As a young adult in college with a part-time job I inevitably became an insomniac.  I used my sleepless nights to complete projects and do homework and just crashed on the weekends. Come Monday morning I was no more rested than I felt on Friday. But this is college and young adult life, right? Fast forward to my 30’s when I moved from Belize to Taiwan, I became a new mom and started a PhD and settled in an 8-year long toxic relationship all in the same year. 

Sleep deprivation at this point was not an option, it was a way of life. I was “new-mom” tired and “PhD student” tired but when I got the chance to sleep I was still not rested. Add that to the stress of living in a foreign country with a huge language and cultural gap! Nutritional deficiencies from living on a “student budget” in an unnecssarily extended doctoral program encouraged by an incompent system compounded this effect.  The cherry on top was the nervous system dysregulation brought on by Stocholm Syndrome disguised as “radical acceptance” of the life I was chosing to live.

My health declined to the point where I couldn’t even recognise myself in the mirror; hardly functioning and waking up to a blaring alarm clock is in-fact the most brutal way to wake up after a night of non-restorative sleep. I was exhausted at a cellular level. 

Then came the diagnosis, Fibromyalgia. Incurabe but treatable. I was devastated and relieved at the same time. 

This also explained so much of my other overwhelming symptoms. I tried to find any means of relief, especially sleep since this was a great way to manage a lot of the symptoms. I still have bad days and that’s alright, I’m OK though because I know now what is important to my recovery. I try to make the beginning of each day start as best as possible. I changed my lifestyle and did a ton of research and made some interesting connections. 

I want to share it all here in the hope that I can help someone else like me get some…