Morning Entries

About Morning Entries

My personal morning diary serves as a dose of reflection, pondering and musings. Cozy up with your morning beverage of choice and take moment of pause with me. My hope is that they these short pieces spark something in you for your own personal Morning Entry. diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com (https://diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/s/morning-entries?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Ashley Meyers

Category

health & fitness · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

23 Jan 2025

Latest episode

9 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

37 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   9 Oct 2026

   What if this is the last time for the both of us?

   What if this is the last time for both of us? What if this is the last time I am the most important person in your life?The last time my hand is held before it permanently exchanges places with A husbandA father of your childrenA child of your own What if this is the last time you press your forehead to mine in a packed restaurant as a means of greeting me? Hold onto me tight in parking lots with tears dampening moon-round eyes. Street lamps picking up freckles that have always been placed just so, across a nose that belongs as much to you as it does your father and me? In a sea of people, we have always been each other’s. What if tonight is the last time you still look for me? Diary of a Life Well Lived is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Heat from an Italian kitchen mixes with the heat of human uncertainty; precipitation gives way to sweat that starts to crawl its way around a tight leather booth, making its presence known under arms and backs of legs and finally up and onto moist, glowing faces. You are seated next to me while seated next to him, and his mother is seated across from me. It feels like a game of keep-away as we battle the inevitable next stage of life that parenting books forget to include at the end of “What to Expect When You’re Expecting, the Extended Edition.” She becomes my comrade in arms, so to speak, our eyes filled with a knowing of what is to come whilst our smiles hide truths and fears soaked in the kerosene of lasts, soon to be lit in the form of two single birthday candles. An hour in, and I’m both carrying the conversation and the weight of this sadness for both of us. Somehow I know I’m the stronger of the mothers, so I attempt to distract where applicable and wrap up every sentence with warm milk and lace my tone in honey. Hopes high that this coating will fight its way through the noisy crowd of voices and make its way to a mother on her son’s last childhood birthday. Candles sparkle 21, and we all look to him. Unspoken thoughts hide in the hundreds of smiles ricocheted across a table that I’m sure has seated this exact scene too many times to keep an honest count. Because what comes next is the years all at once. Days roll into weeks, roll into months, and eventually roll into birthdays toppling over each other far too quickly for us to catch our breaths and remind aging brains that the streamers and party hats season is indeed behind us now. We might find ourselves meandering through those cute yet overstuffed mall stores filled with every assortment of themed sections until our eyes land on tiny green dinosaur figurines and pink ceramic ballet slippers. We will pause in a moment of reflective memories alive all at once again like a black-and-white film emerging from its premature burial. Blurry screen, muffled sound, cracks at the edges from being tampered with by time. We might see those figurines atop cakes and tiny fingertips sneaking smears of buttercream into their mouths, the evidence at the edges of their bottom lips. I imagine her son with the bright neon long socks we talked about earlier in the evening and a version of his same floppy hair he pushes to the side a bit to keep it out of his eyes. I revisit my girl’s 4-year-old uniform: blush pink skirt with some form of sparkle, striped T-shirt that made no sense to pair with such a sparkling bottom, giant flower barrette in her curls, small feet clad in brown leather boots—even in the sweltering Southern California summer heat. Chants of “Happy Birthday” erupt from an entire restaurant, my phone in hand as keeper of a thousand memories, and just like that, the sparkles have reached their end and so has this season. Gifts and hugs and tears and spoons making their way through a tiramisu from the hands of the girl I’ve known every version of. I will later thank God on the way home for blessing me with motherhood at such a young age, if only to be afforded the gift of my children experiencing so many versions of their mother. Smiles across the table for a birthday well done, even if we know what’s to come. What if this is the last time for the both of us? Diary of a Life Well Lived is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe (https://diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

2. 

