Set your alarm an hour early—start the day at the same speed the Earth starts hers.

Start slow because your body deserves to be loved and moved and touched and taken apart inch by inch by your lover’s hands or your own.

Making love in the morning is better than coffee. Waking up alone is equally decadent, limbs scanning crumpled sheets only to find space to be moved into. Love yourself through masturbation and do not be afraid to shout the joys of pleasure into the dewy morning sky that is still half asleep.

Stretch out your limbs like the animal you are as the sun stretches over the horizon.

Find your favourite mug to pour something warm into. If it’s coffee, pay attention to the sound and smell of the beans grinding beneath your palm (and if you do not grind your own beans, promise me you will start tomorrow).

Wake up before the world to absorb the promise of the day.

Write bad poetry in the morning in notebooks that smell like weeks of dried ink and stale paper and let the pages come alive with your words. Let your words be as raw and sober as the day is new.

Nourish your mind with a page of the incredible language of another—a book, a poem, an article.

Do not rush to speak. Enjoy the silence of steam emanating from your mug, the floor under your feet. Walk softly, feeling each inch of your soft, vulnerable soles connecting with the ground.

Go outside for a moment, even if it’s cold, and take five long, deep breaths. Move however it feels good. Let go of your expectations of your body and mind, put on beautiful music and dance, drop into your hips.

If you meditate, meditate, for mornings were meant to be a time of prayer.

Feed your body with love, relishing in the smells and sounds of cooking food in its most natural state for you are an animal and deserve to eat wildly.

Go back to bed for at least five full minutes, feeling the satisfaction of fullness.

Step into the shower. Wash away the stories of yesterday that stay on your skin, in your hair, rinsing water over your whole body, reawakening. Take short, cold showers to practice resilience and bravery.

Dress how you feel. I hope you feel beautiful because you always are. You are most beautiful undone, in the morning.

Smile at your humanity reflecting in the mirror, be grateful for your existence in this body, this time around. Linger here.

When you are ready, enter the world.

~

Author: Annabelle Blythe

Image: Flóra Soós/Flickr

Editor: Katarina Tavčar