When this reaches you, I will be on an Alaskan cruise. Or maybe I’ll be on a Glacier. Or maybe I’ll be throwing up from nausea. Who knows.

So I’m going to make this short and sweet.

This is my first major vacation since May 2023 (pre-severe illness). It feels momentous. It feels treacherous. It feels exciting. Please send me good vibes.

I'm writing to you now from a cafe, two days before I leave. I’m buzzing with excitement for the adventures and the quality time with people I love. I’m also buzzing with anxiety about what it might cost my body.

Oh, life with a chronic condition. The both/and of it all.

Giving myself a break!

To give myself the best chance of success on this cruise, and to actually be in vacation mode baybyyy, I’ve decided to take two weeks completely off from work and social media.

When you work for yourself, it’s difficult to feel like you’ve “earned” time off, given that there’s no official PTO.

Still, I know that I really need the break to refresh, to fuel my creativity, and to keep my eye on the prize (a world where people with chronic health conditions have their emotional and physical needs fully seen, validated, and supported).

The wisdom coming to me

Here’s what I want you to know:

I know your life looks different than you expected.

I know your life involves more pain or illness symptoms than you ever could have fathomed.

I know it’s hard to trust your body or plan for the future.

I want you to know that joy is still possible.

Joy exists in the minute details of life, and in the big, cruise-worthy occasions.

Joy in both.

For the years I wasn’t able to go on a cruise, I still found ways to find my joy. In bed. In my home. In my neighborhood.

Joy is such a funny thing because, for some reason, we’ve learned that we either need to earn it or that by engaging with it we are indulging ourselves.

Neither is true.

So let me ask you this: Where will you find your joy this week? In this body. In this life. In this moment.

Commit to that.

While I won’t be responding to emails or social media messages, I wanted to remind you of the other ways I can support you while I’m freezing cold in the summer, basking in a glacier:

• 🌻 Get on the waitlist for the next Chronic Illness Grief Circle. The last event sold out, and the waitlist will be notified first when the next circle opens.

• 🌻 Start the self-paced course, Believe Your Body. If you ever doubt whether you’re being dramatic or overreacting about your body, this course will help you trust yourself to make the best decisions for your body and your health (code NEWSLETTER15 for 15% off)

• 🌻 1:1 coaching session for personalized support. Get a Discovery Call or Clarity Session on my schedule early for when I’m back in September.

Hope you have a wonderful end to your August. And no matter what, remember that you can find your joy.

Sending lots of love for joy and healing always <3,

Dr. Talia

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Some previous posts you may enjoy:

Acceptance isn’t a performance; 5 things that are really difficult without self-trust when you’re chronically ill; Ask Dr. Talia #3: How do I grieve my life due to illness?

The first Chronic Illness Grief Circle was Monday night. I want to tell you about it but there’s a problem…

It’s hard to put into words the experience of being in a group of people who just get the grief of chronic pain and illness. The way the brain is able to settle. The way the body breathes with more ease.

It’s hard to put into words not because I couldn't describe what happened, but because it's an enveloping feeling you need to experience for yourself to really comprehend. The kind of feeling that leads to both smiles and tears and often at the same time (this happened multiple times at the circle).

My 3 big takeaways

So instead of trying to describe, I’m going to tell you three things I took away from the circle because I think you will resonate with them. Let me know which feels most relevant to you:

1. Validation hits differently when you don’t need to explain yourself first. The difference is palpable—in the way your nervous system responds and de-escalates—between talking about your chronic illness grief with people who get it and people who are just sympathetic.

2. With grief connection comes relief and release, but also a unique sadness about what was missing before. About the hole in your life where more supportive people could have been. That's grief too. And it’s why these spaces are so important.

3. Grief has different messages for each of us. Throughout the circle, attendees connected to their grief through imagination, the brain, and the body. Through those practices, each participant learned something different about their personal grief. Not their peers’, their own. It was the combination of each person’s grief wisdom that made the circle so powerful.

What did people say?

At the Chronic Illness Grief Circle, attendees found that it was easier to share their vulnerability than it usually is, and they appreciated boundaries around no trauma-dumping and no advice.

Given how much interest there has been, and that the first event sold out, I have taken it as a sign to hold more grief circles! If you’re interested, get on the waitlist. You’ll be the first to know when the next circle opens.

Until then I leave you with this: What if your grief wasn’t something you had to solve? What if it was allowed to be painful? What if sharing it with others could serve you? What next step would you take?

Sending lots of love for joy and healing always <3,

Dr. Talia

P.s. 🌻 Join the waitlist for first dibs at signing up for the next circle.

Some previous posts you may enjoy:

Ask Dr. Talia #3: How do I grieve my life due to illness?; Why I want to scream about illness grief; When my body tells me to grieve, I say yes

When my body tells me to grieve, I say, “yes.”

When my mind tells me to build walls so high that grief cannot get over, I say gently, “you’ve protected me for so long, rest now.”

When my body tells me to grieve, I say, “let me feel this grief deeply.”

When my mind tells me to avoid pain with the urgency of an ambulance, I say firmly, “you are only prolonging the pain by trying to bypass it, my love.”

When my body tells me to grieve, I say, “thank you for knowing that I am ready.”

When my mind tells me there is nothing more frightening than grief’s unknown shadow, I say boldly, “you’ve been here before, and you’ll be here again. You’ve made it through this before, and you will again.”

When my body tells me to grieve, I trust in a divine path, guided by my inner knowing and connection to the universe.

When my mind finally allows me the space to grieve, I feel at peace with the pain—one body and one mind, together.

Reflection for you: Do you allow yourself to feel grief? Can you recognize grief in your body? When did you last spend intentional time with your grief?

If you’re curious about grief or ready to sit with it in community, I’m hosting a Chronic Illness Grief Circle on Zoom on Monday, August 17th from 7-9pm NYC time. $17 USD. If you’re thinking this could be a space that’s meaningful to you, then you are welcome. As simple as that.

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More ways I can support you:

🌻 My guide, “What I Wish Your Therapist Knew About Chronic Illness” — A resource for purchase that bridges lived experience and clinical care.

🌻 1:1 Coaching — Illness changed the life you thought you’d have. I help you trust yourself and your body again.

🌻 Self-paced course, Believe Your Body — Stop doubting your chronic illness symptoms and trust yourself to make the best decisions for your body and your health (code NEWSLETTER15 for 15% off)

Quick announcement: I’m hosting a Chronic Illness Grief Circle on Zoom on Monday, August 17th from 7-9pm NYC time. $17 USD. If you’re thinking this could be a space that’s meaningful to you, then you are welcome. As simple as that.

I’ve been deep in grief the last few weeks.

Still, it feels different than it used to.

Different now that I’ve allowed myself to know my grief better than I ever wanted to need to. Different now that I’ve grieved more identities, abilities, and plans than I’d care to remember. Different now that I’ve studied my grief’s aching hills and valleys.

There was one conversation 4 years ago when I said to a friend, “I don’t know how much more I can grieve.”

Younger Talia would be despondent to know that boy oh boy was there more to grieve. But she’d also be pleasantly surprised that I now know how to move through it without collapse.

I was able to get there by talking about, thinking about, and ranting about grief more than any other topic. Studying how not to let it overwhelm me, but guide me. Looking at it straight on with a magnifying glass because I trusted myself to handle what I saw.

How is it fair that chronic illness grief sits on you with the heaviness of an elephant, and then still somehow ends up the elephant in the room that isn’t spoken about freely, only whispered?

I want to scream about grief.

When I say chronic illness grief, what do I mean?

Chronic illness grief is the discrepancy between the life you have, and the life you want; between the life you have, and the life you thought you would have; between the life you have, and the life you see your peers living.

Chronic illness grief means missing what your body used to be able to do with ease that you can no longer rely on it for.

It means somehow needing to let go of the opportunities for connection, career advancement, and JOY that have not been possible because your body had other plans.

Grief.

I want to scream about it until you and everyone you know understands how important it is.

Chronic illness grief is different

Chronic illness grief doesn’t get the same attention as grief of a loved one. No ceremony to commemorate the loss (but should we do that??). No food train. Less and less sympathy over time.

I think this is because if you haven’t experienced it, it’s hard to really comprehend what chronic illness grief feels like. It's harder to understand from the outside than losing a loved one.

When others fail to comprehend the massive losses that come with chronic illness, people with chronic illness feel isolated.

We feel like aliens.

We feel we must mask our true selves to avoid the disbelief and the derision.

