Morning Dew Discoveries

Ro writes about healing, creativity, and the art of noticing beauty in everyday things.

[morningdewdiscoveries]

The Massage Chair and the Micro-Expression

I walked into Planet Fitness just wanting to use the massage chair. That’s all. Ten minutes of peace, maybe a little hum of machine-vibration calm to loosen my shoulders before my hormones and nervous system teamed up to turn me into a storm again.

When I told the guy at the front desk, “Hey, I just want to use the massage chair—do I need to sign into both computers?” he barely looked up. There was this flicker—so fast it could’ve been nothing—but I saw it. That subtle face people make when they’ve already written a story about you in their heads. “Oh, one of those people,” his expression said. “Here for the chair, not the gym.”

My nervous system caught it like radar. It’s taken me years to learn not to let those micro-judgments pull me into shame or apology. But sometimes they still sting, even when I don’t want them to.

Then a young woman walked in behind me—bright, confident, perfectly “gym-coded.” He lit up like a porchlight. “Hey there, beautiful,” he said, leaning forward, suddenly full of personality. He even asked if the guy she was with last time was her boyfriend.

And just like that, I felt the whole thing flip. I could see the social script playing out: the way women, even the kind ones, often tilt their bodies and smiles just slightly to smooth a man’s ego; how we learn to navigate their energy so no one gets uncomfortable.

The girl laughed politely. She seemed fine. Maybe she was fine. But watching it, I just felt this old exhaustion rise up — the kind that comes from years of being on the receiving end of that same weird audition for male approval.

I thought about how grateful I am now — that my partner doesn’t talk to me like I’m a thing to impress or appraise. That I don’t have to smile through someone else’s entitlement just to keep the air easy.

I took my ten minutes in the massage chair. Eyes closed, muscles melting, trying to breathe all that static out of my system.Maybe that’s what healing is: catching the old patterns, the old looks, the old energy — and deciding, I don’t have to carry that anymore.

[morningdewdiscoveries]

You vote with your feet

I was walking in the rain the other day, and this old saying popped into my head — something one of my professors used to say: “You vote with your feet.”

It hit me how that’s true for everything in life — marriage, work, friendships, even the way we treat ourselves. People talk about recommitting to their marriages every day, but really, that’s what we’re all doing all the time — choosing, again and again, what we give our energy to.

Every relationship, every job, has its ups and downs. There are days you’re in love with it, and days it makes you want to crawl out of your skin. For me, the hard part has always been that moment where I start to feel trapped — like I signed a mental contract I can’t get out of. That “I said I would” voice can get so loud that I forget I have a choice.

But here’s the thing: you can always change your mind. You’re not a victim of your commitments — you’re the one renewing them. Every time you stay, you’ve recommitted. And that’s actually empowering. Even writing down what you appreciate about your life — that’s a form of recommitment too.

You can recommit to speaking your truth. To communicating better. To showing up differently tomorrow than you did today. If you fail today, you recommit again tomorrow. That’s it.

You’re never truly trapped. Unless you literally are a prisoner — but most of us aren’t. We just feel imprisoned. We’re used to being parented by systems, governments, or leaders who act like we can’t be trusted with our own power. So we fawn, we freeze, we hand over control.

But you can always walk away. You could quit, leave, move, start over. Sure, there are consequences — there always are. But knowing you can walk away gives you back the power to choose to stay. That’s where the freedom is.

Even the things you’d never actually walk away from — your kids, your family, your calling — you can still reframe how you show up in them. You can walk away from the version of yourself that feels powerless, from the stories that say “I can’t.”

Because you can. You vote with your feet, every single day.

[morningdewdiscoveries]

I'm Finally Starting

I’ve wanted to start a blog for fifteen years.

...Not in the obsessive, “this is my life’s calling” kind of way — more like one of those ideas that keeps circling the runway but never quite lands. One of many interests scattered across notebooks and tabs, none of them getting traction.

Hell, songwriting is my biggest passion, and I still managed to forget about a mixing class I had today — slept right through it. I even had it beautifully marked in my calendar. It’s hard to form new habits when your brain is full of a hundred open tabs, each one buzzing with something interesting. Plus, I got a new bed. Adjustable. Slightly elevated at the head. It’s so comfortable that my body said, “Class? What class?”

Are those excuses? Maybe. Distractions? Definitely. But they’re such delicious distractions. I just need to find a way to fully enjoy everything I want to enjoy — maybe some kind of routine will help with that.

