“Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer. Let the beauty of what we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kiss the ground.”
-Rumi
My insomnia came back to visit last week.
After four months of throwing every integrative, natural, holistic, alternative remedy I could find at it with some minor overall improvements and some sporadic deep sleeps, it came back full force, leaving me lying awake while my two small babies slept soundly, wondering if I am broken forever.
I lay there while my mind morphs into a torture chamber of what ifs and deep rabbit holes of all my failures and ways, I’m doing and have done, it wrong.
I start to find myself pleading with this thing that keeps me awake. Pleading for it to take it easy on me, just for tonight, maybe it could just let me get 3 or 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep, then maybe I would feel ok.
It’s this cave in the center of my chest. Like a weight crushing my heart. A deep ache. All the unfelt and unprocessed heartbreaks of my life rushing the to surface of my body and mind each time I lie down in my bed.
I start to drift off into the relief of the dark space between days but the faintest creaking of the floor boards or my husband moving next to me jolts my body awake with the electricity of vigilance and I am back, mind spinning.
Because I have cultivated for over a decade now, a deep ability to watch my mind and observe my thoughts, even in the darkest moments there is always a part of me that is watching, without getting caught in the momentum of the story.
Even my insomnia has become something for me to practice with. I am grateful for it as it has invited me into a new level of awareness around my thoughts and my mind. As well as given me a deep empathy I didn’t have before for people who struggle with insomnia, anxiety, depression, and incessant mental chatter. Which, let’s be totally honest, is all humans.
And so, I lean in.
I lean in to the crushing cave in my heart. A lot of nights I just lie there awake and crying, until I finally fall into a fitful sleep around 4am.
Sometimes it’s a silent, big-rolling-hot-tears-running-down-the-face cry. Sometimes it’s a breathless sob. Sometimes it’s a cry that starts and stops. But there’s no story, most of the time, just old heartbreaks being felt.
I eat my mid-night snack I have religiously set on my bedside table night after night in hopes that my insomnia is blood sugar related. I take my Chinese herbs from my acupuncturist. I have CBD. I have my magnesium powder. I have my mushroom tinctures and valerian root. I have my cortisol manager supplement. I prioritize napping during the day to practice winding down. I avoid anything that sends my nervous system into fight or flight. I don’t use blue light an hour before bed and wear my blue blockers if I do. I take a hot salt bath. I got to my appointments with incredible healers and practitioners that genuinely care about me. I eat well and often throughout the day. I spend time in the sunshine and outside first thing in the morning and throughout the day. I do slow strength training and gentle walking.
And all of these things are good for me, no doubt about it. But I am realizing; my insomnia is not something to be solved or fixed. It is not something to battle against and declare war on.
When we fight against something we give it more energy. If you push against something it will push back. It’s an energetic law that seems conceptually easy to understand but practically almost impossible in our world where “fighting for what we believe in” is praised, taught and modeled.
So the only thing that actually helps me get to sleep is opening to the pain I feel in the middle of the night. It’s crying. I read somewhere that crying is actually a really good way to release cortisol, so man oh man, am I releasing some cortisol.
It’s the going into the crushing cave in my heart and saying: “I see you. I’m here with you. I’ve got you. You do whatever you need to do. I won’t leave you.”
And I can feel how the insomnia came to teach how me to do this, as well as to bring to my attention these unhealed heartbreaks I have been walking around with.
I almost bypassed them again with all the “solutions” and “fixing” I have been focused on, but the Truth is the weight in my chest is ready to be released. And this is simply what it takes to release it. Real healing is painful because you are feeling all the places you have skirted around the Truth.
The truth of all the times I’ve abandoned myself in hopes of attention or love or connection. All the times I was hurt but didn’t show it or allow it. All the times I needed someone to say, “I’ve got you. I’m right here,” but I was alone. All the times my heart has been broken by teasing or miscommunication or misunderstanding. This is what is asking to be healed and felt and processed.
Rumi says: Today like every day we wake up empty and frightened. This morning I wake up empty and frightened. I get out of bed to Maya crying. I move slowly. The light of the morning always, thank God, making the night’s darkness seem a little less intense.
Rumi says: Don’t open the door to the study and start reading. Take down the dulcimer. I am learning that the last thing I need to do after a night spent frightened and being emptied out, is to start ‘doing’ and ‘working’. This is Rumi’s prescription for dropping all the complicated burdens we haul around and the despair we often feel.
Being as close as I can to the dirt is the way I take down the dulcimer. My way of plucking out a tune on a simple stringed instrument is to get my bare feet on the grass or sit beneath a tree and scratch the matted leaves with a stick, uncovering the miraculous process of dying life turning into living earth.
Preferably I get naked outside and pee onto the earth, watching my body’s water flow down in rivulets and sinking in to the soil.
I go slow. Much slower and duller than my mind would prefer or is convinced is prudent with all the stuff I should be doing. With all the responsibilities I have.
I lie still on the ground, feeling perfectly planted there, and look up at the sky and remember how blessed and perfect this path of life is. I am both animal and divine, after all. Animals need sleep and dirt under their feet. Divinity sees divine perfection and holiness in it all.
Rumi says: Let the beauty of what you love, be what you do. There are hundreds ways to kiss the ground.
I stay in my center. I love my children. I love myself and my inner child that is so scared of living sometimes she must keep me awake with her vigilance and fear. I hold myself and hold those I love. I lean towards the pain instead of away from it and say thank you to it all, kissing the ground with each step.
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