Morning Rituals

I love my morning coffee. It’s the only time I drink it. I might love the space and time even more. No cell phone, no laptop. I usually sit on my couch, watching daybreak. My living room window faces west so I get to see the reflection of the morning sun, on the buildings across the harbour, in Halifax. I’m breaking my ritual today as I write this. I am on holidays after all.

In The Matrix, in the jump program, Neo has to jump from one tall building to the next. I can picture him as I write this. He moves his hands to either side of his head and says, All right, no problem. Free my mind. Free my mind.

I love the idea of freeing my mind and every morning, as I enjoy my coffee, I attempt to do just that.

As I sit here thinking about my mornings and all the directions I could go, I’ll do my best to focus on the ‘thing’ it is I think I’m looking to get from my morning ritual. See how easy it is to find rabbit holes.

Piece of mind. The ability to sit still and savour the moment, without the ‘to do’ list or work or worries or judgements for what I’m not doing, to occupy my thoughts. That’s all…..

There’s a feeling, I’ve experienced it. It doesn’t last long, maybe even seconds, but in those precious seconds, everything in the world is right, and you’re right in the world and there’s nothing else. Bliss, contentment. Dare I say solace?

Naturally, after I finished that paragraph, I had to take a sip of coffee and take that in.

It’s no surprise I’m contemplative. I’m a day away from a 7-day art retreat.

I’m discovering in my art, much like in my life, I’m trying to solve something, or get somewhere, express something that words don’t or can’t apply.

During Covid, I searched for my birth parents. I’m adopted and even though I thought I’d reconciled all the angst of childhood, there were things I didn’t know. While waiting for the Ontario government to release their names, it took many forms, and wrong information. One Saturday, my angst and impatience exploded, and I had a bunch of fabric I’d sewed together on my design wall. I was so mad and frustrated. I don’t even remember how I started, but it was like this tension inside. I layered the fabric with black batting and took my rotary cutter and cut it all up. It felt so good. I wanted to make something ugly and violent. I free-motion quilted all the pieces with black thread. I got the idea of using large safety pins to hold them together, like pieces of a puzzle, not quite put together. I didn’t want the piece to have it all together, so I hung one below. Then I remembered I had an old yard stick in my storage locker. It felt like the perfect thing to hang the finished piece on. After all, as a child, I never felt like I’d measured up to the expectations of my parents.

I don’t think I stopped the whole time I worked on this piece. When it was finished, I hung it on my design wall, sat on my couch and felt so much relief. Without words, I had found a way to solve something I had no control over or could fix. It was the greatest feeling.

The title of my piece, Separated, was juried into an Atlantic regional show, Navigating, from July 2024 to October 2025.