My Darling Coffee

So, I have a deep and abiding love for coffee. In some ways, coffee was one of the first things that gave me a glimpse into my own Big Life. It all started in June of 2014.

For a giggle, I had AI make me a picture of my favorite goddess Kuan Yin with an iced coffee because that is how deep my devotion to coffee is.

 I spent the first couple of days of my faith shift in a hazy, weeping, shaking bundle of trauma. I’d realized that my whole life, all my relationships, everything I believed and based my life on was a lie, and it was about a million times more than I could process. I didn’t know what was happening to me, but I knew it was big, and that on the other side I would be different, but I didn’t know in what way. I had decided to be out loud about my shift, even though I didn’t even know what it was at the time, and as a result I’d been shifting through comments and messages that ranged from deeply loving and supportive, to shaming to outright abuse.

A few days after it started, I got a card in the mail from my dad. I didn’t know what to think when I saw it. I needed love and support because I was really not okay. I knew him and that he fits the medical diagnostic criteria definition of a clinical narcissist, but like all narcissists, he can do very good things sometimes, and he often did, and I was desperate for any nice things people could offer.

I opened it and it was a card made with an image of a carving from the side of the Salt Lake Temple. Inside it was a bunch of platitudes about listening to Paul in the Bible and keeping close to the church. He didn’t hear me at all, and didn’t acknowledge what his daughter might be feeling, or offer her comfort or a hug or a listening ear. It’s like my personhood wasn’t even considered in the card at all. It felt like he seemed threatened by me going through something. I put it back in the envelope and threw it in the wastebasket.

A cup of coffee I had in Rome at this neighborhood bar on the street where we stayed. It was one of the best coffees of my life

I decided to do an experiment. I’d realized I’d given my power away to the church, and I didn’t know how much or how little I’d done it, because I hadn’t done it knowingly; it was built into the system. Just like how if you needed surgery, you’d trust a good surgeon to do what needed to be done and you didn’t need to know all the details, you just trusted that they were trained and expert and took their oath to do their best for all their patients seriously. You put yourself in their hands and it’s not foolish or stupid, it’s wise for your wellness and health. I had done that with the church. I had assumed that it knew what it was doing, and trusted that it had my back in ways that I couldn’t understand why it had the commandments it had. I realized how messed up that was soon after my moment of faith shift crash and I started to wonder how much of my free will I had given up and wondered what to do about it.

I decided my experiment would be to break a Mormon commandment. It had to be a commandment that I knew was made up and irrational. It had to be one that wouldn’t harm anyone if I broke it, and it had to be one that I had kept 100% and never in my life broken even once. I wanted to see if I could do it and what it would feel like so I could judge how much of my agency I’d given away. I decided the commandment I’d break was to get a cup of coffee and drink it.

I get coffee with a group of dear friends every week and it is one of my favorite parts of my Big Life. They always make our coffees so cute.

Mormons have what’s called the Word of Wisdom. Their prophet made it up when the church was new and it was a fad at the time in the area where he lived to make special diets with supposed spiritual, intellectual and moral benefits. It forbade drinking alcohol, coffee and tea and to eat meat only sparingly. It was supposed to give you wisdom and great treasures of knowledge. The Word of Wisdom wasn’t enforced in the early church as the prophet owned a bar and even the Mormon pioneer packing list to cross the plains had whiskey and coffee on it. It was when they had another prophet and there was an economic and political impact to importing the ingredients and supplies to Utah that God suddenly enforced it. Plus, coffee and tea and alcohol were social drinks where women would be with other women for coffee and tea and men would be with other men for alcohol, so it was a way to keep people isolated in their homes and families and away from outside influences that might make them be in their own power and supportive communities and therefore make them harder to control.

Of course, as Mormons, you are never taught any of this, you are just taught that even the laziest of Mormons can just say no to a cup of coffee and if you can’t even do that, you aren’t worth much. I had always kept the Word of Wisdom 100% and even though I was 40 years old had never tasted coffee.

I got in my minivan and got on the freeway. I was shaking as I drove and feeling exhilarated. I drove to Target and walked through the parking lot. I remember thinking, how many people I’m passing know I’m about to break a commandment I’d kept my whole life. It felt monumental, like a character in a movie walking into a building to change their fate.