Still, you can’t skip over the grief, my love

Maybe you know about grief. Maybe you already feel it weighing you down as you go about your day wishing it wasn’t there. Maybe you want to skip over it. I get it, I’ve been there.

But unfortunately chronic illness grief cannot be skipped over, only buried. And with buried grief, goes buried joy, buried acceptance, and buried love for self. That’s a lot to lose.

So I want to scream about grief. For you. So that your grief has the opportunity to be witnessed by yourself and others.

I see you in your grief.

Sending lots of love for joy and healing always <3,

Dr. Talia

P.s. 🌻 I’m hosting a Chronic Illness Grief Circle. I’d love to have you there. Monday, August 17, 7-9pm NYC time. $17.

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More ways I can support you:

🌻 My guide, “What I Wish Your Therapist Knew About Chronic Illness” — A resource for purchase that bridges lived experience and clinical care.

🌻 1:1 Coaching — Illness changed the life you thought you’d have. I help you trust yourself and your body again.

🌻 Self-paced course, Believe Your Body — Stop doubting your chronic illness symptoms and trust yourself to make the best decisions for your body and your health (code NEWSLETTER15 for 15% off)

Some previous posts you may enjoy:

Ask Dr. Talia #1: Should I accept my illness?; when my body tells me to grieve, i say yes; Gratitude isn’t always helpful

A recent quote from celebrity, author, actress, and endo-club-member, Lili Reinhart has been making the rounds on social media. And for good reason. But something important has been left out of the discourse.

In an interview with Cosmopolitan, Lili said:

“I genuinely think that if it became illegal for doctors to blame women’s health symptoms on their anxiety, the world would change.”

I agree with her. The world would absolutely change. I know that some painful experiences of my own would likely have never happened. For example, maybe that young male doctor wouldn’t have asked me—a clinical psychology PhD student at the time mind you—if I had ever “heard of” anxiety.

The gall, and frankly laziness and lack of humility, to settle on anxiety as the culprit in place of adequate medical investigation is much too common.

But beyond the medical system, blaming physical symptoms on anxiety changes how those of us with chronic health conditions relate to anxiety itself.

Let’s reclaim anxiety

I hate that anxiety has become a bad word in the chronic illness community, though I get how it happened.

Because the truth is that anxiety, like illness, can also be debilitating. We should pay attention to anxiety. We should care about anxiety. We should give anxiety the space it deserves especially if we’re living the stressful and anxiety-provoking existence of chronic illness.

Beyond my anger about how common medical dismissal is, I’m also mad that the weaponization of anxiety by healthcare professionals has created a world where people with chronic conditions are hesitant and resistant to acknowledge that they are indeed experiencing anxiety.

People with chronic illness are forced to play this carefully choreographed game where we distance ourselves from any mental health diagnosis out of fear that it will be taken as the root cause of our physical ailments in the small white room, with the fluorescent lighting, across from someone with a stethoscope. It’s an exhausting dance tbh and I wish we didn’t have to do it.

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Guess what?? Illness and anxiety coexist

Here’s the reality: you can have both anxiety and illness, and your anxiety can even be about your illness and still not be the cause of your illness. So when doctors and therapists minimize physical symptoms as anxiety, they are not only dismissing patients’ reality, they are also taking away chronically ill people’s willingness and ability to seek support for anxiety and its real impact on our lives.

What we need is for individuals with impressive degrees (yes, I know I’m one of them) who were taught lack of nuance—treatment protocols, test results, academic journals—to have the humility to understand that there is still so much we don’t know about the body.

Let me say that again. There. Is. Still. So. Much. We. Don’t. Know. About. The. Body.

Given this, can we agree that anxiety is the easy out as an explanation for chronic symptoms? And can we create a world where people can both get support for their anxiety and not get their physical symptoms dismissed as anxiety?

Who’s ready to reclaim anxiety?

Sending lots of love for joy and healing always <3,

Dr. Talia

Reflection for you: How do you relate to anxiety? Have you performed the choreographed dance of distancing yourself from a mental health diagnosis? How did it impact you?

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More ways I can support you:

🌻 My guide, “What I Wish Your Therapist Knew About Chronic Illness” — A resource for purchase that bridges lived experience and clinical care.

🌻 1:1 Coaching — Illness changed the life you thought you’d have. I help you trust yourself and your body again.

🌻 Self-paced course, Believe Your Body — Stop doubting your chronic illness symptoms and trust yourself to make the best decisions for your body and your health (code NEWSLETTER15 for 15% off)

You can also find me on Instagram

Some previous posts you may enjoy:

10 ways to measure chronic illness progress beyond symptom improvement; Ask Dr. Talia #2: What if no doctor ever believes me?; Why is it so hard to believe your symptoms with chronic illness?

I’m going to tell you two stories. I’m wondering if you’ll be able to reconcile them.

I believe the ability to hold seemingly contradictory stories at once is the most precious and rare skill when it comes to living life with illness. It’s learning to recognize the kind of stories that feel like they shouldn’t both be true at the same time, but they are.

This story reconciliation skill is what I work on with almost all 1:1 coaching clients. And to me, it’s what determines how quickly someone can bounce back from the inevitable setbacks of illness, or really just the setbacks of life.

A trip to Portland!

This past week I went on a 4-5 day trip to visit my best friend Adina in the Pacific Northwest, which included visiting Portland for the first time.

Since getting really sick in Summer 2023, travel has been off limits at the worst and requiring intense illness calculation at the best. I have cancelled more than one trip.

Two years ago, recovering from and preparing for a flight took me two days of complete rest. Embarking on a four-day trip was less feasible than narrowing the political divide in this country because it would have meant spending the whole time recovering from or preparing to fly.

So needless to say this trip was a big and nerve-racking milestone in my recovery.

Now I’ll tell you two stories about the trip.

I want you to pay attention to the emotions that come up as you read. Do you recognize anything that feels familiar?

Version 1:

DAY 1 (Travel): I boarded the plane and as always had to choose between two evils: using the sanitizer wipe even though it makes me lightheaded or sitting on a dirty seat scared about germs. I chose the headache-inducing sanitizer wipe.

The flight was delayed after we had already boarded the plane and because I was in the middle seat that meant more time where I couldn’t put my feet up (something that helps my POTS). When I landed, I fought the discomfort of oncoming fatigue to help myself adjust to the earlier time zone.

DAY 2: Our first stop in Portland was the famous Powell’s Books which was incredibly overstimulating from a sensory perspective and meant I didn’t have the bandwidth to actually look at books.

In addition, my electrolyte and eating schedules were off because of the roadtrip from Seattle which meant I didn’t eat my second meal until 4pm. Here I recognized with the dauntingness of a “dun, dun, dun” sound effect how little wiggle room I have with my meal timing and felt sadness around needing to be so strict with my day. I also ate multiple meals that day that my body isn’t used to eating which led to uncomfortable nausea and constipation.

DAY 3: I woke up and the entire room was spinning. For the first few hours of the day, I had to hold onto the wall to walk to the bathroom. Dizziness is not a typical symptom for me so I had no tools aside from staying in bed late to manage.

Around midday the dizziness let up, and we went on a hike that was steeper than I was anticipating. I started to experience intense anxiety around pushing myself too hard and crashing while on the trip. At the beach after, I struggled with temperature regulation between the hot hot sun (damn that Portland sun is strong) and the cold temperature of the water—something I wish my body could more easily do.

DAY 4: Portland has lots of cute vintage, antique, and crafty shops. Maddeningly, many of them have incense. After one or two incense-heavy shops, the scent triggered a migraine. I had to go back to the AirBnB and rest while Adina continued to shop and explore.

At night, we went to a Hilary Duff concert like the two good millennials we are. Because it’s difficult for me to stand in place, I had to sit down on the floor multiple times to rest, missing some of the action.

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Version 2: Can you reconcile?

DAY 1 (Travel): On the flight, I was in a middle seat between two people who didn’t bother me. I arrived safely and my best friend picked me up! What a scrumptious hug. When we arrived at her house she had made the most nourishing meal. Unlike when I traveled 2 years ago, I didn’t feel like I had no life energy in me. I felt OK. Tired, but OK! I was able to stay up late chatting the night away. So sweet.

DAY 2: I finally was able to meet Adina’s partner in person and we made pancakes together. The meal was special, and it was even more special to witness their love in person. When Adina and I arrived in Portland, we visited one of the most famous bookstores in the world, and honestly it lived up to the hype. For dinner, I had Burmese food—a cuisine I’ve never tried and was incredibly delicious.

