What doesn't help me sleep
Sometimes there is no sweet spot
What doesn’t help me sleep
thinking about sleep / 1 mg of melatonin / 3 mg of melatonin / a nibble of 5 mg melatonin dissolvable tabs / lights off / tricking myself by leaving the lights on / a lavender eye mask / a 7-step “wind down” routine / calculating how long I’ve been awake / calculating my new estimated amount of sleep until my alarm goes off / L-theanine / L-theanine with ashwagandha / magnesium citrate / magnesium glycinate / magnesium L-threonate / Benadryl / a weighted blanket (sorry Ashlee Gadd) / daytime naps / phone bedtimes / blue light glasses / anything “sleep hygiene” related / morning sunshine before 10am / a consistent wake up time / low impact workouts / high intensity workouts / essential oils (sorry Emily) / the Sleep with Me podcast / sleep apps / the news / the election / that stupid thing I said in 6th grade / un-replied to text messages / pretty much any conventional sleep wisdom or tips / definitely not the recommendation from your friend of a friend who swears by this $79 proprietary blend of adaptogenic herbs that he or she gets commission on
Sometimes sleep (or work or your health or your kids’ eating habits) is just hard no matter how many things you do or try. Sometimes there is no sweet spot. In these cases, may grace guide our days—and sleepless nights.
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This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Sleepless."
I’ve been thinking lately about how each of us has a particular set of struggles and big questions that accompany them that just seem to follow us around no matter what we do to try to fix them. They’re the things that maybe we can find some sort of relief from, and maybe we’ll have a breakthrough on in 5 or 15 or 50 years, but also maybe we end up carrying them forever. And I think it’s normal to feel frustrated and hopeless and overwhelmed and exasperated by these things, but I also sometimes wonder if some of the distress that accompanies them might be relieved by making some measure of peace with the fact that this hard thing may just be ours to carry for the long haul. Just some thoughts I’ve been mulling over (that ironically I’m typing out because I can’t sleep).
May grace guide our days, and sleepless nights. UGH I've had a sleepless week and felt this so deep in my bones I could cry.