The Tiny Rituals That Hold Us When Everything Else Comes Undone

Finding stability in our tiniest, strangest rituals when life feels unbearably heavy

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This morning, I made coffee in a kitchen that's finally beginning to feel like mine. After a dozen years of stability—same home, same routine—I've now moved twice in a single year.

The disorientation still catches me off guard sometimes.

You'd think after unpacking the last box, the ground would feel solid beneath my feet. It doesn't. There's a particular kind of vertigo that comes with rapid change, a dizziness that lingers long after the physical transitions are complete.

What anchors me isn't a system. It's a ritual.

Each morning, I make coffee the exact same way.

• Press the button on my Keurig.

• Add exactly two Splendas.

• Pour the same measure of creamer.

• And then, and this is the important part, I pause. Just for a moment, watching the steam rise, listening to the final drips, fully present before the day's momentum takes over.

It's not about the method, though the coffee is good.

It's about creating one moment of profound attention in a day that constantly pulls my focus in a thousand directions.

In the whirlwind of transitions—my divorce finally becoming official, deadlines approaching, spaces transforming into new versions of home, futures unfolding in ways I never anticipated—this small, intentional act becomes a tether to the present moment.

Small certainties hold us when everything else comes undone.

The Ridiculous Magic of Imperfect Rituals

We mistake rituals for solemn, significant acts. Lighting candles at church. Meditation cushions and sunrise yoga. Beautiful moments of practiced intention captured in spiritual guidebooks.

My rituals are messier.

Sometimes they look like listening to the same song on repeat during my commute. Eight times in a row, windows down, singing badly. 😅

The barista at my local coffee shop once asked if I was okay when I ordered the exact same drink for the fifth day in a row.

We celebrate arrivals but rarely honor the courage it takes to simply remain in transit.

When my divorce was finalizing, I started doing something that would probably sound weird if I said it out loud: each night before bed, I arranged five random objects on my nightstand. A smooth stone I found on a hike last year. A ChapStick I always keep nearby. A guitar pick. An empty wooden box someone gave me years ago. And this 2,000 peso banknote from Colombia, a country I've never even been to.

None of these objects hold particular significance on their own. Together, they formed a kind of silent prayer.

I am here. I continue. This day is done, and I have survived it.

The thing about rituals is that they don't have to make sense to anyone else. They just have to make sense to some deep, wordless part of yourself that needs reassurance when everything feels like too much.

Secret Pockets Stitched Into Chaos

Imagine chaos as a vast, unruly garment we're forced to wear through seasons of upheaval. The fabric itself uncomfortable—scratchy and ill-fitting. But what if we could sew small, secret pockets into its lining?

That's what rituals are.

They're not grand solutions to life's difficulties. They're modest sanctuaries we've stitched by hand into our daily existence. Tiny spaces where we can slip our fingers and touch something familiar when everything else feels foreign.

The morning coffee ritual. The repeated song. The five objects arranged just so.

These aren't attempts to impose false certainty on an uncertain world. They're invitations to presence—small altars that call us back to ourselves when we're scattered across too many timelines at once.

What we call coping mechanisms are really just love letters to our future selves.

Our culture loves to talk about resilience as though it's made of grand gestures and heroic strength. But I've found that resilience often wears a much humbler face. Sometimes it looks like brushing your teeth, even when you can barely get out of bed. Sometimes it's making your bed with hospital corners when the rest of your life feels like it's coming apart at the seams.

Sometimes resilience is just finding one tiny thing you can count on when nothing else can be counted on.

When Survival Looks Silly But Feels Sacred

Let me tell you about my friend who developed a ritual during her chemotherapy. Each morning before treatment, she would put on mismatched socks—the brightest, most ridiculous patterns she could find. Dinosaurs with Santa hats. Tacos with faces. Neon stripes paired with polka dots.

"It's hard to be truly terrified," she told me, "when you're wearing socks this stupid."

She never pretended the socks changed her diagnosis. But she insisted they changed her relationship to it. "The socks remind me I'm still me. That even with all this medical awfulness, I get to decide some things."