DAY 3: I stayed in bed, as any good vacation day deserves, and really listened to my body, which felt dizzy and needed to be horizontal. By midday, I was able to go on an almost 2 mile nature walk/hike! Being surrounded by trees made me a happy gal and I showed myself that I can make adjustments as I engage in new activities again. At the beach, it was heavenly to feel the sun on my skin. Plus, I’m just a water person through and through. Nothing makes me feel more alive.

DAY 4: I absolutely adored walking through the artsy neighborhoods and cute vintage shops of Portland. After one or two incense-heavy stores triggered a migraine, I was able to listen to my body and get some rejuvenating alone time at the AirBnB.

At night, we gallivanted to the Hilary Duff concert I’d been looking forward to for months. Concerts used to be such an important part of my life and they are no longer regularly possible because of my health, so this felt emotional and I was filled with gratitude.

Did you notice? Reflection for you

What was it like for you to read both of these stories? To read two completely true versions of the same events.

The point here isn’t focus on the positive babe!

The point here is that there are two true stories, and when we minimize either we run into problems. If I had only paid attention to the lovely shopping, I wouldn’t have gotten the rest I needed and taken the medication for my migraine. If I had only focused on my symptoms, well honestly my read of the trip would have been unpleasant.

Living a life full of joy, fulfillment, and pleasure with chronic illness is not about ignoring the hard parts. It’s about being able to hold multiple seemingly conflicting truths at one time. To look at the truth and resist leaning only toward the positive—which dismisses your hardship—or only toward the negative—which makes you miss the beauty life still has to offer. To feel comfortable in the messy middle of complexity.

There were times on this trip where my body felt miserable and uncomfortable. That remains the reality of my life. But gosh, the joy. THE JOY was there.

So which is the lie? And which is the truth? And which story is worth telling?

The answer is blurry.

Sending lots of love for joy and healing always <3,

Dr. Talia

Reflection for you: Which version of the story do you tend to default to—a focus on symptoms or a focus on all the good? How can you begin to integrate both truths? I’d love to know in the comments.

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More ways I can support you:

🌻 My guide, “What I Wish Your Therapist Knew About Chronic Illness” — A resource for purchase that bridges lived experience and clinical care.

🌻 Believe Your Body — A self-paced video course to stop doubting your chronic illness symptoms and trust yourself to make the best decisions for your body (15% off always for newsletter subscribers with code NEWSLETTER15)

🌻 1:1 Coaching — When illness changes the life you thought you’d have and you’re looking for support.

Some previous posts you may enjoy:

Are illness recovery stories helpful or harmful?; Why is it so hard to believe your symptoms with chronic illness?; Ask Dr. Talia #10: Is illness my identity?

I’m going to say something a PhD isn’t supposed to say.

I believe when it comes to chronic illness, intuition has as much of a place in treatment decisions as medical journals.

Intuition is especially pertinent when your chronic condition is understudied, misunderstood, and regularly dismissed by the establishment.

2026 has been the year that I’ve made treatment decisions from my intuition (which includes reading and gathering relevant scientific information, of course).

And it’s been working.

What is intuition anyway?

Intuition is an embodied form of knowing. It’s that subtle awareness that pops up as a thought that can’t be ignored, or a pull in your gut that demands to be heard. Intuition isn’t just guessing willy nilly; it’s allowing your body to recognize patterns your mind may not yet see.

To me, intuition can feel like a burst of energy. It starts in my feet and by the time the energy reaches my brain the idea has fully formed. Suddenly I know what I should do, or need to do, and there wasn’t clear data or reasoning that explained why, but my body-mind absolutely does not want me to ignore it.

Sometimes my intuition is slower. A piece of information that seems irrelevant stays with me until one day it connects to another piece of information. Then another. Slowly, those pieces form interlocking links, and I just know.

The hedger and Cautious Cathy in me feels like I need to say that intuition should be grounded in reality. Don’t expect a supplement to cure your cancer. But when there are gaps in knowledge, your own observations, experiences, and intuitive inklings matter.

What has intuition looked like in practice for me?

The clearest example of my intuition in action for my health happened earlier this year, when I decided to taper off the pain medication I’ve been on for 7 years. None of the many doctors I've seen over those seven years had questioned whether I should still be taking it. I told my primary care doctor that I thought the medication was contributing to my POTS symptoms and I’d like to try and come off of it. She agreed it was worth a try.

Within one week of tapering down on the medication, I gained significant weight (something I’d been trying to do for 3 years), and my physical and cognitive functioning returned to something that reminded me of my pre-severe POTS days.

This is only one example of several times this year that following my intuition has meaningfully changed my health.

But here’s the kicker: while I always was connected to my intuition—and you are too—for most of my life I was not able to act on it because I didn’t trust myself.

Intuition without self-trust is wasted energy. Even more than that, it's energy that gets trapped in the mind-body with nowhere to go.

That trapped intuition keeps demanding your attention. It either pesters you with the same idea over and over, using up valuable mental and physical energy. Or, over time, it reinforces a belief that you are inadequate and incapable of making good decisions. Neither is a good outcome.

For example, can you think about something in your life you just know would be good for you but you haven’t acted on? Because your overthinking brain comes up with 42 thousand reasons why maybe it wouldn’t work out?

It’s worth questioning. Is your intuition trying to tell you something worth listening to?

This might sound intense, but I believe the impact of self-doubt in chronic illness is one of the core roadblocks to living the life we want to live, even with illness. It’s why self-trust is the main mechanism we work on in my course, Believe Your Body. You can’t always control how choppy the waves of illness are, but you can learn to trust yourself at the helm. To believe that, no matter what happens to your symptoms, you will be able to handle it.

And I want to make something else clear: sometimes our intuition does not lead to the outcomes that we hoped for or expected, especially when it comes to unpredictable health conditions. This doesn’t necessarily mean your intuition was “wrong.” Sometimes, the action itself is what gives you the information you needed, allowing you to stop wondering "what if?" and move forward.

Acting on what you intuitively believe would be good for you is worth your limited time and energy, no matter the outcome.

What now?

So don’t go making any haste, irrational decisions about your health. But start paying attention to those small embodied inklings, those creepy crawly thoughts you’ve deemed bothersome but might be worth paying attention to.

What are they saying? What have you been pushing aside that is worth listening to?

I’d love to know.

Sending lots of love for joy and healing always <3,

Dr. Talia

🌻 P.s. If you’re looking for support to build self-trust and your intuitive muscle, Believe Your Body is available for you. Newsletter subscribers get 15% off with code NEWSLETTER15 always.

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More ways I can support you:

🌻 My guide, “What I Wish Your Therapist Knew About Chronic Illness” — A resource for purchase that bridges lived experience and clinical care.

🌻 1:1 Coaching — Illness changed the life you thought you’d have. I help you trust yourself and your body again.

🌻 Believe Your Body — Stop doubting your chronic illness symptoms and trust yourself to make the best decisions for your body and your health (code NEWSLETTER15 for 15% off)

Some previous posts you may enjoy:

5 things that are really difficult without self-trust when you’re chronically ill; how i find clarity; “I don’t trust my body” they say; Ask Dr. Talia #9: How do I plan with chronic illness?

I’m someone who loooooves to be in the present (it’s a real gift to not be dissociated all the time anymore…).

I’m also someone who acts for my past and future self regularly.

I’ve changed a lot in the last few years. So it’s important to me to take the time to recognize all the things that current Talia does—talk about illness on the interwebs being one of them—that younger Talia never would have done in a million years. I like doing things younger Talia wasn’t yet comfortable to do. In that way I still feel connected to her, even though I have changed.

I also create my goals around the world that future Talia wants to live in. This helps propel me forward especially on those days illness makes life feel like a slog.

My big, lofty goal is to create a world where all people with chronic illness have their emotional needs fully seen, validated, and supported. So in the present, I work toward that future Talia who has achieved that.

Believe Your Body is one of the ways I work toward all three: being present with my creativity and intuition, making younger Talia proud, and building the world future Talia wants to live in.

So fun :)

My love letter to you 💌

I call Believe Your Body my love letter to the chronic illness community. If I’m being honest with myself, it’s also a love letter to my younger self.

To the version of me who needed exactly this and didn't have it.

I get a wee bit sad sometimes thinking about how much suffering I experienced navigating the emotional messiness of chronic illness without the right support. A therapist who couldn’t understand and asked the type of questions that made me feel like I was wrong, friends who had no idea what it was like to feel so bad every day and not know how to stop it, and doctors who dismissed my reality when what I needed most was validation and support.

