For many people, a nap is an indulgence. We tend to devalue sleep as a culture in the Western world, often bragging about how little we get and trying to one-up each other over most nights without sleep at all. We carry around Visine for our tired red eyes, get crabby and addicted to coffee, and then wonder why the hell we feel so groggy by the end of the day.

It turns out that not sleeping can do real damage to your body, causing memory loss, weight gain, fatigue, and even symptoms of depression. So bragging about not sleeping is just as productive and genius as bragging about smoking, overeating, drinking too much, or injecting yourself with drugs, it seems. We should instead be focusing on how we can increase the amount of sleep in our lives to get the necessary seven to eight hours we all need.

Me, I’ve always been a proponent of naps. Einstein was too, pointing out that our brains cannot fully process, absorb, and comprehend new learned materials until they’ve had a chance to rest. I’ve always been a split shift sleeper—sleeping three to four hours at night and another two during an afternoon nap—which seems to work for me. I can’t vouch for how healthy it is, only that it accommodates my family, work, chores, and other responsibilities without making me too groggy, for the most part. Now, if I lose one or more of those hours for any reason—which, I’ll admit, often happens—I can be pretty useless.

This isn’t popular, by the way. People complain that I should lead a “normal” lifestyle, so they can conveniently call me between 1:00 and 3:00 PM. They say I should sleep at night—which would, of course, require me to work throughout the entire day, with no time with my child. Everyone else does it, of course, so why shouldn’t I? The only place my lifestyle was ever embraced, in fact, was the internship I did in Spain a few years ago—which was considered fine with or without kids, as I hadn’t even had mine yet.

But I don’t really look like the kind of person who does anything the “normal” way. So every afternoon, when my preschooler takes her nap, I take one, too. It helps me recharge for the rest of the day and get the sleep I would normally get at night if I wasn’t working. My husband sleeps during this time, too, but that’s because he works the night shift. The three of us pile in the bed like the wild things—often along with one or both of our cats—and we rest up for an afternoon of play. (Sometimes he sleeps when he gets home, enabling him to get up with us; other times, he “goes to bed” during our naptime and sleeps the rest of the evening, opting to spend the morning and early afternoon with us.) This sort-of routine has helped us all have time to snuggle and giggle over made-up stories, rest our brains, and carry out the entire day with less stress and turmoil. (And believe me, the days we’ve had to skip naptime for one thing or another have been loaded with both stress and turmoil!)

For my family, napping is as essential as drinking water and eating vegetables. I’d like to hereby defend the importance of naps and their function in daily life (for families, couples, single people and anyone else!), as well as give everyone worldwide the permission to take one if they feel so inclined.