There’s an old Yiddish saying, “man plans and God laughs.”

I’d like to imagine that the original saying was actually “woman plans to sleep and God laughs,” but the men didn’t like that the women came up with something so clever and so specific that it left men out, and so they coopted it and now…here we are.

Lo!For what delicious, perfectly O Henry-esque irony that when your teens are finally old enough to sleep until noon, you’re old enough to have hot flashes that wake you up every hour or so.

Let’s call it Gift of the Menopause. A new classic.

On Instagram this week, I shared that I was on about my 6th consecutive night of waking at at 3 a.m., and I wanted to cry from either the lack of sleep, or the incredibly thoughtful support and suggestions from friends and strangers, or, probably both.

(I will say some of you are a little wacky, but I love that for you. Don’t change.)

Here are some of the possible reasons I learned could be behind waking up at 3 a.m.

It could be hormones
It could be The Change
It could be a 3 a.m. blood sugar spike
It could be wine
It could be dehydration
It could be stress. (As if any of us have any reason to stress this time of year.)
It could be the liver trying to detox
It could have to do with Astral Projection.
It could be that my psychic superhighways are quiet and giving me a chance for stillness.
It could be hot in my bedroom.
It could be the start of a grand spiritual awakening. (Note: My mom always finds the most positive, optimistic answers to any problem.)

But the possibility I’m most fascinated with came from Shannon Thompson:

In Chinese medicine, there are correlations between specific hours of the clock, organs, and their emotional associations. Waking up at 3 a.m. has a specific connection to the release of frustration and anger (the liver) and to grief (the lungs).

Whoa.

Amazing, right? Considering one of my oldest and dearest friends is a rock star acupuncturist and has healed me too many times to count, I’m going to be looking into that a little more.

In the meanwhile, Tylenol P.M. did the trick. Which is probably not one-hundred percent acupuncturist-recommended, but you know. We can’t let some unseen power or universal energy source laugh at our expense all the time. We’ve got stuff to do, and we’ve got to sleep.

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