Believe Your Body exists because I saw, through my own experience and the 100+ people I’ve mentored or coached with illness, that without sturdy self-belief it’s impossible to work toward the grief processing and acceptance required to feel trust in yourself and your body again (or for the first time).

💌 By facilitating your own belief in yourself, I am writing you a love letter. And that love letter allows you to build a more loving relationship with your current body, current illness, and current life.

Illness changes the life you thought you’d have, Believe Your Body is where you start building a relationship with the life you’re actually living in the body you actually have. The place where you stop doubting your symptoms, and reconnect to yourself.

The course is now open, and you can use code EARLYBIRD50 for 50% off through July 3rd.

If you’re on the fence, I’ve included some FAQs below.

I trust you to make the decision that will work best for you.

Sending lots of love for joy and healing always <3,

Dr. Talia

🌱 P.s. If you’re considering joining Believe Your Body, there is likely something inside of you that knows that now is the right time for you to face your grief, move toward acceptance, and reconnect to joy and self-trust.

From Trudy who took the course:

FAQs about Believe Your Body for the maybes <3

1. Some days I do believe myself. Is Believe Your Body still for me?

Absolutely. The course isn’t only for people who never believe themselves–most of us do sometimes. It’s for anyone whose self-belief can be inconsistent, or who feels uncertain around grief, acceptance, advocacy, and joy in a sick body. The framework will benefit you regardless of where you’re starting from. If you’re considering it, you’re welcome here.

2. I’m not sure I’m “sick enough” to need this. What do you think?

If you’re asking this question, you’re probably more familiar with self-dismissal than you realize. Believe Your Body is for anyone who has ever questioned whether their experience was valid enough to deserve support. There’s no threshold you need to meet first. You’re welcome.

3. I’ve tried a lot of things for my chronic illness. What makes Believe Your Body different?

You’ve likely tried a lot of things focused on your symptoms–managing them, reducing them, fixing them. Even therapy does this to some extent. Believe Your Body isn’t about that. It’s about building a relationship with yourself that impacts every single second of every day.

The self-trust you build in the course & community extend beyond chronic illness. It changes how you move through the world, how you make decisions, and how you treat yourself when things get hard with illness.

4. I feel exhausted and stretched thin. How much time and energy does this actually take?

I built this course from inside a chronically ill body, so I kept this in mind! I designed the course to take one hour per week for five weeks. That said, you have lifetime access, and I want you to move through the course in whatever way works best for you.

I’ll also say this: the skills inside the course are designed to reduce the energy you spend overthinking, second-guessing, and dismissing yourself. That mental load is exhausting. Building self-trust actually gives you some of that energy back.

5. Online chronic illness spaces can feel really negative and leave me feeling worse. Are the Zoom calls in Believe Your Body like that?

I’m really aware of this dynamic and it matters to me. The Zoom drop-in calls and Telegram text-support community have clear guidelines around what and how much is appropriate to share. The goal is genuine connection without overwhelming each other’s nervous systems. That’s something I take seriously.

6. I’m visual. What does the course look like?

Great question. Here are the sidebars of first couple modules :)

My body can’t work how it used to.

My body can’t do a lot of things the way it used to.

In the “before times” —before my severe POTS, before 2023— I engaged in a lot of performing wellness. Of pushing through even when it felt like my head was being compressed by a tractor and my joints were throbbing. Of managing 1-2 week crashes after said pushing through and then being a little cheeky and not changing my behavior because that would require admitting something was wrong with my body and that it had limitations.

All I wanted was to prove that I could keep up. That my illness didn’t impact me. That my body was like my peers’.

Becoming majority bedbound in 2023 was the slap-in-the-face realization that I needed as a Type A overachiever. A wake-up call to the reality that something needed to change in the way I related to my body.

But if I'm honest, the signs were there much earlier. In the moments I knew I should rest but convinced myself I was overreacting and should keep going. In the accommodations I didn't ask for but knew I needed. In the grief I locked up in Rapunzel's tower, waiting for my prince charming (better health) before letting down my hair (processing and moving through it).

This isn’t just my story. It’s the story of my 1:1 clients, and the people who have come through Believe Your Body. Chronic illness typically shows us signs of what we need to change before we are fluent in the language needed to understand them. For many people with chronic conditions, a life-altering moment, diagnosis, or change in ability is what it takes to take the body's signals seriously.

Maybe you relate.

Work has shifted

As a first year PhD student, I would wake up at 7am, work for a couple of hours at home, and then head to campus for a full day of class, research, and clinical work. In the early evening maybe I'd go to the gym, make dinner, do more work for 2 hours, and then go to a friend's place to socialize.

I can’t believe my body could do that. On a regular basis.

That is no longer my reality. And even though I have made big strides in my recovery process, I’ve still had to come to terms with the fact that illness changed the life I thought I would have. These days, I try to connect to what my body needs NOW, not what it used to be able to do.

Now, I can work full days from home. I can socialize with the right preparation. Long walks are back in my life, but the gym isn’t just yet. Proactive adjustments are a requirement for my success. And in the process of finding the right adjustments for myself, I have built trust and understanding in my body that is more valuable than any of the protocols or quick fixes I have tried or been tempted to try along the way.

7 small adjustments I make to my workday

That trust is what has allowed me to accommodate myself. So here are 7 small adjustments I make to my workday as a chronically ill entrepreneur, now that I've stopped pretending my body can work like it used to. Permission to take what’s useful, and leave the rest.

1. Build in buffers. I always build in at least a 15-minute buffer (ideally 30 mins) between meetings or coaching sessions. Even if I’m convinced I’ll be fine, I take the proactive step to set myself up for success as I’m building my schedule.

2. Mix task types. I mix task types throughout the day to work with different energies: cognitive, social, physical, creative. For example, meetings take social energy. Writing is high creative energy. Chores are physical energy. Business admin is heavy cognitive energy. Mixing them keeps me from overdoing it and crashing.

3. Work from bed. I work from bed on flare days. And I don’t feel bad about it! Sorry not sorry.

4. Manage screen time. I’m very sensitive to screens, but of course my work means I need to be on one a lot. So I keep tabs on it. I switch video meetings to phone calls when I need less screen time. Or I jot down notes on paper when I want to brainstorm but need a break from the computer.

5. Breaks as a given. I take breaks to walk, eat, do chores, or be creative throughout the day to regulate my nervous system and reduce screen fatigue. Do it. Even when you don’t think you need one, that’s the best time for a break.

6. Appointment decompression time. I build time into my schedule to decompress after medical appointments and procedures. Always. If I feel A OKAY after an appointment, then I take the time to do something nice for myself (a walk in the park, a funny TV show). I try not to skip the decompression time because I know how taxing appointments can be physically and mentally.

7. Notice weekly wins. Each week I have a calendar task that says “Weekly Business Wins.” This is where I take the time to really get into the nitty gritty of everything I accomplished that week. It can be easy to convince myself sometimes that in between the appointments and the breaks I’m not being that productive. But when I list everything out, it becomes very clear that I have been. Plus, appointments and breaks are very productive.

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There’s so much pressure

I hope the examples of how I accommodate myself will be helpful for you—whether you are currently working or not. Because they apply not only to career work but also to chores, medical admin, taking care of kids, you name it.

There is so much noise about what bodies should be able to do and accomplish. That noise makes it genuinely difficult to tune into the right cadence for your own body—given your own conditions, your own reality, your own particular body.

YOU are the one who knows best what works for you. At the end of the day, that's what matters as you adjust to a life that looks different than it used to.

What's one thing your body has been asking for that you've been ignoring? Are you ready to make the adjustment? I’d love to know.

Sending lots of love for joy and healing always <3,

Dr. Talia

P.s. 🌻 If you’re ready to tune into what your body needs now, not what it used to be able to do, my course Believe Your Body could be a great fit for you. Join the waitlist before June 25 for 50% off.

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More ways to connect with me:

🌻 1:1 Coaching — A space to be supported in moving from fixing yourself toward acceptance, self-trust, and body safety while living with chronic illness.

🌻 My guide, “What I Wish Your Therapist Knew About Chronic Illness” — A resource for purchase that bridges lived experience and clinical care.

Interested in using your lived experience to advise health tech companies?

Express interest here. Read more here.

Some previous posts you may enjoy:

Chronic illness makes you face your changing self; 5 things that are really difficult without self-trust when you’re chronically ill; Ask Dr. Talia #4: How do I manage illness while working?

I’m gonna cut to the chase. The answer to if illness recovery stories are helpful or hurtful is a resounding: it depends.

