πͺI create resources to help people adapt to living with chronic illness so they can thrive.
π The morning routine that survived a bad flare
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Hi Reader, I want to tell you about a morning recently that didn't go anything like it was supposed to. I'd had a flare bad enough that I ended up calling my husband home from work. Pain and nausea that just wouldn't let up, my body sweating and shivering through it while my nervous system tried to sort itself out. Not fun. And for a few days after, my normal morning routine, the one I actually rely on, meds before food, food before coffee, a slow unhurried shower, just didn't happen. At all. Here's the thing that surprised me, though. Even with almost none of it happening the way it's supposed to, the routine still did its job. Because it turns out the routine was never really about the order things happened in. It was about a small handful of things that mattered no matter what, and once I figured out which ones those actually were, the whole week looked different in hindsight. I wrote up the full story on the blog, including exactly what those non-negotiables turned out to be and how I'm rebuilding my routine around them going forward. You can read it here if you've had a week like that recently too. |
April Smith | The Thriving Spoonie
πͺI create resources to help people adapt to living with chronic illness so they can thrive.
Hi Reader, Every August the same advice shows up: get your mornings together, build a routine, start the day with momentum. It's aimed at a body that gets to choose what happens next, and that's just not how mornings work when you're managing chronic illness. This week's post is about what actually helps instead. Knowing your non-negotiables, the few things that truly have to happen. Sketching out a full-capacity and a low-capacity version of your morning before you need them. Checking in...
Hi Reader, I want to tell you about the part of self-advocacy nobody warned me about. For years I thought the whole battle was getting brave enough to speak up β with my partner, with coworkers, with doctors who didn't want to hear it. And that part is real. It took me a long time to stop hinting at what I needed and just say the actual thing out loud. But here's what I didn't expect: even after I got braver, I'd still walk into appointments and blank on the details that actually mattered....
Hi Reader, I've been keeping a mental tally lately. The phone calls. The portal messages that never got a real answer. The forms that ask for information I already gave someone else last month. I don't write any of it down anymore. I just carry it, the way you carry a phone number you've dialed so many times it's stopped feeling like information and started feeling like a reflex. Here's the thing I keep coming back to: none of this shows up on a calendar as "work." There's no meeting called...