ðŠI create resources to help people adapt to living with chronic illness so they can thrive.
ðŠ Who are you, really?
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Hi Reader, A while back, someone asked me the question everyone asks: "So what do you do for fun?" I opened my mouth and nothing came out. The honest answer had become "manage my body," and I knew that wasn't the answer she wanted. I stood there running through a mental list of things I used to enjoy, trying to figure out which ones were still true. That gap between the version of myself I could still name and the version I could actually live is where this week's post lives. Not the grief of who you were before diagnosis, that's its own thing and deserves its own space. This is about what comes after: who you're building now, with less energy and fewer tools than you used to have. It turns out the usual advice ("just do what you love!") assumes your interests and your energy are separate things. Chronic illness makes that untrue. So I wrote about what actually gets in the way instead, and some small, five-minutes-or-less ways to start anyway. If you're in that in-between place right now, not lost exactly, just not sure who's on the other side of the diagnosis, this one's for you. |
April Smith | The Thriving Spoonie
ðŠI create resources to help people adapt to living with chronic illness so they can thrive.
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...
Hi Reader, Somewhere in my first year or two after diagnosis, I caught my own reflection and had this small, strange thought: I don't totally recognize this person. Not dramatic. Just a quiet double-take. Patience running differently. Energy running differently. Even my sense of humor felt rewired somehow, in a way I couldn't fully explain to anyone who hadn't lived it. For a while I tried to fix it, like enough effort could get me back to exactly who I was before. What actually helped was...
Hey Reader, Some days the routine just isn't happening. Pain's louder than usual, brain fog's thick, or there's no reason at all, just that heavy exhaustion that tells you today's going to look different. I used to try to push through those days anyway. It never worked. I'd end up more burned out, in more pain, and further behind than if I'd just adjusted in the first place. So I stopped. Now I've got three versions of my routine ready to go, depending on what the day actually gives me, and a...