My insomnia began just when my baby girl started sleeping through the night. Anytime my head hit the pillow, my heart pounded like a million galloping horses, and I would tremble and sweat and eventually get up and stand on our back porch to beg the gods for peace until I heard the birds chirping, inaugurating a new day, which I would spend dragging around my girl without even a modicum of rest. None of the herbs, medications, or mindfulness techniques I tried were able to move the needle. The worst of the experts I saw was a perky-breasted young woman, who’d certainly never had a child rip through her vagina, who said, “When I’m having trouble sleeping, I just think of a beach!” I wanted to throttle her. I was beyond beaches, and yet, after our overpriced consultation, I did begin picturing myself sitting in the sand on the Florida beach of my childhood, my parents drinking beers in lawn chairs, not long before my mother walked out.