Like newborn babies and wild teenagers, my sleep life has been fractured [1] and unpredictable well into my adult life. I could blame it on my parents — they have always stayed up late and never enforced a strict bedtime on me or my siblings — but the truth is more complicated than that. I have anxiety [2] and I'm an overachiever, a dangerous combination that means I'm either up late working, letting off steam after a long day (read: getting some alone time without the kids), or overthinking about all the things [3] that have gone wrong in my life, or, you know, could happen in the future.
Enter: 2020. When the COVID-19 shutdown first happened last spring, I treated the extra time at home [4] as even more excuse to stay up late. I didn't have to get up early to drive to work, so why did it matter if I rolled out of bed at the last second to start my day? But as time wore on (and on and on), I started sleeping less and less. The scary news headlines and overwhelming sense of doom [5] had me up tossing and turning — and left me irritable, stressed, and straight up unpleasant to be around. So, I started setting my alarm — to go to sleep.
For the first time, I made sleep a priority. No matter what I was doing, when 9:30 p.m. rolled around, I would take a shower, put on pajamas, and cuddle up in bed [6] with a good book or a TV show. Lights out happened at 11 p.m. on the dot, so I could get eight hours of sleep before my 7 a.m. wake up time (a full hour before I was supposed to be at work!). I forced myself to be strict, to the point that I would sometimes annoy my husband by turning off the TV halfway through an episode.
My kids were already used to a bedtime ("do as I say, not what I do" strongly applied here), so getting myself on track [8] just felt like the right thing to do. It wasn't easy — I had to take melatonin for months if I had any hope of getting some decent shuteye — but it was so worth it. My mood changed so much. Suddenly, I was able to (gasp!) wake up before my alarm, wait patiently through mid-morning tantrums, yell at my kids a lot less, and even have the energy to start working out again.
If 2020 taught me anything, it's the importance of taking care of your body — and listening to it when it's tired.
It's not just my mood that has benefited from more sleep. Research has shown that not getting enough sleep puts you at risk [9] of serious medical conditions, including obesity, heart disease, and diabetes, and it shortens your life expectancy. Uh, no thanks!
Sometimes, not getting enough sleep is impossible to avoid — looking at you newborn moms, those who are sick, and those who just discovered the joys of Schitt's Creek and are up late binge-watching. But when it is in your control, going to bed early [10] and consistently can make all the difference in your health, both physically and mentally. Think of it as the ultimate form of self-care. If 2020 taught me anything, it's the importance of taking care of your body — and listening to it when it's tired. Sleep well, friends. You won't regret it.