Illustrations by Monica Garwood
FOR 20 YEARS, I had insomnia. I’d wake at all hours, tossing and turning until I finally managed to drift off again, rising red-eyed in the morning. It all felt normal, and just about manageable. Then, in the space of six weeks or so, I lost my father, my stepfather, and my beloved puppy. My insomnia changed. Exhausted by grief and the huge volume of administrative tasks that accompany bereavements, I’d usually fall asleep without a problem, but I’d wake at 1 or 2 a.m. with my mind racing—and find myself unable to doze off again. When my eyes opened, I had a six-hour stretch of wide-awake darkness ahead of me.
At first I worked harder on my sleep hygiene. No alcohol, limited caffeine, no screens in the evening, plenty of outdoor exercise during the day. To no avail. I popped melatonin capsules and CBD gummies from the health food store. I diffused chamomile oil in my bedroom, bought a weighted blanket, pulled on special bed socks. None of these weapons were powerful enough to win the endless battle. I was exhausted, physically and emotionally, and growing increasingly anxious about what the lack of sleep would do to my mind and body. Would I gain weight? Lose brain cells? Would insomnia eventually kill me?
Out of desperation as well as curiosity, I began researching how insomniac women throughout history handled their malady. I read about Laura Cereta, a 15th-century Italian writer, and the mid-20th-century painter Lee Krasner. I didn’t have much trouble finding sleepless women to study—and instead of dying of dementia and heart attacks, as today’s headlines threaten, many survived and thrived, using their nights to study, work, draw, walk, stargaze, write. Some intrepid souls went outside to observe the nocturnal creatures. Some burned off creative energy. And some enjoyed the only period of time when everyone else left them alone.
I was exhausted, physically and emotionally, and growing increasingly anxious about what the lack of sleep would do to my mind and body.
Knowing that so many women had made creative profit from this so-called night watch emboldened me. I wondered what might happen if, rather than torment myself, I used that sleepless time to do something fulfilling. So the next restless night, I got out of bed and tried to think of this quiet time as an adventure. What could I discover?
As I pottered around—sketching, writing, reading—I noticed that the way I thought and felt at night was different from the way I thought and felt during the day. I was more open to new connections and ideas. If I ran into a thorny creative problem during the day, I could find a solution in these quiet nighttime hours. Moreover, I noticed that after these more productive nights, my days felt less weary. I looked back at my lyrics, poems, and sketches and felt a swell of pride that took the edge off my fatigue.
Always down for more research, I dug into the latest science of the awake-at-night brain and discovered an article called “The Mind After Midnight” in an academic journal. A group of sleep scientists had begun asking questions about how the brain works at night, when the prefrontal cortex—adept at organizing, planning, assessing, judging, and juggling tasks, and known to be more active in women—does its job less effectively. Could this explain why I felt more expansive and less self-critical during these hours? I took it as a cue to get even better acquainted with my nighttime self.
Vowing to spend some of my wakeful hours outside, I bought a pair of astronomy binoculars, and on clear nights I lay in the grass and watched the sky. Looking upward calmed me. I felt connected to those I had lost. Inspired, I took an astronomy class so I could learn about the stars revolving above. As it happened, I discovered that a trained night-walking guide lived only a few miles from me, and she was leading group hikes in the countryside nearby. Together we all walked silently for hours, in complete darkness, through the remote English countryside. No flashlights or phones were allowed, lest they ruin our night vision. She taught us to walk confidently in pitch blackness, to notice all the senses that spring to life when our eyes can’t function. We listened more acutely, and since we couldn’t see anything, our sense of smell intensified—damp earth, night-scented flowers, crushed grass.
I loved the communal intimacy of these night walks, but I couldn’t call up the group every time I woke at 2 a.m., so I started venturing out on my own. I’d get dressed, grab a large stick, and take off over the darkened fields. At first, I’d startle at every sound. Eventually I realized that the scuffling was only mice or trees blowing in the wind. Frosty full-moon nights quickly became my favorite. When I got back to bed, I usually fell asleep within minutes and woke five or six hours later without a trace of fatigue. Instead I was jubilant, the way we feel the day after an incredible party, a little tired but full of wonderful memories of the old friends we saw, the new people we met, the food, decor, and conversation. I was merely ambling over fields, but the lit sky, the otherworldliness, the mysterious sounds and scents—they thrilled me. I not only craned my neck to stare at the sky but turned to the ground underneath my feet, home to eerily green-gleaming glowworms or moths with pink-rimmed wings. On bad-weather nights, I took my imaginative night brain out for a ramble, writing poems and songs that my judgmental day brain would have discouraged, combining words in ways I might not have dared to during daylight hours.
AFTER SEVERAL MONTHS, I started to sleep through the night, often for seven or eight hours straight. The first time I awoke and saw light outside, I felt a stab of disappointment. What had happened to my nocturnal me time? I’d missed the moon and the stars, the creatures and the silence and the night perfumes. I’d slept like a normal person. My body relished the feeling of being well rested for once— but at the same time, I confess, it felt a little dull.
I still have broken nights from time to time. And I actually look forward to them—as holidays of sorts, when I can rediscover the world in darkness if I so choose, and reacquaint myself with the secretive, night-wired version of me.
Annabel Abbs-Streets is the author of the new book Sleepless: Unleashing the Subversive Power of the Night Self.