Musings on the Sleepytime Tea Bear

 I can usually measure my mental health with a simple litmus test: am I drinking tea and reading before bed or not? When I’m in a funk, it’s usually because I’m not taking time to sit with my thoughts and feelings, instead filling all of my free time with checking off items on a to-do list.

As a neurodivergent person, having routines keep me alive. I know all about habit stacking, body doubling, and countless other habit building tips and tricks. On the other hand, forming and keeping routines is very challenging for me. Having ADHD, dopamine works differently for me than neurotypical people. No matter how long I keep chipping away at a new habit, my progress is just as precarious as it was at the beginning, and despite well-meaning suggestions of people in my life, no bullet journal can save me.

But I’ve learned to find beauty in fresh slates and starting again. Rather than having so many habits, I instead have to make conscious daily decisions. In this way, my routines are malleable, and the routine of drinking tea and reading before bed remains a favorite I keep returning to when it falls away. 

Sleepytime tea became a staple for me in the ninth grade when I begged my parents to buy me a box of it. The vanilla flavor was my original favorite, but I eventually developed a penchant for the “Extra Sleepy” blend. Though Sleepytime’s creator Celestial Seasonings has a murky, cultish history, there was something about the packaging that made it difficult for me to scratch the same itch with another brand’s nighttime tea.

That cozy little bear beckoned me forth. He was so blissfully serene with his red nightcap in his verdant chair, a sly, satisfied smile upon his face. Something about him always reminded me of the classic Goodnight, Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. I always thought the bear belonged in that scene with the peaceful, nostalgic nature he exuded.

We live in a culture of productivity. In a piece for NBC News, culture reporter Angela Yang explored internet trends like “quiet quitting” and “lazy girl jobs.”  

“As antiwork discourse gains momentum across the internet, job seekers and employees are growing tired of being shamed for retaliating against a culture that they say glorifies overworking,” Yang writes.

One moment that made me so aware of how entrenched I was in productivity culture took place when I spent a summer living and studying in Greece. Unsurprisingly, what I had envisioned as a lazy Mediterranean summer got off to a rocky start. I studied abroad on scholarship and was determined to be the best student I could be while also checking off hundreds of goals on a European travel bucket list. 

In my first couple of days in Athens, I went grocery shopping. A Greek student in one of my classes asked me out of curiosity what an American buys at a Greek grocery store. 

“Mostly fruit and yogurt and other grab-and-go breakfasts,” I’d told him.

“Grab-and-go?” He’d shook his head disdainfully. “You Americans, so productive. You can’t even take ten minutes to sit and eat breakfast!”

I had a defense ready, something about needing to make the most of my time so I could get ahead on homework, but they fell flat. It really was just ten minutes. How many hundreds of minutes had I lost just existing because I felt I needed to be busy doing something productive?

Drinking tea in bed is an act that forces me to slow down. When I wake up in the morning, I tend to start composing long to-do lists of all the chores and tasks I need to take care of in the day. It’s not a fun way to start my day. It’s stressful, and that stress follows me around until I go to bed at night. 

Instead, I give myself ten minutes to power on my electric kettle and drink some tea in bed, reading a couple pages of a non-school text, or just sitting with my thoughts and waking up. No matter how hard I try, I can’t chug a steaming hot mug of tea. I have to drink it slowly and savor each sip.

The same ritual works at night, too. I have an unyielding case of insomnia. Instead of reaching for my phone to dive down Wikipedia rabbit trails, text friends, or play word games, I can brew myself some herbal tea and brain-dump into a journal. 

Even though I grab loose-leaf at the store more often now and try to stray away from cultish tea companies, I’d still like to embody that peace I once saw in the Sleepytime Tea bear, a figurehead of serenity who certainly knows nothing about grab-and-go breakfasts.