Hub and Spoke. Audio Collective. You're listening to Nocturn.

I'm Vanessa Lowe. Many of us have struggled with insomnia at various times in our lives.

Sleep is affected by many factors, including stress, illness, having kids, aging. Reactions

to sleep disturbances range from mild irritation to angst to downright terror and despair.

Annabel Abbs' journey through insomnia began in those familiar places,

but ultimately led her to discoveries that completely changed her life.

My name is Annabel Abbs. Sometimes I'm known as Annabelle Abbs Street. And I am a writer living mostly in London, but sometimes in the countryside on the edge of a dark sky reserve. I have four children. And I write books, fiction and nonfiction and journalism, and I'm a very keen walker.

So back in December 2020, you may remember it was the end of the first year of the pandemic.

There were still no vaccines and here in the UK we were still cycling in

and out of lockdowns. During this time, I suffered a series of bereavements, none of which were

actually the result of COVID. So first of all, my beloved stepfather died. He died in a home.

None of us had been able to go near him for weeks.

We hadn't been able to say goodbye. Six weeks after he died, my father died, who I was very, very close to.

And both those deaths were completely unexpected and very sudden out of the blue really. Then I got a puppy for my four

children. I thought, okay, we can all start to heal over this little puppy. And without realizing it,

we had bought our puppy from a puppy mill. And within four days of getting this little puppy home she was dangerously

dangerously ill and she then died in in isolation at a at a veterinary hospital just after

Christmas day and we weren't able to say goodbye to her so at this stage we were just reeling from this

series of deaths and then there was another

death two weeks after the puppy. And in many ways, this was the worst death of all, really.

My 17-year-old daughter, her friend, he took his own life.

Annabelle and her family had been living in the strange world of COVID, with the fear and uncertainty

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