💪I create resources to help people adapt to living with chronic illness so they can thrive.
🕯️ The Grief No One Names
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Hi Reader, I want to tell you about a kind of grief I didn't have a name for until pretty far into this journey. It's not grief for my health, exactly. It's grief for a person who was already in motion before I got sick. Someone with a trajectory. Plans that made sense. A version of themselves they were actively becoming, one ordinary year at a time. Chronic illness didn't just interrupt that person's plans. It asked me to let them go entirely, without ever asking permission first. For a long time I thought accepting my diagnosis meant that grief was supposed to go away. That if I'd really made peace with being sick, I wouldn't still feel a pull toward who I might have been. It took me a long time to understand that acceptance and grief aren't opposites. I can fully live in my current reality and still feel a wave of loss for that other version of myself, on the same Tuesday, without either one being less true. If that's familiar to you too, you're not carrying something unusual. You're carrying something real that almost nobody names out loud. More soon, |
April Smith | The Thriving Spoonie
💪I create resources to help people adapt to living with chronic illness so they can thrive.
Hi Reader, If fall has felt heavy lately, you are not alone, and you are not being ungrateful. Maybe it started with the first cooler morning, or a store aisle already stocked for a season you are still catching up to. Maybe someone asked what you have left to do before the year ends, and your stomach dropped a little. For a lot of us, the shorter days and the year winding down quietly ask how much energy we had and what we hoped to do with it. That can ache, even when nothing dramatic...
Hi Reader, I want to start this email with a little transparency, because it’s something I value here and something I hope you feel in this community. First, a change to how I’m running the blog. Going forward, I’ll be publishing two new posts a month, plus two updated posts. I’ve been wanting to refresh a lot of my older content anyway, and this gives me a steadier, more sustainable rhythm. You’ll still get fresh content, and your favorite older posts will get a little extra care. Honestly,...
Hi Reader, Can I tell you something? The money side of chronic illness might be the heaviest thing we carry and the thing we talk about least. I know how it feels to put off opening a bill because you do not have the energy to face what is inside. I know the quiet math, the guilt over a smaller paycheck, and the way the holidays can make all of it louder. And I know how lonely it gets when it seems like nobody else is doing that math. You are not bad with money, and you are not alone in this....