Waking me like the gentle slap of a kittens paw
Tapping on my mind
Shifting my feet restlessly
I move to the kitchen pour coffee and stare at my own reflection in the dark window panes
The glass doors are like mirrors
black and reflective
I ponder a woman sipping coffee in her slippers at 3am
I could lament the lost hours of sleep
Sigh at the incomplete cycle of circadian rhythm.
However, that which awakens me is driven by a rhythm greater than a sleep/wake cycle
It is an internal knock
A deeply buried clock
saying “I must speak to you”
A friend in the night
who has just swung by to take me by the hand
lead me to the yoga mat
the coffee cup
the keyboard
I am checking in with my spirit
Something worth waking early
Before the sun
Talking to myself, before anyone else
Catching the tale end of yesterday, ensuring today begins well
casting intentions like a net
a fisherman before dawn
Checking the lines
To see, what I’ve got on
keeping the prizes
discarding the waste
The day is coming in, a relentless reliable tide
And I begin without haste
grateful for this new morning
In which to begin again
*I have always had a vast reserve of energy. My mind is a loud engine which once turned on, is difficult to disengage. I’ve found my balance in recent years with exercise and yoga, meditation, a healthy diet. Still, when I get busy and my days are consumed with the business of “out there” something deeper than my mind wakes me early (even earlier than usual) for a check-in.
I can’t ignore it. Or rather, I choose not too. A few hours before the day begins, spent in quiet time without anyone giving me a list of things I must attend to today. I am prioritising that soulful check-in first. Setting my kettle to boil on the stove, enjoying my rich dark coffee, then stretching the kinks out of the curve of my spine and shoulders with asana. Sifting thoughts, letting them unfurl into words, I type into a blog post, and scrawl thoughts into my journal. Touching base with my interior places, ensuring everyone is on the same bus. Everyone is heard. The mother, the wife, the child that was, the woman who is becoming, and all of the other essential voices we can tune out whilst busy with the tasks that the day drops on us.
If we ignore the interior concerns, they can become toxic or mutate into poor behaviour as old wounds and unhelpful patterns are triggered throughout the day.
We have to wake up each morning truly. Become conscious and aware. Become intentional from a wholly integrated version of ourselves. So often otherwise, our eyes are open, but we are thinking from a place of yesterday, two weeks into the future, or ten years ago – perhaps a habitual pattern or wounded perspective.
That which we do not entirely, intentionally inhabit – inhabits us, becomes us.
If we do not begin the day as our most authentic self, choosing exactly how we will meet it and in what frame of mind, then I don’t know about you, but I can become lost in that soupy sea throughout the day. The fog of numbness creeps in. We begin to react rather than act – from a place of over-thinking, or under-thinking or no thinking – which is never a good place to start because that sort of thinking comes from all sorts of inner demons and old emotional triggers.
Instead, I try to choose how I will respond to every situation throughout the day no matter what it brings. And from that space – I can stay in the moment, knowing I am prepared with the only thing that I can control.
Me.
But it’s a daily thing.
And “me” is slippery if I don’t tell her how things are going to go and soothe all those unconscious protective impulses created throughout my life that will jump in to fill a defensive line if I don’t show them that I have got this, it’s okay – I’ve got this.
You’ve got this.
Cheers to a beautiful morning on the tide – I hope your day goes well and if not, I hope you find yourself well and whole within it.
Header Image: AI-generated art – woman journalling.
