The Shape of Ease

Ah, who doesn’t love the feel and smell of fresh linens on the bed?

Cool cotton, smooth and crisp against the skin, holding the scent of sunshine and air. I remember lying there, limbs loose, breathing easy, my mind blissfully free of anything heavier than deciding whether to read another chapter or drift into a nap.

As someone who now struggles to get consistent sleep, I often find myself chasing that lost sensation—longing for the simplicity of sliding into rest, of trusting my body to ease naturally into quiet.

I do as much as possible to set the right tone for a good night’s rest: dim lights, gentle rituals, soft music, even softer bedding. The careful arrangement of pillows, a cool room, the faint scent of lavender—each choice deliberate, an offering to the elusive gods of sleep.

No clock in the bedroom. That’s by design. I don’t want to watch the minutes pass or feel the pressure of a night slipping away. Timekeeping doesn’t help when your body won’t cooperate. It only makes the silence louder.

I invest probably 9 to 10 hours just to get a total of 4 to 5 hours of rest. Not sleep—rest. There’s a difference. Some nights, the hours come in fractured pieces. Other times, they don’t come at all. But I still do the rituals. The lavender. The tea. The absence of screens. The softness of everything.

Because what I’m really chasing isn’t just sleep. It’s ease. That quiet sense of being held by the night instead of fighting it.

Frequent awakenings disrupt my sleep. Sometimes it’s pain, sometimes nothing at all—just my body insisting I rise, as if it’s forgotten how to stay still. I turn, shift, wait. Try not to look at my phone. Try not to calculate how many hours are left until morning.

The goal isn’t perfection—it’s permission. Permission to rest in pieces. To gather what slivers of ease I can. To count comfort instead of hours.

It’s been 35 years of living in a body that doesn’t follow the rules. A body that wakes like a newborn, yes—but also aches like an old one. That forgets how to rest, how to regulate, how to just be.

There is no baby. No end in sight. Just this unpredictable, beautiful, maddening body that wakes me like clockwork and reshapes every corner of my life.

But still—I try. I soften the bedding. I dim the lights. I chase ease, even if it only comes in moments.

What I do for myself is build my schedule around my sleep. Not the sleep I wish I had, but the sleep I actually get. I no longer force myself into early mornings or commitments that ignore my reality.

If I need a nap in the afternoon, I take it without apology. I’ve stopped performing wellness for other people’s comfort. Instead, I honor the rhythms of a body that has carried me through more than most will ever understand.

I’m always awake at sunrise, and I stick with it, no matter how much sleep I’ve gotten. There’s something about that hour—the soft hush before the world stirs—that feels like a promise I still want to keep. Even if my body is tired, even if my mind feels thin around the edges, I meet the morning.

It’s not about optimism. It’s about presence. About greeting the day on my own terms, even if I had to crawl my way there.

Some mornings, the light is enough. Just that. Just light.

I’ve traded the ease of getting out of bed for the ease of accepting the new day.

It’s not the same kind of ease I once knew.

But it’s real.

And it’s mine.

This story lives in Compass Point 4 — What Has Meaning Now?

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Shape of Ease