shakespeare at 3am: hamnet

How about some Hamnet at 3am. Aka, Shakespeare at 3am.

Last night, as a 45 year-old mom will do, I woke up at 2 AM and couldn’t fall back asleep.

One of those nights where your brain just switches on - replaying conversations, thinking about things that aren’t even real problems. Instead of lying there spiraling, I decided to watch a movie. Something slow enough that it might knock me back out.

I ended up buying Hamnet, the Shakespeare-inspired film that’s been winning awards this year… and suddenly I’m wide awake at 3 AM watching this incredibly beautiful, emotional story unfold while my daughter sleeps beside me.

In this episode of Notes, I talk about insomnia, perimenopause sleep, crying during movies, motherhood, and the strange way a piece of art can pull you out of your own life and into something bigger.

Sometimes the most ordinary moment - like watching a movie alone at 3 AM, reminds you what actually matters.

hosted by Kathy Patalsky

healthyhappylife.com

IG: KathyPatalsky + notes.kathy

Transcript

Sometimes you just need to sit in a dark room and stare at a screen and feel something. 

 You're listening to Notes with Kathy Patalsky. Today's episode

 Shakespeare at 3:00 AM.

 last night. I fell asleep effortlessly like 8:30 PM. Heavy eyelids. Already in bed. My daughter curled up next to me and we just drifted off. There is nothing better than not even thinking about bedtime.

No Routine, no resistance. No. "Okay. It's time to sleep." Just let's get in bed. Close your eyes. Sleeping. But here's the thing, as my Oura ring will happily tell you. Sometimes my sleep is great. I get my seven or eight, maybe even nine hours on occasion, and I wake up rested and lovely and everything feels normal.

But since I'm 45 and clearly entering the perimenopause era, some nights I wake up at 1:00 AM. 2:00 AM 3:00 AM 4:00 AM and that's it. My brain just switches on. Suddenly I am replaying conversations, ruminating on problems that I know logically are not even problems, just the mind spinning thing.

And when that happens, I've learned something about myself. I have to distract my brain. I usually make a conscious decision. Okay, am I falling back asleep soon or am I not? And if the answer is no, I usually watch something.

I know some people have told me that's a bad habit to get into, but I've tried just laying there, and it just never helps. This is the one thing that I find helps me. So that's what I do.

I'll grab my phone, I'll put a earbud in my ear. Usually just one 'cause I'm, you know, lazy at two in the morning and I'll watch something. Usually it's something mindless like Real Housewives or some random documentary or something boring enough that I might actually drift off.

But last night I decided to dig a little deeper. Maybe I watch one of those movies that I've been dying to watch but haven't had time to watch because I am a parent of a small child. So I decided to watch that movie, Hamnet.

I hadn't heard much about it except for the fact that the actress, the main leading role in it continuously is winning best actress all season long and award season, and that people keep saying that the movie is really beautiful and movie and has beautiful music.

Am a sucker for anything with beautiful movie music, by the way. Anything connected to William Shakespeare probably has some credibility attached to it. So there I am on Prime at like two in the morning deciding whether I want to rent it for 20 bucks or buy it for 24.

Naturally, I bought it. I don't need that type of pressure of you need to watch it before your rental expires to save $4. Within seconds, I'm watching the movie in the middle of the night, flat my bed, fully expecting to be bored and asleep again in about 20 minutes, but instead I was completely captured by it. Every scene looks like a perfectly lit photograph. Natural light, neutral colors, fabrics, and textures everywhere. Wood and windows and soft shadows, mossy greens and earthy browns in the forest.

It's a period piece, I think 16 hundreds, right the time William Shakespeare was writing his plays and traveling to London. I'm not gonna tell you the plot, so no spoilers, but I will say this, if you are craving something that might make you cry, something slow and rich and textured with the real hard stuff of life mixed with all the beautiful stuff. This is a beautiful movie, and yes, the plot is kind of slow, like really slow. But the funny thing is I didn't even notice that it was slow while I was watching it.

It wasn't until the end when I was like, oh, I'm usually pretty sensitive to a slow plot.

I didn't really care because the emotional impact was so strong and had so many layers to it, which is exactly what you want. The thing that surprised me, you guys, is that I never fell asleep. I just kept watching, the story becomes more emotional and I'm laying there in bed right next to my sleeping daughter, curled up beside me.

Her body is warm and soft. I can feel her breath on my shoulder, and her little curls are brushing against my face, and I'm watching this movie about love and grief and family and time, and suddenly I'm just sobbing. Silently in bed, of course, and the only thing going through my head is this overwhelming feeling that the most important thing in my life in that moment is that she's right there next to me.

That I have her, and I get to spend my entire life with her in it. because raising, my daughter, is the most important thing I've ever done in my life. And I knew that before watching this movie, but something about this movie brought it out in me. And everything else, social circles, status careers, parties, outfits, wrinkles, Botox, what brand of bags someone is carrying, all of that suddenly feels like absolutely nothing. Completely irrelevant.

And I think that was my favorite part of the movie. Not even the story itself, but the way it reminded me of something timeless, that connection to nature, the rhythms of life, birth and death and love, and family and animals, and the earth.

The movie doesn't even say those things out loud, but it makes you feel them.

That sense that we are all a part of something ancient and mysterious, we can walk through a forest and feel strangely at home. We're all doing this at the same time, on the same place. That we can look at a bird or a cat or a rabbit right in the eyes and feel some strange, deep connection.

Even though we know of science and technology medicine, all these layers of modern life, those cornerstones showcased in this movie are still the same. Love, family, nature, loss connection. The mystery of this planet that we're all living on, how did we get here?

When did this start? Of it, and as I'm watching this movie on my phone in the dark, not at full brightness, I can feel it. Cooking food, speaking words, telling stories, children playing, loving people, those things are timeless. And sometimes you just need to cry.

Sometimes you just need to sit in a dark room and stare at a screen and feel something. And what surprised me most, is that lately all of my crying I've been doing has kind of been about my own life. Crying about somebody else's story felt really good. And I know that sounds simple and I don't know, maybe a little strange, but if you haven't done it lately, go to a movie theater find a show that makes you cry or lay in your bed at 2:00 AM and run this movie or buy it.

Let yourself feel empathy for somebody else's story. It takes you outside of your own life for a moment. And reminds you that the things you're feeling are not just your own. Other people are carrying them too.

We're all carrying them all together, intertwined,

and I know sometimes people say they avoid sad movies because they think it will make them sadder or feel worse. I think it does the opposite. Feeling someone else's pain through someone else's story. Kind. Only a great film can show you. A really great storyteller. Can be incredibly healing because it reminds us that everyone is going through something. From William Shakespeare to your next door neighbor, that we're not alone.

  The work I do here and the work I've always done has really been about proving that exact thing, that we're all living inside our own stories, but somehow they're always touching, overlapping. And last night, three in the morning. The movie ended and I just laid there in the quiet for a minute. My daughter asleep beside me, the house completely still. And I remember thinking, for all the things modern life tells us to care about all the human anxieties that can overwhelm us.

The real story is still the oldest one there is. Love, loss, family, time.  It turns out Shakespeare had already figured that out. Obviously,   

     📍  📍  📍  📍  📍  📍  📍 This was Notes by Kathy Patalsky

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