Also, I can’t currently have sex with my husband. Yeah, read that again.

Before you click away and think this is a messy, liquid courage-induced article about sex and babies, it’s not. It’s actually about hidden and invisible illness. It’s about all the unseen, small, messy things we’re carrying that add weight to our souls, or in my case, my non-functioning pelvic floor.

BTW, not that you care, but I have my first consultation to “fix” that and the rest of my partially paralyzed body on Monday (I’ll unpack more about that at another time). But I believe in coexisting with things, not fixing them, when it comes to chronic health. Coexisting with suffering is actually the greatest muscle I’ve learned to work.

So why am I bringing up kids? Or sex? Or even wrote this article?

Maybe it’s severe endometriosis. It runs in my family. (Is that why I am always in constant pain?)

Maybe it’s because I am three times more likely to experience post-partum depression because of my diagnosed OCD.

Maybe it’s because I currently think Ritz crackers and peanut butter are passable for lunch…so how in the heck can I take care of a small baby?

No, I’m bringing this up to showcase the radical act of vulnerability and how your story, your hidden illness, your most vulnerable trait is your superpower. Actually, it’s your next breakthrough.

If you’re new here, hey. My name is Sarah. I am your premature-born, chronic health, OCD, anxiety-laden internet bestie who has no filter and also has the insane drive to become a multi-millionaire and bestselling author, and still manage to pay her taxes on time and clean out her fridge.

I’m in recovery for Harm and Responsibility OCD. I’ve spent the last few years getting to know thousands of people from around the world who deal with chronic health, mental health, disabilities, neurodivergence, and other struggles that have made me the “Cheerleader of Limitations” (I love it).

Because you matter a lot. A ton, actually. To me, you’re more important than any material thing in the world (including Nutella). Maybe you needed to hear that today, even if you, like me, are scared about the future every five minutes.

I’ve never opened up about this, and jeez, if any family or friends follow me anywhere on social media, they’re going to gasp. Sorry in advance. I love you; I need to own up to this, and maybe someone else will feel less broken than I currently do right now. Because the inability to share our stories, our hidden illness, is holding back healing for someone else.

So if I can drag out my skeleton (who I’ve informally named Carl), then you can too.

Hidden illness rests beneath the layers of our skin, but like our veins, it’s just-almost visible from the surface. It pulses out of our ears like goo and makes us buy things on Amazon on impulse.

And as I get dozens of messages from you, my community, sharing your stories of diagnosis, it is plainly clear how lonely we all feel in our brokenness. How we start to believe we’re the only one dealing with these issues. I want to fix that.

The reality is we all have Carl’s In The Closet. But we spend so much time trying to hide it under drugstore concealer that we forget the power in telling someone else what we’re dealing with so maybe they can get a diagnosis and answers too. Or feel like they can vent about their fears. So they can cry and dance in their seat behind a Zoom webcam at work because they just made a new BFF in the post-pandemic era. That matters.

Look, I currently have more baby shower invitations than wedding invitations (I have entered the later-twentysomething season), and I keep telling myself that this feeling will pass. You’ll want kids, but did you know 50% of women report their OCD symptoms worsen with pregnancy? That scares the crap out of me, more than labor.

Because pre-treated OCD tormented me that much (and no, OCD doesn’t mean you just like organizing things by color), it’s debilitating. You have nightmares about puppies or suffocating while eating toast. The list goes on.

These are the silent thoughts that pass through my mind when someone asks when “we’re finally going to start trying.” On top of my awareness that my insides are (allegedly) so messed up that I can’t do basic things. Like sex. Or sit-ups.

The point is we must preserve and share our stories, our ideas, our invisible illness and suffering in an assumptive society that still thinks OCD is about colors and that sex is easy for everyone.

Because someone years ago wrote an anonymous article, I learned what intrusive thoughts were, and that helped me get the help I needed.

So I decline shower invites selfishly and drown my sorrows in boxed mac and cheese. BUT instead, retrospectively, I see how I could’ve connected with another woman who maybe, like me, is dealing with anxiety, infertility, PCOS, alphabet diagnosis soup, and pain.

Perhaps our purpose has nothing to do with performance, or how we are perceived, and everything to do with what we reveal to others from behind our curtains if we can.

