Sleep Isn’t Simple Anymore

I used to love sleep.

It was easy.
Natural.
Something my body just did.

Now, it feels… complicated.

People talk about sleep like it’s basic self-care.
Like it’s something you can fix with a routine, a tea, a better habit.

But grief doesn’t work like that.

After Kahlia died, I was scared of sleep.

Not in a dramatic way, in a quiet, underlying way that sat in my body.

Because sleep meant waking up. And waking up meant remembering.

There’s a moment, when you wake, before your mind fully catches up.

A split second where everything is still as it was.

And then it hits.

She’s gone.

Again.

I couldn’t face that moment. So, I avoided it.

I went to bed late.
Stayed up longer than I needed to.
Kept myself just tired enough to fall asleep without thinking too much.

And then I’d wake at 3am.

Wide awake.
Body alert.
Mind already halfway there.

This went on for months.

No one really tells you that grief can rewire your sleep.

Some people can’t sleep at all.
Some sleep all the time.
Some drift in and out.
Some wake in panic.
Some don’t want to sleep because it feels like letting go.

There’s no “normal”.

Just different ways the body tries to cope with something it doesn’t understand.

Now, sleep is still… unsettled.

Some nights are okay.
Some aren’t.

I feel like I’m always slightly behind, carrying a quiet sleep deficit that never quite catches up.

And then there are the dreams.

I want to dream of her. I crave it.

To see her.
To hear her.
To have even a version of her, even if it’s not real.

But dreams don’t always give you what you’re hoping for.

Sometimes they turn. Sometimes they become something else entirely. And you wake up not comforted, but shaken.

There’s something almost cruel about that. That even in sleep, where you might hope for softness, grief can still find you.

And yet… Sleep matters. Not in a “you should be doing better” kind of way. But because your body is carrying so much.

Grief is physical. It sits in your nervous system, your muscles, your breath, your energy. Sleep is one of the only times your body gets a chance to soften that load, even slightly.

So maybe this isn’t about fixing sleep. Maybe it’s about protecting it, where you can.

Letting it be messy.
Letting it be inconsistent.
Letting it come in fragments if that’s all your body allows.

If you’re not sleeping the way you used to, there’s nothing wrong with you. If you’re exhausted all the time, that makes sense. If sleep feels heavy, or scary, or unpredictable…that makes sense too.

I don’t know if sleep ever becomes what it was before. I’m not there yet.

But I’m starting to see it differently. Not as something I’ve lost. But as something I’m slowly relearning.

In a body that has been through something it was never meant to hold.

And maybe that’s enough for now.