Anyway. Back to this blog idea. And the podcast idea. And the handful of YouTube channels I’ve started and abandoned.

Before YouTube even existed, I had a LiveJournal. I might’ve been the only one reading it, analyzing Peter Gabriel lyrics and dream-casting movies in my online diary. It always fizzled out, but around 2010, I started wanting to get serious about it.

I’ve opened tabs, bought domains, renamed folders, and rewritten the same first paragraph a hundred times. I kept thinking, I’ll start when I’m ready. But I don’t think I ever felt ready — not once.

Part of it is ADHD. Part of it is burnout — the kind that seeps into your bones and makes even the smallest creative step feel like wading through molasses. And part of it, if I’m honest, is fear.

Or maybe it’s that weird FOMO-shaped fear — the kind that makes it hard to just be in your body. It’s easier now that I’m older, after everything I’ve lived through. A few awakenings, a few expansions, a lot of self-awareness. I’ve learned how to be more embodied, how to move past that old shame that used to keep me from sticking to anything for long.

I used to worry that if I focused on the wrong thing, I’d waste time. Capitalist programming, maybe. That voice that says: “If you’re not hustling like those big-name creators, what’s the point?” But I know now — you don’t find your way by thinking about it. You find it by doing it.

I even bought myself a used copy of Failing Forward by John C. Maxwell for my birthday two weeks ago. And for years, I used to say “Failing Forward by John C. Maxwell” whenever someone (including me) messed up — just to cut the tension or annoy my siblings. It still makes me laugh.

So here I am — imperfectly starting. Not waiting for clarity, or confidence, or the right moment. Just… starting.

[morningdewdiscoveries]

The Story Behind Morning Dew Discoveries

When I was eight years old, I made a guitar out of a cardboard box and rubber bands.

I didn’t plan it, I just felt this spontaneous spark — like, let’s see what happens. I plucked those rubber bands until something that sounded like a song came out of me. I ended up writing two instrumentals and one “real” song: “Morning Dew (in the Morning)”

It was the kind of kid magic that comes before you learn to judge yourself. The lyrics were completely ridiculous and deeply sincere at the same time — something like,

“Morning dew in the morning

I smell you, that’s a warning.

DING DONG DING DONG!”

I recorded it on my dad’s little tape recorder and listened to it every night until the tape disappeared somewhere into the folds of childhood. I’d pay big money to get that tape back now.

But the part that really stayed with me was how my dad — a traditional Irish musician who could be critical, fiery, and larger-than-life — would walk around singing my song. For years, he’d randomly go, “Morning Dew in the Morning, I smell you, that’s a warning…” in his thick accent, like it had lodged itself somewhere in his ADHD brain. It was silly and small, but it made me feel special — like I’d written something worth remembering. And in a relationship that wasn’t always easy, that silly song became one of the things that connected us.

My dad passed away in 2019 from brain cancer. And even though our bond was complicated, that memory — of him carrying my song in his head — still feels like a tiny thread of gold connecting us across time.

What “Morning Dew” Means to Me Now

After that first song, I didn’t write music again for almost twenty years. Between perfectionism, self-doubt, and a brain that runs on a mix of ADHD lightning and burnout fog, I just couldn’t finish things. Then, when I was 28, I started going to open mics — mostly because I had a crush on someone who went. But it ended up waking something back up in me. Since then, I’ve written thousands of songs — or at least started them — and finished a handful I’m proud of.

“Morning Dew” still feels like the name of that part of me that discovers things — the curious, earthy, nature-loving side that gets excited about tiny wonders: garden soil, bugs, sunlight through leaves, or even the perfect design of an object.

You see, I love discovering things and I usually buy things I don’t always have room for and can’t fully enjoy them. However, my ADHD brain gets a similar hit of dopamine and joy from the search as it does from the purchase — but without the regret or the clutter. That’s part of why I started Morning Dew Discoveries: to share what I find, to celebrate the beauty of little things, and to let my curiosity pay for itself instead of draining me. Also as a place to share what I'm enjoying and share my internal ramblings.

The Meaning Beneath the Name

Morning dew is temporary — it glistens, then it’s gone. But in that short time, it transforms everything it touches. That’s what discovery feels like to me: small moments of beauty that change how you see the world, even if only for a second.

So this blog is for the seekers. For the people who collect meaning like pebbles. For those who’ve spent years feeling “too much” or “too scattered,” and are just starting to realize that maybe their chaos is their creativity.

This is me — finally reclaiming that eight-year-old kid who made a guitar out of a box and believed in the magic of her own ideas.