Lipstick on my coffee in Italy

I walked into the store and turned towards the Starbucks. Suddenly a sick feeling washed over me and I realized I couldn’t do it. I burst into tears and realized that I’d given ALL my power away. I turned and left. I went home and cried the whole day. I felt like I had died and realized how I was living like a dead person with no agency of my own and I didn’t even know it happened to me.

The next day I was determined to try again. I went to the same Starbucks. I didn’t know one drink from another and had no idea what to order or what any of it was. I told the girl behind the counter I didn’t know what to get and to pick something for me. I’m sure in Utah, this is not a new experience for a barista. She gave me some frozen Frappuccino thing. I paid for it and walked out of the store and had my first sip of coffee.

I checked my body, and I wasn’t dumber and hadn’t lost any great treasures of knowledge that I knew of, and God didn’t smite me. I was and am a sensitive person so I wasn’t sure how that level of caffeine would affect me, so I went home and nursed that coffee over hours and hours because I was afraid to just drink it at a normal-person speed. I did it. I took at least a corner of my power back.

A few days later, I went back to Starbucks and ordered an iced caramel macchiato. I took it to Sugarhouse Park and took a walk. I remember it was a beautiful blue-sky day with fat white clouds. The mountains looked so beautiful and green and the park with its lake and sloping grassy hills looked magical.  I tasted the coffee and loved it. I didn’t yet know how good coffee could be like those little cups of espresso you get in Rome in the afternoon or the cappuccinos in the morning, but to me with my experience at the time this tasted like heaven.

I walked around the park drinking my coffee and thinking about life. I’d spent the last week in life-shattering anguish, but this moment, with this drink in this park, I had the realization that maybe this wasn’t just an obliteration of my life, but maybe at the end of this process, there would be actual freedom and happiness that were completely new for me, and it would be so good. I felt a happiness I’d not experienced before, and a pleasure I’d not experienced before. I realized that pleasure is a holy and sacred experience, and I began to change.

The next week I bought a French press and a bag of coffee, and I have rarely missed a morning cup since. That is maybe around four thousand cups of coffee since that day, and I have never once taken a cup of coffee for granted. It is always a pleasure and what gets me out of bed in the morning. It is a daily reminder that I took my power and pleasure back and that my life can be delicious and energizing and just plain feel good and that that is one of the main points of being alive. It is very much a daily healing ritual for me.

When I got home from drinking that coffee in the park, I took the card from my dad out of the garbage and tore it into pieces then emptied the basket into the bin outside to be taken away for good. I would no longer let people bully me about my journey, and I would no longer be shamed out of pleasure. I would no longer keep commandments that kept me from joy. I would choose joy myself and whatever that looked like for me personally.

Of course, it didn’t change completely that day and it was a journey of years to unlearn and learn from scratch, but that was the first time I felt a glimpse of my Big Life, that pleasure of living on my own terms, enjoying the pleasures of feeling good in my body and life, and being part of the messy gorgeous human race.

Coffee with my partner at the time after going to a palace in Rome

Yesterday was Mother’s Day and my youngest kid who is in graduate school at Harvard sent me a Dunkin Doughnuts gift card because she said it’s such an institution in Massachusetts. She said her order is an iced coffee with oat milk and butter pecan syrup, so, I ordered that exact thing so I could show her I love her. The coffee so reminded me of that first coffee in the park all those years ago, mid-level coffee with too much sweet, and that sort of scented candle flavoring, but that tasted like it was spiked with pure dopamine and you accidently love with all your heart and will go back to it again and again, and you feel like life is good. I could totally see why that was her go to, and now, along with the iced caramel macchiato I get when I want to feel that sense of freedom again, I think I’ll make this my go to for feeling love and connection to my loved ones.

Coffee taught me that YOU decide what is good and bad for your body. It taught me that pleasure is holy. It taught me that there is joy in doing a daily ritual that most people in your society do, too, and that you have that pleasure and ritual in common. It taught me that you can start the day with pleasure because that is one of the main points of life. It taught me that community and connection over a simple ritual like having coffee together can change your life. It taught me that haters are going to hate, and you can just pitch all that negativity into the garbage and enjoy your day. It taught me that I can choose. I taught me that there are many delights in this world and many connections to be had, and that those are some of the main points of living a Big Life.