A powerful method to meet feeling powerless is to start before a new day’s sunlight begins, right there in the pitch-black dark saying hello to all what appears beyond your control. Exactly in a morning where darkness is still outside, every sensory sensibility on your inside is decided through lightful choices. Absolutely we have a true say in our day.

What this feeling well-lit while darkness surrounds me—and not all is without shiny for brilliant stars are twinkling in a black 5 a.m. sky—demonstrates is my energy for life newness. Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes is a Jungian psychoanalyst, poet, scholar and cantadora or “keeper of the old stories in the Latina tradition.” In her writing one chapter titled “Self-preservation: Identifying Leg Traps” has a subsection called “Returning to a Life Made by Hand, Healing Injured Instincts.”

Each title is in her book Women Who Run with the Wolves—Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. A familiar title since you have been reading these recent blog posts, right? Ceramic cup in hand you are heeding the writing flow, I imagine. A plane ticket reserved for Kona Airport and reservations also made at Kohanaiki Beach Park, yes? If you reached Spencer’s Beach Park as well then glad tidings for Lapakahi State Park being located ten miles or so further along on your northern path and a place we travel in this prose. Alas, a writer continues writing and a reader begins reading when she decides. I get you. When you are good and goddess-damn ready.

This is the point Estes makes that often motivates me to wake early. “The real miracle of individuation and reclamation of Wild Woman is that we all begin the process before we are ready, before we are strong enough, before we know enough; we begin a dialogue with thoughts and feelings that both tickle and thunder within us. We respond before we know how to speak the language, before we know all the answers, and before we know exactly to whom we are speaking” (Estes 275). In this energetic start on a given day is why I go vibrate or talk story with the ancients. Never do I have any idea what I will discover yet every time a sign in nature has been gifted. Like this morning.

My phone alarm chiming bells at 5 a.m. has me rolling over cranky until later—taking back “control” of another 20 minutes respite. Prepping a pour over strong coffee, retrieving a slice of cold pizza from the fridge (meets all the food groups) and an apple found there, too, for breakfast, I joined the steering wheel in my car and plotted a road trip. Ten minutes later, destination in sight, strolling I go beyond the gate that opens at 8 a.m. yet I am standing in the ish zone of 5 45 a.m.-ish.

Lapakahi State Park conduits a chance to meet the ancients on Hawai’i Island. Gifted teachers they are to show how a morning’s first light is a resourceful method for keeping real a new day’s uncertainty: what in the world will the next 24 hours bring? Native Hawaiians began living at Lapakahi 700 years ago, and continued thriving here until early 1900s. These peoples integrated every nature resource local to home being wise indigenous villagers having chosen a strategic home in this specific location to rely on what already is.

Despite their materialistic uncertainty, a sunrise they could always count on. The one in this location provides cool weather to organize life before warmer sunshine arrives. Dawn light breaks 5 30 a.m. or so and only 7 30-ish and beyond does fuller sunshine cascade on Lapakahi. The sunrise continues crawling over the back of a faraway mountain that protects this cove still. Two hours is a long time to work outdoors in cooler morning temperatures.

Materialistic worries are usually not mine, yet I have a few curiosities on emotional duress which is why I woke up in the dark to see inside myself more clearly, what this brand-new day has to teach. Being at Lapakahi in colder morning chilly, a warm hat and flannel I wear, and what I watch is myself watching the dawn greyish light begin, a precisely geometrical blanket covering mountain and hillside and ocean. Soon following are interactive dancing shadows and shimmering sun strands moving reliably and gradually into view.

Unlike Native Hawaiians I won’t be working physical labor in this quiet time but I am working curiosity while the light gets stronger. Observing this ancient village inspires me to be feistily grateful to gain a new sunrise perspective on microaggressions plaguing my life. I am in the work until one feminine divine paradox arrives: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Or the irritants render true humble on a healthy, painful continuum. Each day’s earthly brilliance, her sashaying light conveys a core message: I got you. Watching a sunrise is always this for spiritual strength.

Simply a guess that this place has been chosen as home for her sunlight properties, but for sure the ancients have been reading the aina (land) curves—slopes, dips, and coves. Along this Kohala coastline where fierce winds continually work influence, often intensely so, is an indigenous wind break native to the land. The discovery is a surprise while I’m meandering on Hawai’i State Park walking paths crisscrossing Lapakahi, trails parallel to stone remnants, the dwellings for these prior residences.

My feet are on a path close to the ocean, and a slight hill is beyond, when I feel the sanctuary. Right here is no wind, a cove where whippety winds are not reaching in a land alcove. Exhaling a few breaths, I mumble to myself, aaaahh, a true wind break. Thanks, Lapakahi dwellers, for teaching why you built your culture here integral to nature’s existing gifts for human existence. No condominium building necessary.

Staying in my grateful wind break for a few minutes, I agreed more would be better on time spent in this exact location—with a few slices of pizza and coffees and apples being necessary for a fuller spiritual muscling and, alas, I am too “busy” this morning. The few minutes changed my day, though.