This is why I started The Hope Bracelet movement. After finishing my debut novel, The Bluebird’s Keeper, which I am currently querying to agents, I decided to invite strangers, like you, to opt in to get a free braided blue bracelet—a symbol of invisible stories, of hope, of suffering.

The protagonists, Eve and James, carry hidden mental and physical illness, and they wear these bracelets in the story as a reminder of coexistence and vulnerability.

I first got the idea many years ago, when I thought that if everyone wore a blue bracelet, the streets would become an ocean. Blue would be everywhere because we are all carrying something.

32 U.S. states, 5 continents, and 11 counties later, we’re sending blue bracelets around the world. I hope it makes someone pause and know they matter.

I have very little funds left, and I’m pretty insane in doing this (shipping logistical nightmare, good thing I have experience running a product business), but if you’re interested, you can opt in here: https://www.setapartcompany.net/TBBK.

You can also, by opting in, read the first three chapters of The Bluebird’s Keeper. Your support means the world, and if you resonate with the theme of hidden illness, I know you’ll love Eve and James.

P.s. A big thanks to my husband for when I ran into the kitchen and said, “Is it okay if I tell thousands of people that we can’t have sex?!” he just responded with a laugh and asked how long I wanted my steak to cook on the grill.'

“I think this is it,” I moaned as if I was dying, then took another bite. I pondered the stress of the upcoming tax season, our failure to get a house in the impossible market, a massive change in my job I am dreading on top of already not liking what I do most days, my inability to be consistent on social media because I hate how my face looks, and the anxiety of feeling like a hamster on a wheel – where my only joy is seriously a block of nice cheese from the grocery store as a reward.

Do I sound like someone complaining? Yup. But really, I am grieving. Let’s cut the formalities: I genuinely feel blessed and grateful for the many things I have today. I’m being blunt because I talk to too many people who say, “I feel alone.”

If more of us talked about how we “feel numb in the shower most mornings” or “our face feels too acne-prone for the flawless world of social media,” I think we’d be more connected.

My “is this it” concern is the grieving heart of a dreaming child who didn’t realize that jobs could force you to work the weekend, takeout for two could surpass $80, and airfare was just short of requiring you to sell a Kidney on the black market. Adventure now rests between our favorite shows' commercial breaks, make-believe characters, and Costco trips.

Where is the thin line between the boring or heavy mundane (it comes with the territory) and intentionality building a disconnected life through our own choices? How much choice do we truly have?

If You Feel Miserable, Tired, Stressed, or Just Bored – Keep Reading

I want to speak about a significant, profound issue I’d call an epidemic: this mass wave of a consistent lack of joy – of which we have surpassed daily suffering and subscribed to an unhappy, joyless, heavy life. This epidemic also translates to loneliness. The U.S. Surgeon General issued just that as a public health crisis.

I haven’t talked to someone who hasn’t felt the same way recently. A friend told me yesterday that she only laughs daily when she spends a few hours doom-scrolling on social media before falling asleep.

Ah, social media. And unsubscribed news headlines. And imposter syndrome. And random conversations we didn’t ask for from a stranger about the state of the world that triggered a panic attack. The weight presses on my shoulders, as does the low view count on my social media reels. Unless I set something on fire, people won’t pay attention anymore.

My nervous system, and probably yours, now requires intense stimulation to connect and be amused. How would a nice walk in the sunshine compete with a random video of a guy sucking in a giant balloon of helium and scaring his cat?

Are Our Nervous Systems So Overstimulated That We Can’t Connect With Anything Anymore?

While I have better balance, health, and habits than in the past, I worry - do I have delusions of grandeur? Do dreams weave themselves together – like more frequent happier moments – or do we just become more tolerable of the day? Is it possible to heal our nervous systems and find joy in the less-stimulating elements of life?

Over the past few months, I've learned that the balance between survival, healing, limiting beliefs, and stepping out of our comfort zone happens in the slightest, almost unseen, baby steps.

I clumsily sweat through a workout, my shower feels cold, I don’t eat enough, I mess up a project, I sleep too little, I overwork a lot, and I zone out during a meeting in my messy office, which is filled with empty cups, half-eaten protein bars, and an overall lack of sunshine. I repeat.

