Every Thanksgiving, my husband and I drive eleven hours from Phoenix to see our daughter Sarah in Denver.
I love her more than anything. But I dread going.
Not the drive. Not the cold. The sleeping...
I'm a side sleeper. Always have been. But three years ago the shoulder pain started, and it's gotten worse every single year.
I always slept on my left side. Then the left shoulder got so bad I had to switch to my right.
It was probably only a matter of time before the right one went too.
Most nights I can fall asleep fine. It's staying asleep that's the problem.
I'll wake up and my shoulder is killing me. Deep, aching pain in whatever side I'm lying on.
Sometimes my arm goes completely dead. Pins and needles from the shoulder all the way down to my fingertips.
I'll flip to the other side, get comfortable for a little while, and then that shoulder starts aching too.
I haven't slept more than four hours straight in years.
On the bad nights I give up and move to the La-Z-Boy in the living room. Sitting upright is the only position that takes the weight off my shoulders.
At home, it's just another bad night. Nobody's watching. Nobody's asking if I'm okay.
At Sarah's house, I'm a guest. I don't want to be the mom who can't sleep, who's miserable all morning, who ruins Thanksgiving because she's exhausted and hurting.
We arrived around 7 PM. Hugs, dinner, catching up. By 10 I was exhausted from the drive.
I laid down on my right side around 10:30 and closed my eyes.
I woke up and looked at the clock... 6:47 AM.
I had slept through the entire night for the first time in three years.
On my side. On the same shoulder. Eight straight hours.
"You didn't get up once," my husband said. He looked confused. He'd heard me shuffle to the La-Z-Boy for years.
"Must've been the drive," I said. "I was exhausted."
But that wasn't it. Because the second morning I woke up... and realized again... I slept through the entire night.
No tossing. No flipping the pillow. No waking up with a stiff, aching shoulder.
I lifted my right arm above my head. Full range of motion. No stiffness. No catching. No pain.
That hadn't happened in three years.
That morning, I stripped the pillowcase off and looked at the pillow underneath.
It didn't look special. No weird contours. No fancy memory foam shape. Just a pillow.
There was a small tag hanging off the zipper.
"Nuzzle."
I'd never heard of it.
I pulled out my phone and googled it right there.
First thing that came up: Trustpilot reviews. 4.7 stars. Thousands of reviews.
I started scrolling.
I found Sarah in the kitchen.
"That pillow in the guest room," I said. "Where did you get it?"
She laughed. "I wondered if you'd notice."
Sarah's an ICU nurse. Has been for twelve years.
"You know Dr. Reeves? The orthopedic surgeon I work with?"
I shook my head.
"His wife had a total reverse shoulder replacement last year.
"After the surgery, sleeping was impossible. She's a side sleeper, same as you, and the pressure on the joint was so bad she'd be up every two hours.
"He tried every pillow, every positioning trick. Nothing worked."
"Then he found this pillow and it was a game changer. She started sleeping through the night within a week.
"He wouldn't shut up about it. Kept telling the nurses, 'If your patients have shoulder issues from side sleeping, tell them about this pillow.'
"So a bunch of us ordered them."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Mom, I've tried to help your shoulders for years. You've tried everything. I didn't want to push another pillow on you."
She was right. I had tried just about every cream, tincture, and pillow out there.
Back home in Phoenix, I have a closet full of different pillows that all claim to be "the best."
I really didn't have much hope left that anything would help.
Sarah pulled up a video on her phone.
"Watch this," she said. "This is what's been happening to your shoulder..."
The video shows a skeleton in the side sleeper position. Between the shoulder and the neck... a gap. Four to six inches of empty space where the pillow should be supporting but isn't.
"When that gap isn't filled, your head drops. Your neck hangs. And all your body weight shifts down into one shoulder joint.
"Eight hours of crushing into one joint. That's the dead arm. That's the ache."
"But here's the part nobody tells you."
She touched the back of my neck, right where it meets the shoulder.
"This muscle right here is called the levator scapulae. It runs from your neck down to your shoulder blade.
"When your neck hangs unsupported, it fires all night. Pulling on your shoulder blade from above.
"So your shoulder is getting hit from both directions. Weight crushing down. Muscle yanking up.
"It's not a shoulder problem, Mom... It's the gap causing your issues."
"Because everyone's gap is different," Sarah said.
"The distance between your shoulder and your neck isn't the same as mine.
"Most pillows are one height. Your gap isn't."
She picked up the Nuzzle pillow and unzipped it.
"This is a 2-layer system. Thicker layer, thinner layer.
"You stack them to fill YOUR gap.
"Broader shoulders, keep both. Smaller frame, pull one out.
"That's how you find the right height. So the pillow hole actually gets filled."
"Okay, but I've had thick pillows before. They just felt like bricks."
"That's the other part."
She pressed her hand into the pillow. The surface gave way. Her hand sinking in deep, naturally.
"These are Nanocoil fibers. They're not memory foam.
"They let your head and neck settle in first, then they cradle. All night.
"Your head is elevated correctly. Your neck is in line with your spine. And it feels totally natural."
She released. The pillow rebounded instantly.
"Support your head. Align your neck. That's it."
The pillows arrived three days after we got home.
I left both layers in, just like I'd used it at Sarah's. I naturally have broader shoulders, so I need the extra height to fill the gap between my shoulder and my neck.
My husband sleeps like a rock on anything...
But out of curiosity, he pulled the thinner layer out. Said it was perfect for him.
The first few nights, I figured it was wishful thinking. I've been disappointed by pillows enough times to know not to get excited.
But by the end of week one, something hit me. I hadn't woken up once to switch to the other side. Not once. I'd sleep the whole night on one shoulder and wake up fine.
After the first week, I'd say the shoulder pain was maybe 75% gone. I still had some stiffness in the morning, but nothing like before.
After two weeks, it was completely gone.
I stopped taking Advil before breakfast. I used to take it every single morning. For three years.
The stiffness that used to make it painful to reach behind my back? Gone. I can pull a sweater on without wincing. I can reach the top shelf again.
And the neck pain I'd had for years? That went away too. Once my shoulders stopped getting crushed every night, my neck stopped trying to compensate. Just like Sarah said it would.
I'll be honest. I was skeptical of a pillow making this big of a difference. But I don't know what magic is stuffed in this thing. It works. You can see by my sleep score on my Apple Watch that once I started using it, I've had consistently high scores.
I'm not saying I feel 20 again. I'm 67.
But I feel like myself again. The version of me before the shoulder pain started. Before the La-Z-Boy became my second bed. Before I started dreading every trip.
P.S. Nuzzle, if you're reading this... please launch a travel pillow. I'm not going anywhere without this thing.
Nuzzle has a 90-day guarantee.
Three full months to sleep on it every night. If your shoulders don't feel the difference, send it back. Full refund. No questions asked.
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I know what it's like to dread going to bed because you know your shoulder is going to wake you up. To have your arm go dead night after night. To spend hundreds on pillows that promise to help and don't change a thing.
You don't have to keep living like that.