Now let’s bring on a curiosity experiment and say your life is a continual wind storm, where can you catch a wind break is what I am damn energetic to ask. From a privileged world view—shelter, food, clothing, healthcare, education, and leisure—these basics can still be seen as “not enough” so we wail, “When can I catch a break?” On honesty though if all of these are already functioning in your life, the break has entirely been caught. No need ask da question, brah. (Reinvented Hawaiian pidgin there.) Or is the question still the right one to ask?

In modern times, a life wind storm is our own making simply not knowing what enough is enough for your one brief life. Truly knowing what decisively is your enough is a native wind break, meaning easygoing acceptance for basic privileges. Or did you originally choose to live a life of materialistic ease? Perhaps you simply go with any direction the wind brought your life? Gratitude for material basics I have, but the irritating pinch in my side is communication conflict happening and this means I don’t often get an actual say in my day.

One wind break I can catch from fury at a thousand paper nicks cutting my daily life, year after year, is Audible. Listening to books through ear phones cocoons human response sensibility. Knowledge arrives to your intellect uninterrupted and emotions to your heart, too. The listening space is all spontaneously focused this way. That woman you see on a walk shaking her fist in the air, doing a twirly circular dance step, and laughing aloud to herself is how I venture often walking outdoors with my dog Bell. An Audible book title that brought me to the other side of radical acceptance on paper cut conflict messages is The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins.

Listening to this book feels like standing at Lapakahi inside the ocean cove sanctuary area—no windy disturbance—yet on my life path making thoughtful decisions. Robbins is the kickass woman always to have on your side. She’ll directly say, “I don’t give a shit what you are feeling.” And reason is her analysis on how feelings are a neurocircuitry lasting so briefly, a few seconds or minutes, and the other side is already here—meaning you standing in a wind break for having stayed with feelings that are now subsided.

We simply have to decide how catching a break might look and commit to going there. Perhaps a leisurely stroll outdoors? Robbins’ book demonstrates how to let them go about their business (especially when the them events are obstacling) while you decide to let me focus on empowering my one proactive day. Any 24 hours is a continual let them, let me cyclical reaction to direction choosing while uncertainty continues in a day.

One chapter from essential recovery literature is in Living Sober titled “Live and Let Live” and repeats this affective let them, let me mantra for emotional sobriety. Let them means let live since what others do is none of my business because I have business to mind called living my own life. And in response to let them be them is then let me or live. Let them, let me can be synonymous with let live and live. We eventually admit that “learning to live with differences is essential to our comfort” (Living Sober 11). Yet daily the nuanced work is to discern how far this let them or let live motto can go.

When will you say enough is enough? A despot runs the country you live in? Let them and let me join a political protest that demonstrates to senators and representatives how I will vote in midterm Congressional elections. A teenager brings obnoxious behavior that is hurtful and pointless? Let them and let me focus on my own self-care, thus bringing respect and kindness in return, anyway—not a doormat, a doorway to modeling healthy behavior. An implied financial agreement is made without a direct contract agreed upon? Let them and let me research my legal options current today.

Why I woke so early this morning for conversing with ancients is to learn fundamental historical honesty that my dilemmas are in the Cadillac category—rather luxurious. After living on Hawai’i Island for nearly ten years, the island’s history continually reverberates. An energetic grace that today in a modern era life basics are absolutely more than enough. Especially when compared to Native Hawaiians historical fights to live and let live. In 1778 when initial European contact began around 300,000 Native Hawaiians populated the islands.

One hundred years later 85 percent of the population have lost their lives primarily to foreign diseases, Native Hawaiians having immune systems for tropical life not to live through the health peril colonizers brought. This brutal history contrasts purposefully with phrases like let them, let me and let live, live for seeing that to live at all in a historical era is the greatest privilege. The lessons I learn while standing in Hawai’i nature on sacred lands—distantly from any modernity—is how to be peaceful and to be inspired how others lived long before my time.

An amazing sunrise, an advantageous cove originally chosen by Native Hawaiians and my own serendipity discovery of this windbreak at Lapakahi, channel a decision to catch my own break. I found a powerful one in Gloria Anzaldua’s poem “Cihuatlyotl, Woman Alone” in her book Borderlands/La Frontera. Redesign is what I have in front of me, agreeing on a future to take creative risks like creating a book titled Into Lesbian Lives: Prose and Photos Across America. Various deep-natures are there on travels for discovery and also wisdom social connections with other lesbian women. Anzaldua decries her lifelong fight to be alone (not lonely) from those who she previously made a bargain with to go along to get along and then said no, her own let them, let me:

“there’s nothing more you can chop off or graft on me that will change my soul. / I remain who I am, multiple and one of the herd, yet not of it. / I walk on the ground of my own being browned and hardened by the ages. / I am fully formed carved by the hands of the ancients, drenched with the stench of today’s headlines. / But my own hands whittle the final work me.” I’m beginning a new chapter on a familiar book called my life and the wind break I catch and give to myself is being my own authoress for the rest of my days.