But when I take twenty minutes to plan a nicer dinner and some different and intentional conversation starters for my husband? Suddenly, the half-eaten protein bars have a means to the end, and I feel a little excited.

When I offload social media apps to focus on building a business and get payout emails that I hope will eventually repurchase my time, I feel hope.

Dying Your Hair and Moving to Europe May Not Be The Answer, Or Possible, But This Is…

I understand what it feels like to have limitations, responsibilities, and daily heaviness. I know what it’s like to have an overdraft bank account and to be trapped with where you live for years.

But these micro changes and baby steps, seeped intentionally into the little things you can control in your day, can make the most significant difference and refuel your dreams. Perhaps it’s a phone call, a new recipe, taking a half-day, trying something new with your nails, or sketching a prototype of a product idea that you’ve put off—whatever it is, it matters.

We don’t have to rinse and repeat our daily routines. With just a few minutes of intentional focus and ideas, we can add flavor, like salt, to the week.

The missing ingredient is focusing on who you are becoming, not only what you do daily.

Who we are becoming is the guiding point of those small steps and decisions that lead to a lack of joy and disconnection. And the excitement of taking some of our power back and realizing we have more resources than we know can stimulate a spark within us.

When I realized this, I had to look in the mirror – which was tough.

The tasks that keep me super-stimulated but don’t contribute to becoming the person I want to be are adding up. I avoid certain things that make me uncomfortable but will keep me exactly where I am – and my friends - we’re already a month into the new year. Do you want to be in the same place you are now in a few months? Don’t feel guilty for saying no; get excited because you are about to give yourself a lot more yes.

But also, life's dull, sluggish, not-fun elements positively contribute to who I am becoming equally. By thinking about it in this way, we can celebrate even the tasks that kind of suck: the workout, the high-protein snack, the tax organization, the job.

We can decide today to create an excellent balance between the essential mundane and inject some joy, intentionality, and even small things into each week while casting a vote on who we are becoming and not assigning ourselves only to what we do and who we are within a job, label, or career.

Most of the beautiful things you enjoy today, from favorite books or bodies of work, stemmed from someone intentionally injecting a dream into their daily vision until it became a reality.

I believe in your dream.

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For the life of me, despite being described as a warm, fluffy ray of sunshine, the idea of human interaction and having a conversation makes me want to melt into the glazed floors—to the extent that I constantly ask myself, “Do I just order ahead?” to avoid the thirty-second interaction. I know now that a part of this anxiety is the neurodivergent in me, but it’s made me wonder: What have we lost already because we’ll never know it or experience it?

For the youthful generation (and I hope that at the age of twenty-six when I have kicked off life insurance and am in a higher tax bracket, I can still consider myself youthful), I believe the coffee shop may be the last physical stance against the Western front of permanent desocialization. I know; it's very Frank Navasky of me (if you know, you know). Ultimately, this indicates that you don’t trust how extraordinary you are and what you have to offer others.

Despite my extroverted abilities, I can do it in short bursts like a trained hat trick; I find myself and many of those I work with shrinking their space around them, chiseling away square footage as if it’ll also chisel away their monthly rent cost.

Read more

The extra shot was brought on by our third conversation of the week about the price of groceries (we settled on going to Aldi more often as a solution) and the realization that I was on the edge of quitting my entire six-year professional career in marketing.

I kept telling myself things would change: the late nights, the weekend work, the dry-heaving in the toilet (from stress, not because of more cocktails – if you’re reading this, Mom, don’t worry).

I also told myself a phrase that I think has catapulted us into a society of isolation, anxiety, and unhappiness: “Not liking most days is normal. It’s part of being an adult and part of life.”

I made a strawberry cake to celebrate the moment.

I do believe that suffering is an inevitable truth for us all. But was I ready to submit to the notion that’s just how it is when it comes to daily life, or were there improvements on the horizon of drop-kicking a 6-figure paycheck and living on Aldi cheese and a savings account? What microchoices were I avoiding daily because I feared leaving my comfort zone?

