How I Learned to Love My Insomnia

Motherhood taught my body how to not sleep.

Before those newborn days, it never occurred to my body that it might stay awake at night. I never thought about sleep or the possibility of not getting it. I just slept. On schedule and in luscious droves, sleep rolled in like clouds every night.

Then, I became pregnant. And after I gave birth quicker than the doctor could draw her epidural needle, the baby broke up the clouds.

From the beginning, I hated the advice "sleep when the baby's sleeping."  More like, don't sleep when the baby's sleeping, because she's going to be up again in three second anyway, and a snooze won't be fulfilling so fuck it, we're going to stay awake, and when the baby wakes up, we're going to die inside even more.

These thoughts would be like an overbright, pulsing sun, scaring the sleep clouds away.

But as the baby grew and her sleep got more regular, the sleeplessness sort of stuck around. It seemed that once my body found this way to glitch, it kept it. We'll do stress like this, my body said. And I hated it.

The pandemic delivered the next major episode of sleeplessness; I don't need to explain to you why.

I remember my daughter sitting at the dining room table with her laptop on remote first grade. I remember her classmates' funny six-year-old banter, her teacher's heavenly ability to manage a Zoom classroom, and NPR (while it was still federally funded) on in the background.

And I remember, after another shitty night, tears streaming down the cheeks of my expressionless face as I watched my daughter, the inside of my throat like a knotted, burning rope.

"What's wrong mama?"

"Nothing. Mama's just tired."

Because of my insomnia, I started seeing a therapist.

She would work with me on it, but also referred me to a sleep specialist. The whole time I saw the sleep specialist, the insomnia got worse. Being self-conscious about sleep repels sleep–even the sleep specialist warned me about this. But, stick it out. Try so many things, including not caring. Stop caring about not sleeping, she said!

Once I stopped seeing the sleep specialist, I slept so well.

But I kept my therapist. I told her I was up at night thinking. About everything. And being upset about thinking about everything. And fretting over how dreadful the next day would be.

She told me that our minds crank out <insert very large number> of thoughts per day. Our minds are like barking dogs, she said. When you yell at a barking dog, does it work?

Here's what you do instead: Pat yourself on the head like the barking dog you are. "There you go," you say to yourself/the dog, "barking again."

"There you go, barking again."

With that—and lots of meditation— I began to soften. When I was awake in the middle of the night, me and the dark windows and my incessant angst again, I had to be nice. No more getting pissed. No more turning my back on myself in anger when I was in pain. 

I began treating myself like a small child, afraid of the dark. It's okay, it's okay. I'm with you. We're here together. It's not that scary after all, babe. Here, we'll read together.

It got better, much better, but not gone.

Once, I went to my doctor and started crying when the conversation turned to sleep. She prescribed an anti-anxiety medication. It was a relief in the moment, but I knew I would never take it.

Why didn't I ever take it? Why do I never want to take sleep medication?

First, there's nothing all that wrong with me. I'm sensitive, and I tend to get stuck in loops. For many of us it's worse, or much worse, and for those of us who need and benefit from drugs, yes queen. 

But I don't take sleep meds because I've learned, and continue to learn, that insomnia is my teacher. Sorry to be that annoying yoga teacher, but it's true. 

Along with meditation, it has taught me how to take good care of myself, even when I want to tear myself out of this skin suit I'm forced to be awake in at 3:12a.m. 

Insomnia has taught me to bear the exhaustion with lightness, knowing it will pass.

And every time, while lying awake in bed, I put my hand on my own tired heart—every time I drop the specifics and just feel how fucking frustrating life can be—I feel so much tender compassion I could die. And I sort of do, but then I'm reborn as someone with a slightly larger heart.

Learning to cope with the day after insomnia was a whole other ball of earwax.

In the beginning, insomnia days just made me wish they were gone. I hated an insomnia day. I complained about how exhausted I was and snapped at whoever was closest to me (including inanimate objects) because of how exhausted I was. And I considered that day a waste. 

But eventually, I learned to soften during the day, too. 

I learned to be quiet on the days I was deathly tired. Go slow. Do yoga nidra. Even do a workout; lift a weight like an emo zombie. Do it all, but move with it in quiet. And hover, awake, in the depths of the tiredness. It's sort of beautifully trippy there, like the mossy crevasse of a gnarly tree trunk.

With this growing acceptance, I came to realize the altered state of exhaustion is very much alive, and not a waste at all.

Because on those days, I'm living close to my pain. I'm living on the knife's edge. At any moment, I can burst into tears. I can fuck up royally. Those days, I have no choice but to wear my vulnerability like an uncomfortable outfit. Now, I see those days as difficult, but sacred. Why? Because I remember how much I have to pay attention and be gentle so that I can take care of myself.

I recently took a class on the Tantric view of Hindu Goddesses. In this tradition, Goddesses are the divine energy, or shakti, of the world. And there's a goddess for everything.

Dhumavati is the Goddess of Disappointment and Letting Go. She is the crone, the witch (but un-Instagrammable ), the widow, the forsaken, the crazy old lady who pushes a shopping cart full of rat carcasses through a trash-laden parking lot, or whatever. She in accompanied by a crow, a symbol of misfortune.

"From a worldly point of view," writes Sally Kempton in Awakening Shakti: The Transformative Power of the Goddesses of Yoga, "Dhumavati stands for despair, sadness, and failure… ...[but] without passing through Dhumavati's winnowing basket, we remain trapped by our dreams of success and our fear of loss, especially the losses that come with age and sickness. With her grace, we can mine the exquisite wisdom hidden in the heart of life's most difficult moments."

And what is this exquisite wisdom? Pain belongs. Difficulty belongs. Suffering belongs. Death belongs, too. 

It's like my favorite Buddhist sutta, the Upajjhatthana Sutta, that says, in short, and in part:

I am of the nature to grow old. I am of the nature to have ill health. I am of the nature to die. All that is dear to me and everyone I love is of the nature to change.

So, drop the illusion that life should be easy or unchanging, that we shouldn't encounter illness, old age, or suffering in ourselves or the people we love.

When I don't hide from or fear or "should" these difficulties to bits, surrender courses through my body, a deeper peace settles. This is Dhumavati's wisdom.

Standing in her dark light, the fear becomes the object, not the point of view. Hence, I feel less afraid.

To be clear: I would still rather sleep. 

I don't take sleep meds, but I do take hormones to help me sleep during perimenopause, and a dreamy magnesium tincture to help with headaches, and I've been known to pop a CBN gummy before bed. If I really needed to take a Rx for mental or physical health I would. And I'm not saying that folks who take medication for insomnia just need to love themselves.

I'm saying that I love my insomnia because, for me, it has shown me where I need to change. It has forced me to change. It is one of my soft spots, a tender area through which I touch compassion for myself and others caught in its grip. Or any grip, really. Insomnia is my teacher, and when it visits me, I grumble. But I open the door.