So if you were in the mood for a jolly, simplistic, black-and-white answer, I want to save you from disappointment upfront.

Maybe now you’re thinking, couldn’t something related to illness be straightforward for once??? And to that I say, I hear you. It’s exhausting to always need to weigh complexity.

That said, I find the nuance of human emotion and behavior so deliciously interesting, so I hope you’ll stick around for the subtlety.

At the end I’ll guide you in some reflection of your own experience to uncover what the answer is for you, because that’s the only answer that really matters.

Chronic illness recovery stories can both inspire and depress

For some, hearing stories of chronic illness recovery can feel hopeful, motivating, and bring comfort and ease. Like a warm-weighted blanket that solves your pain, dissociation, and anxiety all at once. By witnessing someone else crawl out of the depths of illness, you see that it may be accessible to you too and the impossible feels possible. Recovery stories provide much-needed lightness while illness weighs heavily on you.

For others, hearing illness recovery stories can elicit difficult feelings of envy, fear, and comparison. Like being trapped in a jail cell, while others are going on with their lives on the outside. And even if the narrator is not intending to be cruel, it can feel like you are a sugar-obsessed child and the person who has recovered is dangling candy in front of you that the universe has no intention of giving you. Recovery stories can feel like fantasy when your daily reality is, well, very not recovered.

And of course it’s possible for one person’s reaction to change day to day and situation to situation. I myself have both confidently rejected recovery stories at times, and relished in their hopeful aura at other points.

All experiences are valid. And recovery stories should never be pushed on someone with chronic illness as a panacea. Because the truth is illness recovery stories are written by people who made it out. And they're read by people who aren't sure they will.

Quick announcement break — Believe Your Body waitlist

If illness has changed the life you thought you’d have, my course Believe Your Body may be a good fit for you. Join the waitlist now for access to 50% off when it launches in 3 weeks.

What does the research say?

A research study by Rennick-Egglestone and colleagues on mental health recovery stories matches my own observation. Their results found both helpful and harmful outcomes of recovery narratives.

Helpful outcomes included connectedness, empowerment, and hope. Harmful outcomes included a sense of inadequacy and pessimism.

What I love about this research is it doesn’t toxic positivity its way through illness recovery like some of the mental health research out there. It leaves room for multiple perspectives and experiences. What works for one person won’t necessarily work for another. Everyone who lives with chronic illness knows this to be true, and it can also be one of the most frustrating parts of recovery.

So again, illness recovery narratives can inspire or depress. It depends. Nuance. Yum.

So what’s the right way to move forward?

The way to move forward is to understand your particular feelings and needs, and to trust yourself enough to stand by them.

If you are in a phase where recovery stories feel like someone is dangling a treat in front of you, never to give it to you, it’s ok for recovery narratives to feel not helpful. If you’re in a phase where recovery stories fill you with hope and happiness, and motivate you to keep taking the meds and show up to appointments, then absolutely seek them out.

With chronic illness, there is so much noise about what will and won’t help you. At the end of the day, only you know what works for you in your particular body.

A personal note

As I continue on my own illness recovery, I am cognizant that my story may feel hard for some to read. I want to hold space for that—you are always welcome to skip my writing if it doesn’t feel good.

Here’s where I am: I am about 75% recovered (a highly empirical figure, by which I mean the number that felt right to me) from where I was a few years ago at my worst. And I am beyond grateful every day. And still, sometimes seeing others reach that remaining 25% feels like someone dangling candy in front of me that I can’t eat.

I hope that in this community we can hold space for the varying experiences and trajectories of illness, wherever you are in yours. Because I know what it’s like to be at the darkest depths, what it’s like to start improving, and what it’s like to backslide. And I can hold space for you no matter what stage you’re at.

Sending lots of love for joy and healing always <3,

Dr. Talia

Reflection for you: What are the emotions that come up for you when you encounter recovery stories? Are there certain situations where it feels helpful? Not helpful?

Thank you to today’s newsletter sponsor, Neura Health

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More ways to connect with me:

🌻 If you tend to feel you’re “overreacting” when you have a new symptom, Believe Your Body may be a great fit for you. Join the waitlist for access to the 50% early bird discount

🌻 1:1 Coaching — A space to be supported in moving from fixing yourself toward acceptance, self-trust, and body safety while living with chronic illness.

Some previous posts you may enjoy:

Why is it so hard to believe your symptoms with chronic illness?; Joy doesn’t wait for your symptoms to stop; Ask Dr. Talia #10: Is illness my identity?

Many of us are walking through the world like a decapitated head. Sorry to get gruesome, but it's true!

We act as if the body and mind are separate, and we’re all too eager to default to the unattached head. Sometimes that's a conscious strategy just to make it through the day. Sometimes it's an unconscious attempt to create some stability in an uncertain and scary world.

Fewer people are walking through the world as an integrated body-mind (picture B above). These individuals are able to flexibly move between attention to cognition and attention to sensation. Between what they’re thinking and feeling. Throw in chronic illness—a chronic trauma to the body—and the scale tips even heavier toward the decapitated head (picture A).

And that’s understandable. I was there for many years. This was the perspective that really started to shift things for me:

The goal of mind-body integration, or embodiment, in chronic illness is not to never be dissociated, or never feel removed from the body. It’s to have the flexibility and ability to return to presence in the body when it serves you. And yes, it serves you even and especially when you have a chronic condition and chronic pain.

One of the core distinctions between those who can make that return to presence and those who struggle to be present is the capacity to believe what your body is telling you, treat yourself kindly in those moments, and from there take aligned action that supports you.

Why is it so hard to believe your symptoms with chronic illness?

When I think about why it’s so hard for people with chronic illness to believe their symptoms are real, sometimes I’m like huh? This is so weird? We notice something wrong in our body and immediately the mind jumps in to minimize the symptom or dismiss it entirely.

This response is pervasive. Almost every person with chronic illness gaslights themselves about their experience.

How did we get here? How did dismissal become the default, rather than curiosity and care?

The reasons are multilevel.

3 levels that explain self-dismissal of illness symptoms

1. At the societal level, every message we receive about bodies tells us that to live in a disabled or sick body is less than. That it makes you unworthy, or burdensome. That the goal is always peak health. That a flaw, or a pimple, or a pain, means something is deeply, deeply wrong with you. We never get the message "Hey, bodies are bodies. They change, they have different abilities on different days and throughout time. That's ok. You don't need to fix yourself."

2. On the interpersonal level, many people (and I’d dare to say most) with chronic illness have experienced dismissal and minimization from those whose belief and validation mattered most for their physical and emotional safety: a parent, a new doctor, a partner. These “small remarks” become deep wounds that dig deeper on the societal wounds that already exist in each of us.

3. And then on the intrapersonal level (within oneself), not believing our symptoms can serve a protective function. If we don’t admit to ourselves that we are sick, or in pain, or have different abilities than we used to, then we don’t need to sit with the immense grief that may overwhelm us. Denial feels like safety when we do not yet have the capacity to sit with what is.

What does believing your symptoms/body look like in practice?

As I was writing this piece, I knew I wanted to convey the concept in a concrete, lived-in way. What does it actually mean to believe your body while you’re out there living a good ole life (because life gets better when you believe yourself)? So I paid attention this past week and noticed specific moments where it showed up:

• I believed my body when I took the nerve-wracking step to make a complaint about a nurse at the infusion center. This nurse, despite me asking multiple times, continued to insert the IV without any warning. First, I believe it’s never ok to do something to someone’s body without consent or warning. And second, this action was flaring my medical PTSD and extending my recovery time in ways that were completely avoidable. The complaint was received seriously, and now I am no longer placed with that nurse. Believing your body means that your comfort is important enough to take the risk to advocate for your needs.

• I believed my body when I started to feel the early inklings of dizziness while shopping for new sandals in the busyness of midtown New York. The kind of inkling so small that when I was functioning as picture A (see above), a separate body and mind, I likely would not have noticed. So I believed that something was up. I didn’t push through. I sat down, drank some electrolytes, and then went on my merry way. The journey did not include finding new sandals, but it did include avoiding a larger flare. Believing your body means being in tune with yourself and taking the time to understand your needs.

• I believed my body last week when I made room to feel the intense grief over the careers I gave up—becoming a professor and working with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. Even though I love the business I have created and feel incredibly fulfilled from a career perspective, the grief of an altered life plan still surfaces from time-to-time. I don’t push it down, I give it permission to exist. Believing your body means allowing space to sit with grief.

