It’s been a crazy year. I hope everyone is still thriving physically, mentally and spiritually. In this issue of Allure, the beautiful Alicia Keys tells us how she’s been adjusting to the changes in her own routine. She also gives us guidance into prioritizing self care with some examples of her own. Check out the interview she does in the Allure and photos taken by Daria Kobayashi Ritch.

Her daily routine

“I try to wake up at 5:30,” she says. “I want some things before the day goes away and then I can never get it back. I love to do my meditation early and usually piggyback that with a workout. I’ll be done maybe at 6:30, 6:45, and then I’ll start to wake the kids up. It takes me a hundred years to wake them up. We leave the house about 7:40 and bring them to school. I usually have a bunch of calls. Then I clear all the business stuff by about two or three.” An afternoon in Keys’s household is refreshingly mundane: Pick up the kids, maybe basketball practice, homework, dinner, bath, bed. “Then I have adult time,” she says. “A lot of the times I will work. I will create until eight, nine, ten, sometimes later.”

How COVID has affected her

“I’ve been traveling with music since I was 17 or 18. There’s really never been a time when I’ve just been still. It’s a new experience and it feels really, really, really good, in that sense of being still and solid with my family unit and being much more present.”

On creating space

 “Man, if I can’t find my own space. We all need our own space, just period. No matter what you do or what your job is, you need your own space. [I need space] to create the lyrics or the idea or the concept, or even just to have the confidence.”

On creating rituals

“I love the idea of creating these rituals and [learning] how we can make new ones. I started with the rituals that I use in my life, like lighting a candle. If I feel like I don’t know what to do, I will say, ‘I am clear on all the decisions I have to make’ and I will call it forth. I will say that to myself and that becomes my mantra.”

How this past year has subtracted human connection

“It’s so easy to never leave your comfort zone. It’s true. We have access to everything. And yet, from this digital world where we can literally see anyone in any place in any country at any time, and we have access to it all, how do you interface when you’re on the other side of the screen? It’s deep. It might be a song. Let me see if that’s a song…. I need to write that. It’s called, ‘The Other Side of the Screen.’“