πͺI create resources to help people adapt to living with chronic illness so they can thrive.
πβββοΈ When managing feels harder than it should
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Hey Reader, There's a particular kind of frustration that comes with feeling like you're trying to manage your illness well and still somehow falling short. Like you're doing everything you can think of, and it's still not working the way you hoped. This week's post is about the patterns that tend to make chronic illness management harder in pretty consistent ways. Not because anyone is doing something wrong, but because some of these habits emerge almost naturally from living with a chronic illness in a world that wasn't built for it. I cover five of them: why good days can backfire, what gets lost when symptoms go untracked, why medical care tends to slip exactly when it matters most, how emotional health and physical symptoms are more connected than we're usually taught, and what happens when you keep measuring yourself against who you used to be. If any of those land for you, the full post is worth a read. It's not a list of things to fix. It's just a little more to work with. Read the full post here: What Gets in the Way of Managing Chronic Illness (And What Actually Helps)β Talk soon, |
April Smith | The Thriving Spoonie
πͺI create resources to help people adapt to living with chronic illness so they can thrive.
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....
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....