Brooke Shields Admits ‘I’m Always Tired’ and ‘I’ve Stopped Sleeping’: ‘It’s All Difficult’

I get these seem like pretty off-the-cuff comments without a lot of planning or deep meaning meant, but I don’t think “being a mom is tiring, working is tiring, and I don’t sleep anymore” is a great message to be sending out. I know so many of us can relate to those sentiments, but I wish it wasn’t so normalized. We shouldn’t feel so tired all the time, we shouldn’t find it acceptable to not be sleeping regularly and still feel we need to hustle and perform. We should be fighting to normalize taking breaks, resting, finding balance, listening to your body and adjusting your activity level to it rather than the other way around.

Also, sleep is an absolutely necessary biological function; humans cannot live long if they truly are getting no sleep. Which means she is sleeping at least a little (obviously). It’s disingenuous to imply she never sleeps anymore. True lack of sleep is often either a symptom and/or a harbinger of worsening mental health – specifically completed suicide. Global insomnia (inability to get any sleep at all) is one of the biggest acute risk factors for attempting and completing suicide. Given Brooke was open about her struggle with post partum depression and taking antidepressants (going so far as to rightly confront Tom Cruise over his judgment of that because Scientology rejects psychiatry), I wish the messaging here was different. I also hope she’s getting the help she needs.