Dark Night of The Soul - How to Give Yourself a Grace Period During Hard Times

From the Heart with Rachel Brathen

This week’s episode is coming to you from a sleep-deprived, exhausted Mama, who has gone through a dark night of the soul (or several) with a beautiful baby boy who refuses to sleep for more than 30 minutes a night!

With Bear unwilling to sleep, or sleeping so lightly that the slightest move wakes him again, Rachel has not had a proper night's sleep in several weeks. They’ve tried everything from sleep coaching, acupressure points, lavender massages, soothing, coaxing, but nothing seems to work.

What do you do when you have gone several weeks with little to no sleep, and in the rare instances you do have the chance to sleep you can’t? What do you do when you develop Momsomnia - when your nervous system is so wired that it refuses to allow you to rest when you have the slightest chance?

You ask for help, and you give yourself grace. You take the pressure off to get dressed, to show up, to put on a face like everything is fine. You ask for help from your partner, your family, your community. You drop all expectations of yourself and you do your best to survive. You allow yourself to have chocolate for breakfast and you add your supplements where you can. You call it a grace period and you allow it to be just that, a period where you have compassion for yourself and you allow yourself to receive all the help that is offered.

Tune in for an episode that will remind you that it truly takes a village, to give yourself immense grace when things get hard, to allow yourself to remove the mask to feel your feelings, and the importance of asking for support when you need it most.

Poem - “The Grace of Mothers,” by Jillian Mackenzie https://www.instagram.com/p/C1cNgAgORLU/?img_index=5 @ancestral.mother

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