How I Reclaimed My Ability to Sleep Without Shame
Becoming a parent taught me that sleep deprivation is deeply uncool
If I could give just one piece of advice to my 20-year-old self, it would be to go the fuck to sleep.
When I became a mother, at age 31, I cursed myself for every hour of sleep I had ever denied myself for no good reason. So much sleep squandered in my 20s because I fancied myself a Busy and Potentially Important Person. I was trying to make my mark, trying to launch a company while bartending to pay rent, and everyone knows that entrepreneurs can’t be bothered with such frivolous pastimes as sleeping.
In my early 20s, I got home from my Sunday bartending shift at 3 a.m. and arose at 7 a.m. to start my workweek. I stayed up too late on Fridays — because I was young and didn’t yet get hangovers — and stayed up too late most other days just because.
But still, when I did sleep, I did so with gusto. I routinely enjoyed uninterrupted, untroubled hours of sleep, all stacked up one after the other. I made up for staying up too late by sleeping in on the weekends, a luxury I didn’t yet know to cherish.
I have, in fact, always been partial to sleep. As a child, I never protested my 9 p.m. bedtime; in fact, I even continued to honor it through my freshman…