• And lastly, I believed my body last night when I woke up with throbbing wrist pain. Instead of going into a cycle of blame around the wrist position I chose while writing this newsletter at the park, I simply popped over to my night table, took out my wrist brace, and wore it for the rest of the night. In the morning, the pain had decreased substantially. Believing your body means responding to your needs without blame.

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Four moments. Four different kinds of believing. All of them available to you.

I hope you can see that this is possible for you too.

You are not alone, and there are proven strategies to move toward self-belief, self-kindness, and a joyful life—illness included.

Are you ready to start?

Sending lots of love for joy and healing always <3,

Dr. Talia

P.s. If you’re ready to start believing your symptoms and move toward body kindness, trust, and joy, my course Believe Your Body launches self-paced very soon. I'm offering 50% off to everyone who joins the waitlist before it launches.

Reflection for you: Start to notice the situations where the self-dismissal shows up for you. Can you try saying, “I’m choosing to believe myself.”

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Some previous posts you may enjoy:

“I don’t trust my body” they say; Chronic illness acceptance isn’t giving up; Ask Dr. Talia #2: What if no doctor ever believes me?

As a creator, so much of what I do is edited. Newsletters edited on repeat. Reels that are edited to have no gap in speaking just in case someone gets bored in the second it took me to breathe. Edited, edited, edited.

As someone with chronic illness, so much of what I do is planned. Appointments planned months in advance, energy management planned every day, pill cases planned each week and then suddenly the week has passed and it’s time to plan to refill the lil green plastic case again. Planning for my body has taken over the space I imagine could be filled frolicking in Central Park without a care in the world, and without a pigeon flying in my face.

I’ve been craving a creative space that isn’t the optimized, planned out, edited version of me, but is just unfiltered. Though even now sitting with the word “unfiltered” feels slightly filtered! Like hello I need to announce that this is now the unfiltered version of me!! Ok everyone, I am unfiltered now!

But the crux of what I’m trying to say is that I’m an intuitive person and I’m at my best when I’m in the moment, feeling the presence of myself, and talking from my heart, mind, and soul all at once without worrying about your attention darting to the next flashy thing. I’m not so flashy, and that’s ok.

So that’s the origin story of Thinking, Unfiltered with Dr. Talia for paid subscribers. Though it reads more like a winding ramble, than a Marvel superhero script. Still, this will be my playground to speak about what’s on my mind, the patterns I’m seeing, what I’m intuiting needs to be shared with the chronic illness community, and to have fun (what’s life without some fun?).

Consider this your invitation into the unedited version of me, and maybe you’ll even find yourself in conversation with the unedited version of you.

Lots of love always. Press play.

In today’s Thinking, Unfiltered I'm thinking about chronic illness and social media echo chambers.

Is it helping us feel less alone or is it keeping us stuck? Probably both. That's what I'm sitting with this week.

Read more

I have spent most of my life telling myself I hate Greek mythology. Then I saw Hadestown on Broadway for my birthday and had to reconsider.

It was a birthday weekend where I felt so present in my body and in my life. Part of that presence was that I finally took a few days off from work after a splendid finish to my course Believe Your Body. Part was that my partner was in town, which meant that the baseline level of longing that buzzes in the background of my brain was gone. And part was that my health was better than it has been for the last few birthdays, which meant I felt like a person engaging fully with the world again. Three yummy ingredients for a present birthday.

I’ve always known that in presence, there are profound lessons. It’s why I meditate. I just didn’t expect, “huh, do I actually like Greek mythology?” to be one of them.

Hadestown on Broadway

Hadestown tells the story of two pairs of lovers based on Greek mythology: the young love Orpheus & Eurydice, and the darker story of Hades & Persephone (feel free to read more about the stories if you’re curious, but this newsletter is about me people). The musical evoked emotions of hope and fear, and had me reflecting on the darker sides of love. It also touched on themes of climate change and the effects of capitalistic greed, which of course hit differently walking directly into busy consumerism-central Times Square right after.

I'm not the first person to realize that Greek mythology offers a way into the deeper stories of the human condition. But it was the first time in my own life that the stories felt genuinely intriguing. For the first time, I had popped the bubble of the story I'd been carrying since 9th grade English class, miserably reading The Odyssey. Apparently I just needed it packaged in a language I understand—Broadway musicals.

The stories we tell ourselves

We all have those stories about ourselves that we stick to. Sometimes they are more serious, like “I’m too much for the people in my life.”

Sometimes they are seemingly innocuous like, “I hate Greek Mythology.”

Both can cut you off from curiosity, appreciation, and growth without you even realizing it.

And given that my 2026 motto is “stories are for books,” and it’s my birthday week—and birthdays are for reflection—what better time to reflect on the stories I tell myself.

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Chronic illness stories run deep

With chronic illness, the stories tend to run deep. Illness can so wildly shape your experience of life and yourself that the narratives calcify quickly and under the radar. Stories can absolutely be a helpful paradigm to understand ourselves and our experiences. But stories can also box you in tightly, without allowing room for change or growth.

And especially with something like chronic illness, which makes so many of us feel boxed in at baseline and which lasts a long time, it’s worth reevaluating the stories you’re telling yourself from time to time.

For example, I no longer tell myself the story that speaking openly about my illness is “unprofessional.” Or that if I feel joy, my pain isn’t real. These stories held me back significantly for years.

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A lot can change in a year

Last year I spent my birthday feeling very ill. I had to cancel the park hangout that I arranged to be right across the street from my apartment, but even leaving the apartment wasn’t possible. This year, sure, I accommodated and paced myself pretty diligently, but I was able to do everything I wanted to do. I’m so grateful to my body for the ways it has healed.

But even if my health hadn’t been better, on this birthday I told myself new stories about what was possible for me and my body. And that’s accessible no matter your current level of symptoms.

I thank Greek Mythology for reminding me of my own motto.

What’s one story about yourself you are ready to update?

Sending lots of love for joy and healing always <3,

Dr. Talia

P.s. If rewriting the stories you tell yourself about your body and your illness is something you're ready to do Believe Your Body is becoming self-paced this summer. I'm offering 50% off to everyone who gets on the waitlist before it launches. Get your name on the waitlist :)

More ways to connect with me:

🌻 1:1 Coaching — A space to be supported in moving from fixing yourself toward acceptance, self-trust, and body safety while living with chronic illness.

🌻 My guide, “What I Wish Your Therapist Knew About Chronic Illness” — A resource for purchase that bridges lived experience and clinical care.

You can also find me on Instagram, guiding meditations on Aura Health, and at my website

Interested in using your lived experience to advise health tech companies?

Express interest here. Read more here.

Some previous posts you may enjoy:

Joy doesn’t wait for your symptoms to stop; Gratitude isn’t always helpful; Ask Dr. Talia #9: How do I plan with chronic illness?; I’m tired of focusing on my health

I find it interesting that almost everyone who chooses to work with me 1:1 identifies as spiritual in some way, and if not spiritual, then a creative.

Now you absolutely do not need to be spiritual or identify as a creative (though you are creative, read here), to work with me. But it’s as if the people who choose to work with me have x-ray vision seeing through my secular exterior into my spiritual skeleton. Despite almost never talking about spirituality in my content or writing (until now), they can tell how important it is to me.

Maybe it’s my essence. Maybe it’s Maybelline.

Data & Intuition = Me

I believe part of the reason I don’t talk about spirituality here is because it feels like there is a “coming out” process to saying you’re spiritual—especially as a PhD who strongly digs data.

But can’t it be both? I believe in both data-grounded evidence and intuitive knowing. I believe in the fundamental laws of physics and co-creation with the universe. I am someone who heads to academic journals to read about my medical conditions and delves gleefully into the topics of energy, frequency, Jewish mystical tradition, and maybe even manifestation a lil wee bit.

So there is a part of me that fears that I’ll lose you, my reader, if I start talking about spirituality. That maybe you will find me less credible.

But then I remember—because I am a psychologist after all—that we perceive others will judge us for what we actually judge in ourselves.

Oops.

Why do I judge?

Despite being pretty fiercely committed to my spiritual practices, pursuits, and interests for 5+ years, there is still a voice in my head that judges me for it. For feeling connected to, inspired by, curious about, interested in, and enraptured by that which I cannot see, but can emphatically and confidently feel.

Doesn’t this resemble some of our experiences of illness though? Knowing something is there before the tests and “evidence” show it? Especially for many people with chronic illness who went through the ringer to get a diagnosis—too many normal test results were used as permission to abort the mission, instead of as curiosity to find a deeper connection.

