What Wakes You At 4 AM
4 am is where the day hasn’t begun, and neither have I. That liminal space where body is still tangled in sheets, and mind is starting to tangle too — only in loops, regrets, half-formed plans.
Those dreaded wake-ups, hours before our alarms go off, might actually be a gift. Sometimes they offer clarity, but they always give access: to what aches, to what longs, to what’s still possible.
Sometimes thoughts knot tighter.
And sometimes they start to untangle, thread by thread. Gently at first, then with a gradual but insistent yanking.
It’s the hour of imagination and anxiety.
Divine inspiration braided with cortisol.
It’s when I find myself playing Barbie dolls with my past — redressing old conversations, restaging reunion scenes with exes in better lighting, testing out lives my younger self only dared dip a toe into.
It’s when reality loosens just enough for fantasy to slip in.
When memory and possibility hold hands.
I’ve been trying to write something this week. Trying being the operative word. Everything I put down feels like a performance of what I’m supposed to sound like and I promised myself I’d only write what inspires me, no bows allowed. It all feels thin, like trying to pin down smoke. Nothing lands. Nothing sticks.
The truth is, I’m tired. Not burned out. Not depressed. Just soulfully tired. I want to lie in bed and not need to figure out how to bring my business back or craft a plan to navigate this week’s liminality. I want needles to deflate my shoulders, kneading fists on my hips, fingernails polished into hazy pink seashells that make me feel like I’m holding something together. Nail polish does that.
Sometimes the work is rest.
Sometimes the productivity is surrender: the holy kind. The kind that asks nothing of you but still gives you back to yourself.
And yet, even in that surrender, my brain doesn’t stop. There’s that 4 am voice. That thin but persistent thread of consciousness that doesn’t yell or shame — it just appears. The yogis call this Amrit Vela, the nectar hour. They say the divine speaks then. Maybe. Or maybe it’s just when all the noise dies down enough to hear what’s underneath.
The funny thing is, this hour, the one I now find sacred, is one I used to avoid at all costs. Back in my early 20s, when I was partying and trying not to feel much of anything, I hated 4 am. It was a cruel reminder that the night was over. That light was coming. And not the golden, romantic kind. The kind that felt like consequence. I'd be in a cab or someone’s living room, still blurry and bloated, and feel that slow bleed of morning light through the curtains. Birds chirping. Moms pushing strollers. People jogging, hydrated, functional. I’d rush home just to avoid being seen by the sun. It wasn’t just shame. It was avoidance of self. That silent post-party moment when the noise fades and all you have left is your reflection. Puffy. Parched. Not yet ready to become.
Years later, during my deep yogi era in Los Angeles, I tried to turn that hour into salvation. In training, our teachers told us to wake at 4 am for sadhana, every day, as it was the best time to meditate. I'd dry brush my skin until it tingled, step into a cold shower in my uninsulated little blue cottage, and smother myself in rose oil. All to prepare myself to sit cross-legged on my sheepskin, chanting mantras into candlelight. I was obsessed with getting that early light on my face, as if it might wash me clean. By 6 am, I was exhausted but oddly proud. Like I was on the Dean’s list for dharma. I didn’t always feel better. But I felt like I was trying. And trying, back then, was how I measured worth.
Now, a decade later, I’m sleeping in a room above the bay, mangroves, and a sky that softens before it brightens. The brush still bears scars from the last hurricane — some of it stripped bare, some stubbornly blooming anyway. I’ve been pulling the shades each night, telling myself I need rest, that I need to be healthy. And I do. But the light still finds its way in. Even through closed blinds, it kisses my eyelids. I think about meditating. Or going back to dreaming. Today, I let myself linger in the gray of morning, listening to the thoughts that want to be heard and heeding my heavy eyes.
Most mornings, Dolly stirs first. She uncurls from a gravity-defying sprawl that has somehow overtaken the bed, shakes, and noses her way under the covers. Her body plopped against mine is grounding in a way I can’t explain. She doesn’t care that I don’t have all the answers. She just wants warmth and presence.
And maybe that’s all the 4 am hour wants too. Presence. Not answers. Just a moment of stillness before the deluge of daylight and phones and movement. Maybe it’s not about solving the thoughts, but noticing them. Letting them stretch out. Cast shadows. Take shape. Asking them what they want you to know.
And listening.
Sometimes I wonder if the things that wake us at 4 am are just unprocessed emotions shaking us by the shoulders. Or maybe they’re offerings — divine Post-its reminding us what still needs tending. What still needs integrating. The parts of ourselves we’ve left out in the dark.
I once asked someone if they ever woke at 4 am and couldn’t fall back asleep, if their mind spiraled too. He didn’t hesitate. “When don’t I wake up at 4 am?” he laughed. It struck me how many of us are lying awake in our own little boxes, staring at the ceiling, wrestling something invisible. Alone, together.
And sure, it could just be cortisol. But maybe cortisol is holy too. Maybe the body’s alarm bells are part of the prayer.
What wakes you doesn’t have to break you. What wakes you might just be your work — not in the capitalist, push-through kind of way, but in the sculpting-of-the-soul way. These worries, flashes of desire and doubt and memory — they’re clay. Wet. Shapeless. Warm in your hands. You get to shape them. Or not. You get to sit with them until the sun comes and dries them into something real.
That’s the miracle of 4 am.
Not that it gives you clarity.
But that it gives you access.
To what hurts.
To what heals.
To what’s still possible.
You don’t have to chase the light.
Just be brave enough to let it in.
