The alarm was no match to the buzz of my nervous system. It cued the intrusion of an unwelcome electric charge in my veins. The static, unrelenting. The dread, its presence so familiar, shapeless and heavy. I devised coping mechanisms without deliberation, there was no time really, the morning had arrived and dauntedness rang through my head.
The writer Elizabeth Gilbert regards the efforts of her past selves with a benevolent “good guess!”. I appreciate this. We try so hard with what we have.
Food was one of my original good guesses. It wasn’t so much about hunger… breakfast was my seat belt for the day—each filled with increasing urgency.