The Truth About Mornings

May 25, 2025

Once upon a time I would sometimes go to the beach for sunrise.

Every morning, we each wake into a series of choices.

These are some of mine—

Do I reach first for my phone, my mala, or a book—knowing that turning on the light may wake the toddler still nestled in my arms? If I manage to slip away, I might have five minutes or fifty before I’m needed again. In that liminal space, what do I do?

Tend to my writing? My body? My altar? My home?

When I turn toward the kettle—do I make coffee or cacao?1 Do I step into my office or into the garden first thing? If there are dishes in the sink, do I tend to them before I drop in to my writing? Do I listen to a playlist, a podcast, an essay narrated by ai, or the birds?

Every small act is a pivot point, every choice shapes my life, a quiet invocation of value and attention. What I choose is not always something I would advertise if I were trying to build a personal brand. For example, today, like most mornings, it’s screens first thing. It’s logging onto the computer to read and write before anything else.2

Years ago, it seemed every wellness influencer was writing (or being interviewed) about their morning routine. These articles often read like a gauntlet: lemon water, breathwork, tonics, pranayama, yoga, dry brushing, oil pulling, face yoga, sauna, juice, journaling—an aspirational blueprint that somehow made me feel both inspired and inadequate. I remember thinking, Really? You do all that? Every morning?

It felt unattainable, performative.

But I’ve revisited some of those pieces recently, and they read differently now. They reflect people who’ve carved out rituals to support what they care about—within the limits of their own systems and structures. I don’t believe those mornings looked like that every day, especially not for anyone caring for a child, a community, a changing world. But my judgements came at a time when I naturally slept until the sun was at such an angle through my window that it woke me up, and I would roll out of bed, get dressed, make coffee, have a bite, and get to work without much thought or ceremony.3

Now that I am not only mother, but entrepreneur, co-founder, developmental partner to many; the responsibilities of these roles seems to wake me consistently before dawn to have as much of a day’s work accomplished before the world rouses awake.

And I do want to make the most of this time, on my own terms.

I was initiated into early mornings by pregnancy.
These hours are, for me, inextricably linked to motherhood.

Fueled by a pre-dawn cortisol jolt every day of my first trimester, I was awakened by a massive surge of energy that often showed up as intense anxiety. In the first few weeks, I would take that energy and make the 15 minute walk from my apartment to the seawall that held back the intracoastal lagoon from flooding the historic West Palm Beach neighborhood we called home at the time. I would sit on the seawall, dog’s leash on wrist, journal in lap, pen in hand, moon overhead, water lapping at my feet, and write my heart out.

This lasted a few weeks until one day, on the Full Moon in Cancer that happens each Capricorn season, I had a particularly powerful journaling session and then puked four times on my walk back home.4

Morning sickness rendered morning walks untenable.

So I turned to my books for solace and grounding. Specifically, I turned to John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us, particularly his Morning Blessing. Will you read this with me, slowly and aloud?

I bless the night that nourished my heart
To set the ghosts of longing free
Into the flow and figure of dream
That went to harvest from the dark
Bread for the hunger no one sees.
All that is eternal in me
Welcome the wonder of this day,
The field of brightness it creates
Offering time for each thing
To arise and illuminate.
I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Wave of desire I am shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.
May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.
May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.

I’m genuinely curious, how did reading that make you feel?

It was a simple, earthbound practice.

Each morning, waking up trembling, I would quite literally stumble toward the kitchen clutching a mala in one hand, and pouring a glass of water in the other. I’d load up my arms with a thin purple quilt and my journal, and I’d lurch, ungracefully, out the back door, throwing the blanket down on a small patch of grass in our garden, nestled among tulsi, mugwort, and motherwort. I would throw my belly to the ground, water beside me, mala in hand. I chanted a mantra5, 108 times. Then I listened. To the birds, to my breath, to the rustle of the world.

After forty days, I still had anxiety, but much had shifted both internally and that practice got me through the hardest of it. It reconnected me with the pulse of life, with the wonder of each morning, with the reminder that no matter how awful things get, as long as there are trees and birds and sky and morning dew, as long as there is ground on the earth to lay my belly on, I can find my center again.

As I said in the beginning, I wake up these days and don’t turn to my mala or a book of blessings. I wake up between 4 and 5 and after the bathroom, I open the computer and settle into my work. The surge in these hours is a little less anxiety these days, a little more clarity of focus. So I read, I write, I correspond with clients, I try to move as much along as possible before my kid wakes up, before Seth wakes up, before the world wakes up.