There is also a false paradox that some of you may feel. That pain and suffering should negate the existence of or commitment to spirituality. That if there were something greater out there, you wouldn’t be suffering like this.

But becoming spiritual during my most sick years taught me the opposite. Spirituality isn’t about promised healing or changed outcomes. It’s about connection to something bigger than myself, a connection that takes me out of my suffering and puts the wonder and awe of the world into the forefront of my consciousness. And I feel that divine connection in my body, a place that harbors pain and unpleasant symptoms too. How amazing.

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Spirituality helps me cope

Spirituality is undoubtedly a large part of how I manage the hefty emotional weight of illness. Which means I should not be consciously excluding it from this space as I have been. This space is to show how I emotionally cope with illness, and spirituality is a key ingredient in my particular recipe.

And in a way, my spiritual journey is interchangeable with my story of chronic illness. While I believe I was always drawn to spirituality, it took the immense emotional and physical suffering of illness to plant me in front of the spiritual door that was always open for me.

Chronic illness slowed my life down enough that I had no choice but to bask in the spiritual essence of being human.

Walking in authenticity

So this is not me convincing you to be spiritual. Not at all. You are welcome here (and to work with me) no matter your beliefs or disbeliefs.

But it is me showing up as more authentically myself. Because though it's not a stated purpose of this newsletter, a major goal of it is to allow me to become more fully myself. And as a result, I hope you too give yourself permission to do the same.

How does spirituality play a role in your life? I'm genuinely curious to hear your perspective.

I’m manifesting authenticity for us all, whether you believe in it or not ;).

Sending lots of love for joy and healing always <3,

Dr. Talia

Reflection for you: What’s one way you can show up more authentically in your life?

More ways to connect with me:

🌻 Sign up for the Believe Your Body waitlist & get access to the 50% discount

🌻 1:1 Coaching — A space to be supported in moving from fixing yourself toward acceptance, self-trust, and body safety while living with chronic illness.

🌻 My guide, “What I Wish Your Therapist Knew About Chronic Illness” — A resource for purchase that bridges lived experience and clinical care.

You can also find me on Instagram, guiding meditations on Aura Health, and at my website

Interested in using your lived experience to advise health tech companies?

Express interest here. Read more here.

Some previous posts you may enjoy:

Yes, you are (a) creative; Staying flexible, just like illness taught me; Ask Dr. Talia #10: Is illness my identity?

I have more energy than I used to.

It feels like in the blink of an eye that also felt like an eternity I went from someone so debilitated and bedbound by illness to someone who is moving through the world like a semi-normal human.

But I don’t feel like a normal human.

I feel like every good day I have is both so precious and astonishing that it deserves to be front-page news. That every activity I return to post-severe illness, is like standing on the podium at the olympics—a medal-worthy physical feat.

At the same time, there’s the kind of music that plays in a thriller in the background. The kind with dissonant harmonies and ominous rumbling bass that implies: you never know what’s going to pop up and beat her down next.

When I’m on the subway, or at a museum, or a social gathering, I think to myself, “They don’t know how much I went through to be here right now. They don’t know how amazing it is that I am sitting here looking like a semi-normal human.”

No one talks about the return to better health from severe illness. The utter confusion. The sleepless nights. The routine adjustments. The gratitude. The tears. The sun-tinted grief. The questioning. The uncertainty of becoming someone new. again.

That topsy-turvy middle ground of transition

For a long time, work was the way I measured how sick I was. How many hours was I able to work per day? How many minutes could I look at the computer screen before my brain screamed? Could I attend meetings in person or only virtually? Work serving as a measuring stick for my functional capacity.

Now, I’m working. I’m working a lot. In preparation for my course Believe Your Body I worked a few 10-12 hour days. 10-12 hour days. From someone who a few years ago could work only 2-3 hours.

I’m loving my work. I feel very motivated and fulfilled by it. And I won’t lie to you, there have been times where I feel shocked in my place. Like I’m floating above the scene of my life, uncertain if it’s safe to feel safe feeling less sick. Is this actually my body?

I worked so hard to accept that other body. That other mind. The one that severely limited me. And now what? There’s a new baseline? Is this the old me? Is this the new me? Is this a newer me? Is there even a “me” to begin with?

Chronic illness makes you face your changing self in ways most people never do.

I’ve wanted to exercise lately… WTF?

When I started getting the pangs of wanting to exercise again—not just the walks and PT exercises I’ve been doing, but big exercise like going to a barre class or the gym—it was a strange feeling.

Is this a trick? Is the universe teasing me? Will I crash if I follow this inkling? This curiosity?

With chronic illness, uncertainty around what's actually good for you bangs so loudly it's hard to concentrate. Like every adjustment to a new normal is a marching band parading through the city. Adjusting to a new self is cacophonous work.

In those moments of uncertainty about my body’s capacity I ground myself back in my truth: I trust myself to follow my intuition. To be in conversation with my body. To manage whatever comes up, even if it’s hard. To allow joy and peace no matter the change. One day at a time. I accept myself as I am today. Whether that’s more or less sick than I was before.

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Opportunities are open, which reminds you of what was closed

Becoming less sick widens your perspective. You start to see all of the opportunities you missed out on before, when you were busy feeling physically miserable and limited. At some point those opportunities became less painful, because you accepted the beauty in your more limited life.

And then you get better… and you reckon with how much it sucked to have your world so small.

At some point you come around the grief bend, though. And you don’t take a single opportunity for granted. You smile because illness gave you that—a winning perspective that can only be won through hardship. Ughh but why did there have to be hardship?

Accepting a changing body

When it comes to chronic illness acceptance, what we have to accept is that our bodies will consistently change. And as soon as you’ve come to terms with a certain level of functioning, or the presence or absence of a certain symptom, your body will poke a little fun at you and show you something new. A symptom you thought was gone. A capacity you thought you'd lost returning. A limitation you didn't see coming.

I used to feel weighed down by those changes.

Occasionally the uncertainty catches up to me even now.

But after a week or so of heightened anxiety I remember this one big truth. I continue to face my changing self without expecting myself to stay the same.

Most people aren’t doing that. Will you?

Sending lots of love for joy and healing always <3,

Dr. Talia

Reflection for you: How do you manage the changing seasons of chronic illness? What does it feel like to face your changing self?

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More ways to connect with me:

🌻 1:1 Coaching — A space to be supported in moving from fixing yourself toward acceptance, self-trust, and body safety while living with chronic illness.

🌻 My guide, “What I Wish Your Therapist Knew About Chronic Illness” — A resource for purchase that bridges lived experience and clinical care.

You can also find me on Instagram, guiding meditations on Aura Health, and at my website

Interested in using your lived experience to advise health tech companies?

Express interest here. Read more here.

Some previous posts you may enjoy:

I never planned this; Acceptance isn’t a performance; Chronic illness acceptance isn’t giving up

When you’re chronically ill, there are a million things you can do to help yourself, a million things you shouldn’t do to help yourself, and a whole lotta opinions on your body. It can be really difficult to tune into your needs, and to recognize when something isn’t working for you.

I’ve spent the last 5 or so years honing in on my intuition, and building trust in myself to tune out all the noise and follow my gut for what’s right for my body (**this isn’t medical advice, please check in with your doctor). Most recently that looked like advocating for myself with my doctor to get off of a medication that I’ve been on for 6+ years.

And while the withdrawal has been quite brutal (IYKYK), I saw immediate benefits to tapering off of the medication. My intuition knew. That’s only possible because of the trust I’ve built in myself.

I want that for you too. But first I need to delineate what it costs, what becomes really difficult, without that self-trust.

Quick Sponsor Break — Disability Benefits Help

If chronic illness has affected your ability to work you’re not alone. I know some of you are navigating that reality. Occasionally I’m asked about the Disability benefits process, and it’s one of the areas where I don’t have the right expertise to guide you. So I’m really glad to share this week’s newsletter sponsor Disability Benefits Help. Disability Benefits Help is a free online resource that explains eligibility and connects readers with advocates at no upfront cost. If this is something you’ve been trying to figure out, DBH’s website could be a supportive place to start. I hope this resource will be helpful for those who could use it.

5 things that are really difficult without self-trust when you’re chronically ill

1. Making decisions efficiently.

Chronic illness requires an exhausting number of small decisions every single day. Do I push through or rest? Do I cancel or go? Do I mention my symptoms or stay quiet? Do I try the new medication or wait?