This isn’t a confession letter, but I think it’s relatable for many. You were so focused on survival mode that you kept running, letting the little pieces of your authentic self chisel off as currency to get another stride ahead. The price seems low until suddenly you dread Monday on a Thursday, and you can’t eat your favorite tomato and burrata pasta dish without a laptop screen gouging your eyes at 11 p.m. I cried so much in the last two years, in particular, that I struggled to cry at all. I’m like Cameron Diaz in The Holiday.

To be clear, this isn’t a hate letter to my industry but more of a larger question about lifestyle in general: Are we indeed the authors of our own story, or do the external threads in societal survival that pull us along ultimately win?

For some context, because I am confident the few on my mailing list that I’ve been building the last year in my side business are confused af (sorry) at receiving a dreary and slightly provocatively tilted newsletter (sorry, again): I wanted a little space where I could let loose.

I’ve been building a business I love and adore on the side as a Creative Success Coach, and yes, I have the whole corporate job in tow. But there is so much more to me than discussing branding, productivity, and marketing. I preach about being authentic online, but I let so many chiseled-off pieces of myself collect dust on the ground that I don’t think anyone outside my family knows who I am genuinely—just one side of myself. I think I write this terrified because perhaps I only know one side of myself.

And no, I’m not going through an identity crisis; I'm going through an identity reawakening. I'm adding an extra layer of frosting to the world I'm building and returning to my creative core and first love: words—all the provocative and sweet ones in between, and not to sell, push, force, like painful labor, but gently, like the way butter finally melts at summer room temperature. (Yes, I used labor and butter in the same sentence; get used to this weird $h*t).

I miss the fragment of myself that unapologetically wrote words like I was running a marathon with an unsettling WPM speed, even just for a seventh-grade paper. I miss walking on a Tuesday morning because it’s beautiful outside, and I do not anxiously check my Microsoft notifications and say, “Maybe later.” I miss caramelizing onions with a glass of wine slowly instead of rushing because I need to cram in laundry, three to-do list items, and a social post before bed after a full day of work. So I don’t even taste my food – hence the title Salt. I love food, and cooking is my love language. Is this all too much to ask? Or did we all subscribe to a lifestyle that was always a machine and never very human?

I have a wonderful marriage. In a few days, we’ll happily celebrate our second anniversary (a few of you just rolled your eyes; I felt it). So far, I’ve learned that to love well, I must die to myself, sacrifice, and make space to nurture my other half. Sometimes, this is easy, and other times, it is very hard.

If you, like me, want to do more of what you love each day, I’d imagine the same rules apply. To slip into a peaceful nap with a fuzzy blanket because you can or watercolor paint each morning will require you to deny yourself other things. Such as setting boundaries with family, having less money, and not giving in to the inevitable internal emotion of I should be doing insert blank task right now.

Pleading the fifth to the guilt by association crime, our identity is simply what we do for work in American culture.

I realized (this was the 4:23 am breakthrough) that to achieve this, do less, and make space for the things I love; I must deny myself a lot of temptation. The impulse Amazon orders: I feel fat in this dress, so let me buy another—the panic of using every spare minute that my eyes are open to be related to making money, and so on. The temptation of giving into the What Ifs and entrusting if I need to get a new job, I can, with the skills I have, even if it’s new and uncomfortable.

But here is ​​where you come in: If to love something is to sacrifice, many of us must love our jobs, right? For some, it’s our only relationship–maybe even an affair. Did that make your stomach sink a lot? In my conversations with many of you, I have found that you are playing the same Stockholm Syndrome game as me: doom scrolling, overdrinking to compensate, and drooling over your one-week vacation like it’s ecstasy.

Romanticizing life and all forms of love takes extreme effort and work. Suppose you love a particular meal, hobby, or skill. In that case, one of the ultimate acts is to deny what was probably installed in you over the years, to give way to the expectations and the machine instead of pleasure and leisure. To make space when someone else is demanding your time – your highest currency – and choosing yourself when you are a chronic people pleaser and have a savior complex.

So, even though I’m sure only five people will read this, I’d like to invite you to join me on this terrifying journey and change, to make space for what you love, to pick up the fragments of yourself you lost along the way, and to love daily life a little more than you did yesterday because time, the air in your lungs (even at ungodly morning hours with a hangover), is a gift.

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