Midweek Enchantments #3: "Eating the Impossible for Breakfast", Neurodivergent Hacks as a Love Language
and day 3 of actually eating breakfast
This is the third post in Midweek Enchantments. Midweek Enchantments is a weekly series/practice where I’ll share some writing about enchantment and one thing I’m feeling enchanted by, with invitations for joining me in this practice!
Dear Shapeshifters,
I’m currently in a creative writing class focused on fairy tales. I’m deeply excited by the possibility of doing more of this kind of creative work, and drawn to fairy tales, fantasy, and magical realism as forms of resistance to colonial stories that flatten the world, as if it were not already dripping with magic.
I’m curious about our tasks as storytellers in these times, about stories themselves as spells, as resurrectors of enchantment, inciters of our imaginations, and sources of inspiration for how we actually live our lives.
I’m thinking about the legacies of Octavia Butler and Ursula Le Guin, and adrienne maree brown’s words,
“all organizing is science fiction.”
I’m thinking about
sharing,“Why is it so hard for me? Oh - It’s cause I’m from the future. It’s cause I’m from the future where everything revolves around community care.”
I’m remembering walida imarisha’s words:
“When I tell people I am a prison abolitionist and that I believe in ending all prisons, they often look at me like I rode in on a unicorn sliding down a rainbow.”
I’m thinking about how some of us used the inspiration of Polyjuice potions to use ourselves as decoys to disrupt ICE from detaining a community member who was being released from the local jail.
I’m thinking about Be-Loved, one of the local mutual aid organizations that has been on the ground building and supporting community in impossibly beautiful ways, both before and in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. I’m thinking about how pre-storm, several Be-Loved members came to speak at my partner Nihila’s class, and shared:
“When we tell people what we’re doing or dreaming of doing next, most people tell us - ‘that’s impossible!’ And we tell them, we eat ‘impossible’ for breakfast.”
Which reminds me of the often quoted dialogue in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland:
Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
I’ve been coming back to that quote often in my life, though only just today am I considering the irony of being a dreamer who happens to be quite terrible at eating breakfast, and other day to day executive functioning tasks.
I know I’m not alone in this! (Hello Sagittarius season and fellow neurodivergent, hyper-focused-to-the-point-of-forgetting-you-have-a-body-dreamers!)
Neurodivergent Hacks as a Love Language
It’s not uncommon for me to get up, make a cup of coffee, start writing, researching, working, and then look up… and it’s 3pm.
People have been making suggestions for how to “just make myself breakfast” for years and years to no avail (or they have been feeding me- thank you!). But unless I am cooking with or for others (which I do love), I’m terrible at cooking for myself. And I’ve learned that with my ADHD and grief brain, and all the things I want to get to each day, I need to get up, get coffee, and get into my flow. Stalling to figure out breakfast and clean up afterwards is going to seriously disrupt that flow.
But this week, I discovered the magic of… Toast.
Or rather, my partner Fox looked over at me while I sat with my coffee, already engrossed in my days’ to do list, and said:
“I have a proposal for you. What if, when you get up each morning and you go to make coffee, you had a really simple go to breakfast you could make at the same time, before you got into your work? Like toast you could just pop in the toaster?”
The way that neurodivergent people can care for each other seriously makes me weak in the knees.
Maybe you’re scratching your head here.
(Yes, they essentially said, “but what if, toast?” and it landed in my body as revelation)
Or maybe you’re nodding emphatically because your brain works more like mine and you know it’s not actually just toast. It’s loving observation, curiosity, a gentle proposal. And it’s an effective one. The reason this suggestion particularly works for my brain is because it finds a place where I already have a solid routine and rhythm, and accentuates it. It recognizes what systems are already in place and working and finds a small way in that has a big impact. I am good at getting up and into my flow with a cup of coffee. Now all I have to do is follow that well worn path to my morning coffee and put the bread in the toaster.
And now it’s day 3 in a row of having breakfast. Life changing. Miraculous. Neurodivergent love.
(We’ll see if it sticks)
Hacks, On-ramps, and Finding a Way In
I use the term hacks and on-ramps interchangeably.
I learned the concept of “on-ramps” from KC Davis in her book How to Keep House While Drowning, which provides a neurodivergent framework for disrupting shame around not “getting things done” and not having motivation or a capacity to initiate or keep up with daily care tasks.
In addition to being helpful for those of us who identify as neurodivergent, I find Davis' concept of “on-ramps” helpful for those of us feeling “blocked” or frozen in our creative and grief processes, or in our attempts to connect with the more than human world, or our attempts to let ourselves rest, or in our attempts to join in community efforts when we ourselves can barely keep afloat.
Davis essentially asks us: how can we create more accessible “on-ramps” to whatever task, goal, or practice we’re trying to do, and interrupt perfectionism and expectations of needing to fully dive in and complete something quickly?
These on-ramps would ideally be small, pleasurable, or at least gentle ways into an activity we feel “blocked” around starting or returning to.
On-ramps are invitations to do things our own way and not “THE way” we are told we should.
On-ramps are invitations to find something that makes beginning a practice more accessible, and to orient towards processes and practices over products or outcomes.
Davis gives the example of deciding to create an “on ramp” to using her stationary work out bike. She decides she will just try for 5 minutes a day, but still finds herself avoiding the bike. She changes her target to 1 minute a day, and then finds herself building a rhythm of getting on the bike regularly and often going for longer. The point is not how long she goes, but that she found a way into the practice. A contact point. A place to start.
The Macro and Micro Mundane Miraculous
The resources neurodivergent educators are putting out there are truly life saving. And they help us cultivate an awareness of the systems that are in place in our lives, on both the micro and macro levels, and remind us that instead of berating ourselves, we can create better systems of care.
And the reason I love the idea of eating the impossible for breakfast, or believing in 6 impossible things before breakfast, is because both locate the dreamer in the every day, in the mundane tasks of being human. And both make wild dreaming a daily practice - a muscle to build.
This Sagittarius season invites us to locate our wild dreaming in our day to day lives. We are invited to remember ourselves as both the archers, and “the dream horse, galloping towards adventure” (
) and what brings us real joy.As we wake up today, on what is in the US a colonial and violent holiday, what does it feel like to take a few moments to practice believing in even one thing that has felt impossible? Maybe it’s small. Like being able to feed yourself breakfast and drink enough water today. Or having the space to make some music. Or medium sized - like starting a queer theatre troupe or community apothecary with your best friends. Or maybe it’s really big, like genocides ending, like the abolition of militaries, borders, prisons. Whatever it is, what’s it feel like to sink into this dream? Take a few minutes to really imagine it, to get to know it, to feel it breathing in your chest, tingling in your finger tips.
Then spread this glittering dream across your toast, and take a bite.
With love,
Mara June
If there’s one enchanting thing right now in your day or week, one impossible dream you’re dreaming, or one on-ramp or hack that helps you get through your day to day, what is it? Tell us in the comments below.🦋✨
PS For more on enchantment, grief, and increasing accessibility for self/collective care, join us for Herbalism for Grief Support!
These themes are foundational parts of our Herbalism as Grief Support course, which begins this January! Learn more about the course here. Scholarship forms are open through November 30th.
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