A part of me wishes this were different; I’d probably be more fit if I exercised first thing, more insightful if I meditated, more at ease in my home if I tidied before dropping in. I do know that my life is vastly improved when I connect with The Living World outside of my home, in the garden, under and around the trees, before I get online.

In my idealized image of myself, I do all of this together before the house is up. To be frank, my fantasy image of myself is a lot like the morning routine profiles of wellness influencers of years past. In that world, I wake up to a house that is perfectly tidy because we set everything beautifully the night before. In this world, I have created a sit spot for mediating in my garden, in front of the yarrow patch, overlooking where the mugwort grows wild beneath the plumeria trees. In my fantasy, I meditate well and with diligence, wisdom and peace and love flowing through my body as the sunlight begins to kiss the dew.

In this fantasy, I am able to soak up the sunrise with awe every morning.

In this fantasy, my kid sleeps until eight and then we have the space and time to play and make breakfast together in ease. In this fantasy, there’s plenty of time to get everything done in the day. In this fantasy, we have a bigger budget for childcare and Seth and I can both work together, alongside one another, as our child enjoys his enriching quality time with our trusted community members for longer stretches of time, and we can pay them for their time.

That’s not quite the world I’m living in today.

My life is beautiful, and I don’t take it for granted. That Seth and I both can work from home, that one of us is pretty much always with our child, that we do work that is entirely purposeful and meaningful and which genuinely improves the world in all the ways we know how, is amazing.

And it means that sometimes I need to pause in my computer work and look out a window, and remember the utter magnificence of being alive on this planet before I return to my emails.

And this brings me to my final poem of the morning, one I just discovered yesterday morning. This is Morning Song of Senlin by Conrad Aiken. It’s longish, and beautiful, and, I feel, very much worth it.

It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning
When the light drips through the shutters like the dew,
I arise, I face the sunrise,
And do the things my fathers learned to do.
Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops
Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die,
And I myself on a swiftly tilting planet
Stand before a glass and tie my tie.
Vine leaves tap my window,
Dew-drops sing to the garden stones,
The robin chips in the chinaberry tree
Repeating three clear tones.
It is morning. I stand by the mirror
And tie my tie once more.
While waves far off in a pale rose twilight
Crash on a white sand shore.
I stand by a mirror and comb my hair:
How small and white my face!—
The green earth tilts through a sphere of air
And bathes in a flame of space.
There are houses hanging above the stars
And stars hung under a sea. . .
And a sun far off in a shell of silence
Dapples my walls for me. . .
It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning
Should I not pause in the light to remember God?
Upright and firm I stand on a star unstable,
He is immense and lonely as a cloud.
I will dedicate this moment before my mirror
To him alone, and for him I will comb my hair.
Accept these humble offerings, cloud of silence!
I will think of you as I descend the stair.
Vine leaves tap my window,
The snail-track shines on the stones,
Dew-drops flash from the chinaberry tree
Repeating two clear tones.
It is morning, I awake from a bed of silence,
Shining I rise from the starless waters of sleep.
The walls are about me still as in the evening,
I am the same, and the same name still I keep.
The earth revolves with me, yet makes no motion,
The stars pale silently in a coral sky.
In a whistling void I stand before my mirror,
Unconcerned, I tie my tie.
There are horses neighing on far-off hills
Tossing their long white manes,
And mountains flash in the rose-white dusk,
Their shoulders black with rains. . .
It is morning. I stand by the mirror
And surprise my soul once more;
The blue air rushes above my ceiling,
There are suns beneath my floor. . .
. . . It is morning, Senlin says, I ascend from darkness
And depart on the winds of space for I know not where,
My watch is wound, a key is in my pocket,
And the sky is darkened as I descend the stair.
There are shadows across the windows, clouds in heaven,
And a god among the stars; and I will go
Thinking of him as I might think of daybreak
And humming a tune I know. . .
Vine-leaves tap at the window,
Dew-drops sing to the garden stones,
The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree
Repeating three clear tones.

This poem is alive within me today, as a reminder of the glittering magnificence unfolding every single morning. And it shows us that regardless of the mundane tasks required of us each day, we can be in communion with that marvel, that wonder, that vastness. Every morning that the body wakes, the soul of the world calls to the souls of our being, nested within the whole. No matter what we’re doing, we can tune into this song.

So, again, I am curious. How does this make you feel? And what is the truth of your mornings? And how has that changed and transformed over time? And what nourishes your heart and soul first thing? I’d love to hear.

The Truth About Mornings

It was a simple, earthbound practice.

Discussion about this post