I’m stuck on how I should start this post or whether I should write it at all… how do you start a post about 4 years of the most difficult of your life that are not over yet…

Ok, so, let me try... these pretty mountains are basically a decoy to the not so pretty mountain I’ve been scaling in my own life... (How is that for a start?)

This “mountain” has affected EVERY part of my life. I’ve shared little about it on here because i) I don’t feel Instagram and even less, my profile, is a place to complain about personal problems and ii) I definitely don’t want to come across as a hypocrite... advocating a healthy and wholesome lifestyle,

coaching people to feel and live healthier lives, when I myself am facing an insurmountable health challenge.

But, in an effort to be more transparent, I will go ahead and share, in the hope that it will resonate with some of you and help you find support and encouragement.

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So, let’s jump right it!

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The last 4 years have been some of the most difficult of my life.

4 years ago, I began to battle with (very severe) chronic insomnia. 4 years ago, seemingly out of nowhere, I didn’t sleep a wink for 7 days in a row! What followed is 4 years + where I only averaged about 2 hours of sleep per night/day, and countless nights spend  lying awake, tossing and turning, basically going crazy... 

Let me tell you, sleeping that little literally messes up everything. In some ways, as I’m writing this I’m profoundly aware of how blessed I am to have 0 mental health issues, have had a healthy baby and pregnancy (even though it was especially exhausting on next to no sleep), to be in a loving relationship and to live in a beautiful and peaceful part of the world.  And yet, not sleeping literally robs you of your capacity to enjoy a lot of the blessings in your life…

This is because NOT SLEEPING FOR THAT LONG becomes a battle physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. It’s a form of torture, because after some time, your body and your brain almost shut down and you would

.....literally give anything for an ounce of sleep. It is almost unbearably. I can barely describe it, nor do I want to do that.  Unless you’ve been through it, there is no point of reference. It feels utterly hopeless. It makes you question your desire to live. It makes you wildly unproductive. You feel constantly hungry and hungover. Some times you can barely stand for long periods of time. You will almost certainly experience depression and suicidal thoughts, and sometimes I literally felt on deaths doorstep, wondering if my body would hold up.

Our body and brain is designed to sleep. In very simplistic terms, sleep helps out bodies and brains recover, detox, build muscle, form memory and rejuvenate. Sleep is basically the bedrock of health and longevity. So not getting it has been frightening in more ways than I can describe.

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 It has also been a spiritual battle. I’ve asked Jesus so many times to take this burden off me but he hasn’t answered my prayers the way I wanted or expected Him to. Sure, it has made me doubt my faith. But God is not a vending machine and I know that His ways and plans for me are so much bigger than I can imagine, and sometimes they involve profoundly difficult times. It says in the Bible that He allows us to go through hard times for our good and our growth (see Hebrews 12 and James 1 as examples) we don’t understand it but we need to trust because He promises that He has our ultimate flourishing in mind (Romans 8:28 – “and we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them”). I guess it’s kind of like ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’+++ and SO much more!!

While God has yet to answer my specific prayer for healing my insomnia, He has not been absent from me in the past 4 years. It is only by His grace that I have the strength and energy to get up out of bed each day and live, take care of Elleni, enjoy life, have the energy to workout, coach clients, slowly build my business and write my book. He answers my prayers for strength and energy daily. Most people that I tell about this are like: “wait what... I’d never know because you’re so full of energy...” I am by His grace! And yet, there is the side that people rarely see, where I basically resign myself to doing the bear minimum to keep myself and the family afloat.

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While I am still searching for solutions and different ways to help myself, i always try to seek God’s wisdom in it and ask Him to guide me. So far nothing that I’ve tried (sleeping pills, supplements, diets, doctors, acupuncture, chiropractors, naturopaths, CBTI, shrinks).

I know that God can heal me but that He has chosen not to at this time. I can’t be so proud to assume that I can heal myself. It’s easy to get puffed up on all I know about health and the body, so it’s been a very humbling experience for it all this knowledge not to “work”.

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This has certainly changed the trajectory of my life. It led me to quit my job as a lawyer and seek out the path of becoming a health coach. Ironically, it actually was also what triggered me to start this instagram account, even though through my worst days I could barely look at a screen, never mind produce content. Nor have I ever talked about this... ????

Yes, it is tough, as I said in my first post, it’s the biggest and most terrifying mountain I’ve ever had to scale. And yet, here I am, seeing past it every day and thankful for the wonderful things I can enjoy.

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Covid made many people feel fearful and like they had lost control over their lives, and rightly so, it showed us that so many of the things we take for granted can vanish basically overnight. That is what happened to me- the most basic thing, sleep, suddenly became a rare luxury!

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I’m profoundly aware of how little I can control and that’s a hard reality to embrace for someone who is a bit of a control freak. ???? But knowing that I have a God who loves me so much that he sacrificed his most precious possession to rescue me from a life of pain and suffering because he loves me and wants the ultimate best for me, helps me to relinquish the reigns over my life and trust even when it really really hurts. But I know this life, and even the uphill battle I face today, is only the blink of an eye compared to what He has promised to give me once this life is through.

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In the Bible, Paul, too had some terrible condition too that was described as his ‘his thorn in his flesh’ - we don’t know what it was. He says, he asked God to take it away from him because it was so difficult to live with but God answered:

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

So Paul said:

“Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” - 2 Corinthians 12:9

Will I always suffer from insomnia? I don’t know. I hope not, but I’m learning to trust in the sufficiency of God’s grace for me more each day while I do.