It is funny how the word habit often gets a bad rap. We tend to think of it as something dull or mechanical, brushing teeth, checking emails, biting your nails. Something we do without thinking.
But habits are much more than unconscious repetition. They’re patterns we carve into our days, grooves in time, and, over the years, they shape our experience of the world. Some habits dull us, sure. But others keep us tethered to meaning. To self-hood. To love.
A habit, at its best, is a kind of ritual. A sacred rhythm. Something you return to not because you have to, but because your soul knows there’s nourishment there.
For me, that habit is waking up early.
It began years ago when I was minding my dad. He didn’t sleep well throughout his dementia, but towards those 2 years at the end, he did. The beginning of his dementia was a rough ride, and the days were long and full of care to the end. But the early mornings, those were mine. The quiet before the house stirred was a blessing. I’d make tea in the half-light and breathe. Just breathe.
It was the one hour I could hear myself think, before my energy was given over to someone I cared for. And though I didn’t know it then, I was forming a habit of honoring that quiet, a kind of morning vigil that was as much about survival as it was about stillness.
Now, years later, he’s gone. But the habit has stayed.
These days, I’m still up early, though now it’s my dog – Heff- old, blind, and bloody demanding who starts the commotion, usually with a loud bark and a look that says, “You’re late, woman.” First, he needs out, then he demands breakfast like a small, furry overlord. And while the details have changed, the feeling is the same.
Strangely, I sometimes feel like my dad’s still part of it. Like it’s him nudging the dog awake, nudging me toward the quiet, still looking after me the way I once looked after him. Maybe some habits carry echoes of those we’ve loved and lost. Or maybe they become ways of staying connected.
And so, each morning, I find myself by the window with a mug in hand, wrapped in silence. I watch the sky shift, the birds stir, the trees stand steady. There’s no rush. Just presence.
And maybe that’s the real joy: not the act of rising early, but what it makes space for. Stillness. Gratitude. Memory. A softness around the edges of grief. A conversation with the day before it begins.
We often think of habits as things that control us. But the right ones? The soul-chosen ones? They gently hold us, like a rhythm we can rest inside.
So yes, I have a habit (one of many!). And I’ll keep it. It brings me joy, not because it’s routine, but because it reminds me that I’m alive… and still listening.
UNDER THE WILL... OVER THE DRAMA... 
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