Get Ready Like Cleopatra
Greet the Day like the Sovereign Ruler You Are
Oh, hello my friends!
A little news:
Today is the LAST DAY to get 🐦 early-bird pricing 🐦 for my retreat in Santa Fe!
COME ON VACATION 🏞️ with me! We’ll rest, we’ll get inspired, we’ll have deep conversations and you’ll make new friends (or at least -I’ll be your new friend!).
If you’ve read Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies or Glow in the F*cking Dark and thought, “This sounds nice but I need help putting these rituals into my life,” then this is your opportunity to live the books! GET OUT OF YOUR HOUSE and live the life you want!
I made this retreat because it’s the exact retreat I would want to go on! So if you’ve trusted my taste in the past - I think you’re going to love this.
On with le newsletter!
Get Ready Like Cleopatra
I have a confession to make: I’ve been having trouble getting out of bed lately. Blame staying up too late (damn you, The Valley), blame politics (damn you, two party system), blame the fact that I’ve been cured of insomnia and can actually SLEEP IN (THANK YOU UCLA INSOMNIA CLINIC), but I’ve really been having trouble getting my day started.
And so, I’ve been experimenting with my morning rituals to give me something to look forward so that I stop hitting snooze. Which got me thinking about the importance of morning rituals and one ritual in particular…getting ready like Cleopatra. If you’ve read Lilies you know about this ritual but today I bring you the update! But dearest reader, I was not always a morning person. Nay. It wasn’t until the ancient year of 2011 that I even CONSIDERED a person could have a morning ritual.
I didn’t have a morning ritual to start, I had an escape plan:
My Morning Escape Plan
Wake up in a spiral about how late I was going to be for work.
Panic about how much I had to do.
Eye piece of last night’s pizza I had accidentally left out and wonder what it would say about me if I ate it.
Journal, meditate, find gratitude, grab pizza, chug canned coffee, flee.
Every single morning, through my actions, I told the world: I am not worth taking care of.
I might have kept going this way except that I had a roommate and I noticed she lived life in STARK in contrast to me.
Lauren, my bff from high school, had an entire RITUAL for how she got ready in the morning. I’d catch glimpses of her in a floral robe and gold-rimmed glasses, sipping coffee like she had all the time in the world. Then she’d disappear into her bedroom, only to reemerge in a cloud of perfume and powders, professional, beautiful, and utterly unhurried.
What. The. Actual. F*ck. I would think to myself.
At first, I thought the effort Lauren put into her physical appearance was . . . well . . . pretty vain. Wasn’t it frivolous to spend so much time, money, and energy on your appearance? And WHO HAD THE TIME TO WAKE UP A REASONABLE AMOUNT OF TIME BEFORE WORK? But post - “getting ready” Lauren always radiated. Not only did she look great, but she seemed happier and more confident. I asked Lauren why she went through so many steps to get ready and she told me, “Honestly, it’s fun. And these are just the things I learned from my mom.”
Ah. Right. Enter the full self-pity parade: Cue the cymbals, trumpets, baton girl, and someone waving a big red ornamental flag with “mom issues” in gigantic bright yellow block letters.
Lauren had learned how to take care of herself from her mom and since I never really had a relationship with my mom, I had missed out on learning how to take care of myself as a woman.
Tired of neglecting myself (it was my heyday of reparenting after all!) I decided to give this whole “morning that isn’t wildly stressful” thing a try.
Since I didn’t have a mom to emulate, I thought about all the women I admired and turned to my long-loved, aspirational icon: Cleopatra. Sovereign Goddess and OG Lady Boss (yes, we are reclaiming the term). She was a shrewd, clear-eyed empress who ruled virtually the entire eastern Mediterranean in a palace made of onyx, garnet, and gold. Incomparably smart, she out-negotiated, out-strategized, and out-bad-assed her foes. She slept with only two men in her life, but those two men were Caesar and Mark Antony. The woman knew what she was doing.
Clearly, I couldn’t ask Cleo how she got ready in the morning, so I imagined what it would look like. I splurged on a mascara called “Black Ecstasy” because it gave me those heavy faux eyelashes I think Cleopatra would have preferred. I lit incense like it was going out of style and am only a TINY bit afraid of what that level of smoke inhalation did to me. I journaled and plotted my thoughts and life the way I’m sure Cleopatra did.
I played and TOOK TIME for myself and suddenly waking up thirty minutes to even A WHOLE HOUR EARLY (weird flex, I know) was not an obligation but a privilege.
Taking time for yourself in the morning is an act of self-respect.
Sure, the day might go to shi* but, while you are alone in your kingdom, while you have a moment of quiet, you can honor yourself. And that’s a potent base level to start your day. When you begin your morning recognizing that you are a goddess, you notice that the whole world will start to treat you that way. I’m not talking about vanity or narcissism. I’m talking about acknowledging, first thing in the morning, that you are powerful and worth taking care of.
Because here’s the major thing I’ve learned from having a morning ritual: you are stronger when you give yourself incredible kindness.
And that is why, dearest reader, I must get back to my own morning ritual and why I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you make one for yourself. Will you get ready for the day like Mark Antony? What about like Audrey Hepburn? How can you shape your morning in a way that honors you and your one human life?
Do you have a morning ritual?
Have you thought of having one? If you don’t - why not? If you do - does it effect you the same way mine effects me? I’m dying to know! I read and reply to every single comment :)
In my paid journaling community we are going to be writing about how we can treat ourselves like ROYALTY so I hope you’ll join me there.
AND I REALLY HOPE you’ll join me in Santa Fe!
Hell yes. I have a Turkish robe and I go outside to drink coffee and I spritz perfume on and put MERIT glow serum and highlighter on even on WFH days/when I’m wearing gym clothes!
Cleo is also the name of my alter ego when I’m working on my biz 😆 👑 🪄
Thank you Tara! Seems like when the shit hits the fan and chaos abounds both within the walls of my house and outside in the world the FIRST thing I do is toss all my well intentioned (desperately needed) self care routines out the window. I leap like a firefighter on speed from bed and start flailing away at the day. The day generally go on a downward trajectory from there. So….I am in. If I think of that first window in the day as an oasis or life raft, and throw in some moisturizer and eye liner maybe tomorrow will be better. Here is hoping.