Solitude is Sacred

what i've learned from waking up at 5:15am every morning this week

a peek into my early morning morning pages

I’ve always been someone who’s early to rise.

When I was younger, I would always be the first to wake up at sleepovers. I would toss and turn until I was too bored to pretend to sleep any longer. I hated this about myself when I was little – I thought it made me uncool. Now, I relish in the couple of hours before everyone wakes. I prioritize it. And when I think back to the times in my life when I have felt the most grounded in myself and my practices; they have always been when I have consistently carved out time in the early morning to tend to myself before the rest of the world wakes. 

An invitation from my writing group this week to write as the sun rises has reminded me of the sacredness of the early morning.

It has reminded me of the need, the craving of my soul, to carve out more time for solitude. While I have hesitantly woken up each morning to begin my morning pages as the sun rises, as the day goes on, I feel more connected to myself that ever. This week has encouraged me to start my day slowly; with intention, with care. I am in no rush to move through my morning pages, or meditation, or to finish my newsletter. Because I have made the space in my morning, I feel more connected to myself as I move through my day.

When I begin my day with ritual, routine, intention – I am reminded of the sacredness of life, of solitude, and I am able to infuse that into everything I do. It has got me thinking about how there’s something sacred about solitude. To be alone with only me – my mind, my heart – I believe, is one of the greatest gifts in this life. 

And yet, I find it difficult to carve out the space and time to be truly with myself.

I spend most of my day alone, yes. But I am often surrounded by people: walking down the street, sitting next to me on the subway, even the noise of my roommate making coffee in the morning can disrupt my morning practice. I welcome the noise, you have to when living in a city. But I often find myself busy trying to drown out that noise or down regulate my nervous system, instead of truly having the spaciousness of being with myself.

I don’t know if I’ll keep up with the pre-dawn wake ups in the coming weeks, but I do hope to continue exploring my relationship with solitude and how that impacts the rest of my life.

People often see solitude as something to fear. Oh, I could never be alone with my own mind, they tell me. But what if that is the very thing that is keeping you from living the life you truly desire? What if solitude is the key to deepening your relationships, to experiencing more joy, to finally stop believing that more is going to make you happy? 

Solitude is sacred. It requires courage to sit with yourself, to be honest with yourself, to approach your depths with curiosity. That trust is not built overnight. To be in relationship with yourself is to be living as a human. It is a gift that we are able to sit with ourselves and ask life’s big questions. It is a miracle that we are able to reflect, to question, to dream. We can do that in community and in relation to others, yes. But what happens when you allow the external noise to die down…what are you left with? What kind of life do you want? Who do you want to be? If no one else was there to give you the answers, what would you discover?

I don’t think we all need to start waking up before the sun rises but I do think we could all benefit from more time without distraction, stimulation, and external influence. There is a difference between laying in bed for hours alone, scrolling through reels (guilty) from spending an hour or so each morning before the world wakes to tend to my inner world with no one else in sight. Both can be supportive. Both can provide insight. It is important to have time with yourself to process and integrate the stimulus of the world that is always buzzing around us. In today’s world, we are more connected than ever and yet, and because of it, we are even more disconnected from ourselves.

Solitude is not something that should be difficult to come by but in this day and age, it requires intention to be experienced.

Waking up early may work for you, or it could be as simple as leaving your phone at home when you go on your daily walk. Meditate for 20 minutes before bed. Lay in the park, or on your couch, and do nothing. Take yourself out to dinner and bring a journal to write down your experience. Walk through a museum and allow your mind to wander. Close your eyes, take a breath, and find a moment of your day to reduce the noise. Solitude is not something to fear, nor is it something to avoid. It is the most important tool in my toolbox of practices that make me feel the best, make me feel most like me, and allow me to live a life filled with intention and joy. 

Later this week, I am leaving for a three week road trip – it’s a trip I have been dreaming up for over three years. I’ll be meeting friends along the way but will spend the bulk of my driving and exploring time on my own. People often ask me why I love to travel alone. Because I do, honestly I often prefer it to traveling with others. I love to travel alone because I love my own company. There’s few people in this world I’d rather spend time with than myself. Because I am fun, and cool, and have a great taste in restaurants AND music for a long road trip. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love my friends and my family and the people in my life who make this experience of being human so much more vibrant. My relationships with others, to this world around me, are one of the biggest priorities in my life. But even still, my relationship to self comes out on top. Not because I am selfish, although I think I am and that’s okay, but because I know when I carve out time and space to tend to my relationship to self, I stretch my capacity to love and show up for others.

When I am able to love and accept all of me, I am more able to do that with any person I encounter. Solitude is a tool for me to tend to my relationship to self as much as it is a tool to deepen my capacity to be in unconditional, heart led relationships with others. Quite simply, I am a better human when I spend quality time with myself.

Solitude is sacred. It is the foundation of the practices that keep me tethered to myself and grounded in my life. Solitude is sexy. It is badass to know how to spend time with yourself and it is even more badass to enjoy it. Solitude is the key ingredient of the recipe for how to live a good life. It gives depth to our experience, meaning to our relationship to self, understanding to the world around us and how we best operate in it. As bell hooks writes,

“Self-love is the foundation of our loving practice. Without it our other efforts to love fail. Giving ourselves love we provide our inner being with the opportunity to have the unconditional love we may have always longed to receive from someone else.”

With that, I am going to take a little cat nap – 5AM wake up calls are no joke!

bell hooks <3

1. What is my relationship to solitude?

2. How often do I actually find true solitude?

3. What are a few ways I can carve out more space, and time, to be with myself without distraction?