Sunrise Letters
Day 6: Containers
The writing in Sunrise Letters is taken directly from my morning pages.
The cardinals are always the first birds to greet me in the morning. Their short sharp chirps punctuate the darkness beyond my open windows; a familiar sound now, after having lived here for a little over a year, but now I hear them through the windows of my little tree-circled jungle hutch. When I wake, around 6am, Edna is ready for her wet food, though she didn’t wake me like yesterday. She’s the best cat— she knows when I wake up and if it changes learns after only a day. I pad into the kitchen. For the first ten minutes after waking she follows me, meowing, though she’s been fed. This is how she is.
This morning I microwaved leftover Earl Grey and poured myself a small glass of milk from the farmer’s market, which I’ve been having for breakfast this week. Then I turned over both of my fermentation projects. My garlic honey has three more weeks and just yesterday I made fire cider, slicing onions, garlic, lemons, ginger, and oranges along with cinnamon, clove, mustard seed, turmeric, pepper, fresh mint and lemon balm and immersing it in apple cider vinegar. That will take a month to ferment into an internally healing concoction.
Years ago I tried to make kombucha. This was before I was diagnosed with ADHD and autism. Before the self-forgiveness that followed those diagnoses. My kombucha failed because I kept forgetting about it, and I told a friend: I guess I’ll never be someone who can have projects like that.
You see, I’ve always wanted to be someone who had their life together enough to have things fermenting in the cupboard.
Finally, I am.
The jars are daily touchstones. Each time I tighten their lids and flip them over only to hear the satisfying soft pop of captured air when I gently untwist the lids I am reminded that processes are necessary for growth. So is trust. All I need to do is fill a jar with ingredients and flip it over every day.
Growth doesn’t always require intense labor or remaking, but presence is essential.
I learn so much when I pay attention without judgement. Last week, I learned that I can’t be a social butterfly while also working on my newsletter, my book revisions, my PhD coursework, and teaching.
This week, after therapy, I learned that being social often feels like an obligation, akin to the pressure I once felt regarding romantic partnership. Long ago I believed that not having a partner indicated a fatal flaw. I’ve been pressuring myself to go to events because I think I should go to events. In actuality, events are too overstimulating. I’d much rather spend time in small groups or one-on-one.
When I pay attention I notice the ways in which I’ve internalized cultural and societal expectations. Because I am paying attention from the inside; to my feelings, my bodily sensations, my natural energetic flow, my reactions; I can respond to my own internal needs rather than imposed narratives.
It’s second nature for me to readily accept what others give me— their projections upon me; their difficult and rejected feelings.
As we grow up I think we all learn to hold different shapes. Multiple shapes. Many people grow into shapes like rhizomes, connected to their families and communities.
I am naturally shaped to hold. I am naturally self-contained.
I learned to hold my mother’s sadness, despair, and rage. So, naturally and instinctively, I hold.
I wouldn’t change that if I could. Being able to hold pain, both for myself and others, is a rare gift.
I’ve also learned to hold good things, like hope and love, though this is less intuitive (for now). If I’m not paying attention, people will naturally drop their negative emotions into me, by no one’s fault. Over decades I’ve learned this.
For many years I’ve pictured my shape as a plastic wastebasket, overfilled and solid, but I think I can better imagine my shape as a permeable woven basket, made from natural fibers. Everything moves through me.
It’s not that I shouldn’t hold, but that I must also let go.
It's light now. The sky has unmuted from black to electric and now baby blue, and soon the sun will appear. The high-school intercom blares across the football field which abuts my little jungle hutch. Birds chatter and flit and jostle. I want to know them all.
Cool air drifts through my open windows, through which I can see the lemon balm, coriander, oregano, and lemon thyme growing in my small garden. There is space for me. What will I plant there? There’s the sharp trill of a hawk.
I can choose almost anything.
Hmmm, not a wastebasket, I feel like I am an overstuffed trashbag sometimes, holding the emotions of so many family members.Maybe I will reimagine myself as a finely knotted net in a stream, allowing other people's emotions to flow through me.