Take time to invite rest in, and savor the art of sleep.

By Melissa Errico

Sleep for me has always been a time of “oops.” As a child, I always had one more idea at night, and would stay up indulging in a series of activities that would come into my mind. Another task for homework. Another spin of my favorite vinyl. A secretive hour listening to Dr. Ruth. My own mother tended to be creative at night; in fact, we had a saying in our house: “It’s midnight, it’s time to move furniture.”

Cut to motherhood. I was determined to have children with bedtimes who enjoyed sleeping and who would be tucked in like a Norman Rockwell painting of the perfect family. I would lead my children in a ritual of baths and books and kisses and coverlets. I would teach them to let go.

When they were really little, this worked: In fact, I was so exhausted each day that I fell asleep myself. As they got older, my natural insomnia came gradually back. I didn’t refer to it as that—I thought of it more as creativity, or energy, or hyperactivity. But the house settled each night without a drama, and quickly. One irrepressible daughter may have her reading light on a bit later than the others, but even today, all three like their evening rituals: doing face masks and wearing cute pajamas.

And alas…everyone is asleep, and I am awake. Husband snoring. Kids dreaming. And there I am, eyes open. I don’t know why, but it seems I need two hours from the moment the house gets quiet to become calm. I am a singer and started touring more and more, usually away three days to a week. Hotels and time zones complicated my already not-ideal natural rhythms. Sleep was starting to define my days in sneaky ways. I would struggle to fall asleep and then be groggy the next day. By 3PM, I hadn’t done as much as I wanted to. 4PM. 5PM…. Night seemed to approach too soon.

Then one day, I took a book off my shelf called Say Good Night to Insomnia. I’m not doing a review of that (terrific) book, but I will say that the title alone is the point: Make friends with the night. Say hello to it and make it good. You are the hostess of your own sleep party. Greet it at the door. Say, you are welcome here. Put some Figaro Apothecary bath salts in a tub. Get the soft pajamas that your teenagers wear. I didn’t know to turn my thermostat down. The weighted blanket that makes me overheat? Throw it away. I’m finding my groove. I loved the cooling sheets I had bought (even my husband noticed them right away).

Then, the other night, that irrepressible daughter came into my room just as I was trying to figure out a second pair of sheets I had bought. I told her they were designed to help you sleep even better, though this mystified her—as I also was trying to figure out how they plug into the wall. They mystified me a little too, frankly. We followed the directions and plugged into the electrical outlet, apparently to tap into some pole that is underneath our house and will connect my bed sheets to the electrons in the Earth. My bed, the theory goes, would be swimming in a current of soporific electrons. 

My daughter felt I had gone too far. “I thought you were sleeping super-well lately,” she queried. I was, but I just thought I’d try this. She said it was a TikTok thing—and that I’d fallen into a trap. I told a friend about it, and he said it might be a placebo, but that those are powerful too. Maybe self-deception and self-nurturing are related.

The point, again, is that you can invite rest in. Maybe it’s taken me all this time to redirect my creative energy at night to the art of sleep. Maybe a little humor thrown at the problem is good for it. As I lie down to dream, I’m grateful to know that with some very methodical steps, like a good book and some cool products, I can find a better rhythm, not just in my music, and say good to night.