   1 Oct 2026

   poised and positioned

   I think I might have some form of OCD. I’m haunted by items not quite perfectly in their place. A pair of earrings gone rogue and placed atop a fake box-made makeshift tabletop in my youngest daughter’s room. Sneakers I toppled off from earlier this morning sit with the left nearly on its side while the right is perfectly straight, and thoughts hum in the back of my mind for hours about how that right shoe is patiently awaiting for the left to get its s**t together and come straighten itself out and be placed perfectly next to its poised position. I cave into my obsessive thoughts and pause my meeting for less than 60 seconds to attend to the inanimate object. I smile for a deed well done and say aloud, “Well, there you are, that’s better,” with a slight grin of appreciation for my small action. I sit back down and return to said meeting, all while processing the feeling that I have some form of craziness trying to make itself known, or perhaps 41 is when you enter the phase where they will identify as the year she lost her wits about her. I think this is some type of metaphor for my life. I’m waking up with chest pains and unsure if the cause is psychological or physical ailments from simply turning another year older last week. Things are not in their place. My youngest daughter is not in her room. The plan is not mapped as it once was. Every constant has somehow morphed or faded this year, and my mind is desperate to find poised, perfected positions of normality or what once was or always has been. Even the dog is some form of anxious energy roaming the house in the middle of the night, unsure where he belongs as well. Perhaps he is mirroring back to me my subconscious frequency he has picked up and thinks it’s his own now to bear. So I drink loose-leaf tea at 7 a.m. and pretend to get on with it while my mind fights against the idea that men are indeed revolting predators to be locked away for fear that they will use the worst of modern-day weapons: a group chat 57-future-leaders-of-the-world deep, who were excited about the message “Free Pussy upstairs,” with no conscience or care of who that pussy belongs to and how she got there. Then we will call them Cornell 7 this time and another Joe Doe, while I calculate the significance of the number 7. 7 days for creation to be made, 57 men to do nothing but partake, 7 men for 7 hours to expel the life from God’s very own hands of creation. And then I ponder over everything that happens in 7 seconds: * An individual subconsciously makes 11 distinct decisions about another person during those initial 7 seconds of contact. * We form lasting snap judgments of credibility, trustworthiness, and competence within 7 seconds of meeting someone. * Approximately 28 babies are born and 14 people die globally every 7 seconds. * Roughly 700 lightning flashes strike Earth every 7 seconds. * The Universe expands outward by 525 kilometers every 7 seconds. 7:17 on the clock as I walk toward my kitchen… And I will push down the lever of my French press while I push down my feelings and watch the dark liquid bubble a bit on the sides as proof that everything rebels, and if we are pushed down hard and fast enough, those small traces of bubbles turn to rage and pop with enough force to splash up and out of the glass container trying to keep all its grounds contained. A whole generation of women are fighting for themselves, their ancestors, their children, and their children’s children in hopes they will never be victims in a group chat, nameless, with only a womb to be identified as. We are all trying to put a left shoe back in its place, poised and positioned… just right. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe (https://diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

3. 

   27 Jan 2026

   Soulmates

   Sometimes, I think you get the worst of me, but today it was clear that I have simply given you all of me. I have allowed myself to be my best and my worst in your presence and more than anything I have been more than what I knew. The better version of mothering and care and you’re the loving proof of my all. You tell me today how you wish you knew more of me. To have seen me at 7 or 13 and a glimpse of me at 21, filled belly with all 10 pounds, of you. How it could have been to be my friend on all the playgrounds of all the cities I was dropped into and if a hug from you would have changed the trajectory of my life and if having a friend like you would have steered my heart to choose better than your Father. You reach for me and my hands release the coffee cup I’m using as a security blanket and in that moment I feel love billow from your hands all the force of life lives in one single brush of your skin, milky and young and of my own DNA and in that moment I can almost feel a lifetime that we once lived out - not as mother and daughter but as soulmates on a playground best friends holding each other in a love that can only be known through many life times lived side by side. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe (https://diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

Podcast Authority Score: 6 / 100

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Quality

11

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

0