There's something profound about claiming these small choices when the big ones feel utterly beyond our control.

We keep waiting for the in-between to end, not realizing that the in-between is where we actually live.

Another friend, going through a devastating breakup, told me he started making elaborate breakfasts every morning—the kind with multiple components and precise timing. "It's the only time of day I feel competent," he admitted. "For thirty minutes, I know exactly what I'm doing."

We find the strangest lifelines to grip when the current threatens to pull us under.

I have a theory that our most powerful rituals aren't the ones handed down to us by tradition but the ones we discover by accident—the odd, specific acts that somehow help us breathe when breathing seems impossible. These peculiar ceremonies of comfort are as unique to us as fingerprints.

When everything feels like too much—too uncertain, too painful, too overwhelming—these small, strange rituals become sacred not because they're profound, but precisely because they're ordinary. Accessible. Available even on our worst days.

Especially on our worst days.

The Pocket of Safety You Carry

What's your coffee ritual? What's your mismatched socks, your five objects, your elaborate breakfast?

What small, perhaps slightly silly act helps you remember that you're still here, still continuing, still capable of creating one moment of order even when disorder reigns?

I ask because naming these rituals gives them power. When we recognize them not as quirks or habits but as the subtle, essential tools of our survival, we can reach for them more intentionally when we need them most.

Maybe yours is the specific route you walk when you need to clear your head. Or how you water your plants on Sunday mornings while listening to that one playlist. Or the way you've organized your bookshelf by color, even though everyone tells you it makes no sense.

These aren't distractions from the real work of coping.

They are the real work of coping.

The humble, unglamorous ways we stitch ourselves back together day after day.

The steadiness we crave isn't found in circumstances. It's built in these tiny, stubborn acts of showing up for ourselves.

In Praise of Absurd and Tender Rituals

Tomorrow morning, I'll make coffee again. I’ll pause and watch the steam rise. It won't solve the fact that I need to finish unpacking (there are still boxes, they are just in the garage 😂), that I have looming deadlines, and that life continues to be gloriously and terrifyingly unpredictable.

But for those few minutes, I'll hold a tiny piece of certainty in my hands.

Rituals aren't escape hatches from reality. They're doorways that lead us back to ourselves.

So here's to the absurd, tender rituals that keep us tethered when everything feels like too much. The small, strange acts that wouldn't make sense to anyone else but make perfect sense to the part of us that needs to be reminded: this too shall pass, but right now, in this moment, there is coffee. There are mismatched socks. There are five objects arranged just so.

There is continuity, even in chaos.

There is you, still finding ways to care for yourself in the midst of it all.

What saves us isn't grand transformation. It's the humble persistence of showing up for the smallest parts of our lives.

And there is something quietly miraculous about that.

I’d love to hear more about the rituals you have. Would you share?

Want to hear the thoughts that didn't make it into this piece?

For paid subscribers, I've started creating behind-the-scenes audio reflections—the unfiltered wonderings, the vulnerable moments, the 3am insights that felt too raw for the page.

In this reflection, I share the real story behind my five objects ritual, what happens when these tiny anchors fail us completely, and why "secret pockets stitched into chaos" almost didn't make it into this article at all.

These aren't polished. They're process—the thoughts still echoing, the questions I'm still holding, the parts of writing that usually remain hidden.

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The Tiny Rituals: The Audio Companion

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About Alex

I’m Alex Lovell — political psychologist, yoga therapist, and writer.

Lived homeless. Been divorced. Survived a seven-car pileup with a semi. Fell in love with questions that don’t have easy answers. I’ve met a lot of thresholds. Even the one before death.

These days, I split my time between research, writing, and holding space for people figuring out who they are after everything shifted.

This Substack is where I make sense of things out loud.
I write for people in transition — between roles, beliefs, relationships, selves.
The ones quietly wondering, “What now?” but allergic to one-size-fits-all answers.

Sometimes I quote research. Sometimes I quote my own nervous system.
One speaks in data, the other in sensation. I’ve stopped choosing sides.