Without self-trust, each of these decisions becomes a negotiation with every voice except your own. Your doctor’s opinion. Your family’s concern. The wellness influencer you follow. The study you read at 2am. You gather and gather and gather information because you don’t trust the information you already have—the information that lives in your body about the best next step. Not the cure, just the best next step.

With self-trust, the decisions don’t become more infrequent, but they do take a whole lot less energy—something that’s very important to savor.

How do decisions about your health feel to you?

2. Tuning out other people’s opinions

Everyone has an opinion about your illness. How you should treat it, manage it, think about it, talk about it. Some of those opinions come from love. Some come from discomfort. Some come from people who have never spent a single day in a body like yours.

Without self-trust, all of those voices fill the space that should belong to you. You start making decisions based on what will create the least friction, the least explanation, the least disappointment in someone else’s eyes. You become an expert at managing other people’s feelings about your illness while losing track of your own compass.

Self-trust is what lets you hear the opinions and still come home to yourself.

Whose voice are you currently giving more authority than your own when it comes to your health?

3. Believing yourself when something is wrong

This one is devastating. And I see it constantly in my clients and it’s the reason I created my course Believe Your Body.

When you’ve been dismissed enough times—by doctors, by people who love you, by a culture that doesn’t believe sick people—you start to do the dismissing yourself. You second-guess the symptom. You wonder if you’re overreacting. You wait too long. You minimize. You gaslight yourself before anyone else gets the chance.

Self-trust is what lets you walk into a doctor’s office and say: something is wrong. And you’re not questioning whether that’s true.

Have you ever talked yourself out of seeking care because you weren’t sure your symptoms were “bad” enough?

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4. Bouncing back from hard decisions

Not every decision you make about your health will go well. You’ll try a treatment that doesn’t work. You’ll push when you should have rested. You’ll trust someone who lets you down. You’ll make the call that turns out to be the wrong one.

Without self-trust, every one of those moments becomes evidence against yourself. You internalize shame, inadequacy, and incompetence instead of just recognizing it as it is—that you made the best decision you could.

With self-trust, a hard decision that doesn’t go as you’d like isn’t evidence of something bigger about you. It’s just evidence that you’re on to try to the next thing.

What’s a health decision you made that didn’t go as planned that you’re still holding against yourself?

5. Accessing joy

Joy requires presence. And presence requires feeling safe enough in your own body and your own mind to actually be there. Without self-trust—without the foundational belief that you know yourself, that your experience is real, that you can handle what comes—joy gets crowded out by hypervigilance.

Self-trust doesn’t guarantee joy. But without it, joy becomes a lot harder to access.

Can you think of a moment recently where self-doubt pulled you out of a joyful experience?

The good news

The good news, and I mean this, is that self-trust isn’t a personality trait you’re born with or without. Everyone (including you!!) can start to make the small decisions that build that trust. Say out loud what you need, spend less time agonizing over a decision, only ask for opinions that matter to you, choose yourself and your view.

I bet you’re already doing this more than you give yourself credit for.

So keep it up. I trust you.

Sending lots of love for joy and healing always <3,

Dr. Talia

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More ways to connect with me:

🌻 1:1 Coaching — A space to be supported in moving from fixing yourself toward acceptance, self-trust, and body safety while living with chronic illness.

🌻 My guide, “What I Wish Your Therapist Knew About Chronic Illness” — A resource for purchase that bridges lived experience and clinical care.

You can also find me on Instagram, guiding meditations on Aura Health, and at my website

Interested in using your lived experience to advise health tech companies?

Express interest here. Read more here.

Some previous posts you may enjoy:

Ask Dr. Talia #2: What if no doctor ever believes me?; 5 ways internalized ableism silently erodes self-acceptance; 5 ways mistrusting your body shows up in your life

You know that saying, “nothing about us, without us?”

I believe in it wholeheartedly. It was even in the title of my PhD dissertation.

The phrase was popularized (though not originated) by the disability rights movement and has since been championed by many marginalized groups. The idea is simple: if something is being built to “help” a community, members of that community should be at the decision-making table.

Beyond coaching, content creation, and writing, I also work with health tech companies building products for the chronic illness community.

My thesis is that for companies to succeed, both in meeting their business goals and actually helping the people they claim to serve, they must build not only for the community, but with the community.

And not just cursory surveys, but real co-creation. On the ground feedback.

Given the platform I’ve built here, I see part of my role not just as advocating for my own lived experience of illness, but creating opportunities for involvement for all of you as well.

My perspective is just one perspective. My experience isn’t the bible of what it’s like to live with chronic illness. More people need to be at the table.

And from many conversations and interactions with you all, I know how thoughtful and perceptive so many of you are about healthcare systems. Most of you notice (and experience) things that companies miss entirely.

What happens when companies don’t build with us?

There are absolutely some companies that are building with the chronic health community. Visible is a great example.

But sometimes I see an ad for a company claiming to help people with chronic health conditions and I just sit there in disbelief.

MIND BOGGLED.

How did this ad make it through a marketing process to reach my very eyes? Who OK’d this rubbish piece of content?

Some themes I see that make me angry:

1. Deficit-based messaging: Anything that subtly (or not so subtly) suggests chronically ill people simply aren’t doing enough to get better. Shame isn’t the game, my friends. It might get people to sign up initially, but customers will quickly lose interest when the product doesn’t actually help.

2. Clearly staged patient testimonial: You know the kind. The kind where you’re absolutely certain the person was just hired to make the video.

3. Products that look like they’ll increase hypervigilance: If you’re gonna give people data about their bodies, I need to know the plan for managing body hyperawareness. Because data without context can easily turn into anxiety.

Any other marketing ploys that bother you? LMK in the comments or reply to the email.

Community Advisory Boards (CAB) are the answer

A Community Advisory Board is a group of people with lived experience who help guide strategic decisions for companies. Done well, it’s more than feedback. It’s co-creation. A seat at the table for people who’ve historically felt powerless over their own healthcare.

One of the biggest mistakes companies make when gathering feedback is treating it as information extraction. Research shows this erodes trust. A well-run CAB flips that dynamic. Instead of extracting insight, companies build ongoing relationships with the communities they serve. Creating authentic pathways for participation.

And honestly? Listening to the community not only improves product design. I believe deep in my stomach that it’s an ethical obligation.

So I built an opportunity for those interested

If you enjoy giving thoughtful feedback, are open to sharing about your health journey, and like to notice and analyze what does and doesn’t work, this opportunity is for you. It’s not a survey. Or a quick conversation. It’s an ongoing relationship where your lived experience directly shapes the health tech products being built for people like you. Plus you’re compensated.

You can express your interest here.

Because if these tools are meant to support us, our voices should be part of shaping them.

I hope today’s essay gives you a window into how I’m working to build a world where everyone with chronic illness has their emotional & physical needs fully seen, validated, and supported.

Sending lots of love for joy and healing always <3,

Dr. Talia

P.s. I’m working with a founder who is particularly looking for advisors living with lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and psoriasis. If that’s you and you’re curious, be sure to fill out the interest form.

More ways to connect with me:

🌻 1:1 Coaching — A space to be supported in moving from fixing yourself toward acceptance, self-trust, and body safety while living with chronic illness.

🌻 My guide, “What I Wish Your Therapist Knew About Chronic Illness” — A resource for purchase that bridges lived experience and clinical care.

You can also find me on Instagram, guiding meditations on Aura Health, and at my website

Interested in using your lived experience to advise health tech companies?

Express interest here.

Some previous posts you may enjoy:

7 things I wish your therapist knew about chronic illness; Ask Dr. Talia #6: Does Pain Affect Productivity?; what i’ve learned about living with unpleasant symptoms

Today’s newsletter is going to be short and sweet.

I’m sitting in sunny California. It rained last night which broke the heat of last week. The grass is covered in leftover precipitation and there’s just the right amount of breeze.

How lucky am I?

This year I decided to rebrand myself as someone who is lucky. I’ve been dealt a lot of hard things in life, things I had no control over, and at times they’ve made me feel like I was unlucky. Like I attract bad luck.

Now, every morning, I say to myself “I am so lucky!” and you know what? I realized I am.

Sickness, traumatic events, betrayals—they existed, they still do exist. I’m not ignoring them. But now that I’ve trained myself to see the lucky, it’s too hard to miss. No bad actor or unexplained symptom can take that away from me.

I’m lucky.

So hey, why don’t you notice something about yourself and your life that makes you lucky today? Can you share it with me or a loved one?

Sending lots of love for joy and healing always <3

The luckiest Dr. Talia

P.s. 19 people have signed up for Believe Your Body—how lucky. I likely won’t offer the course live again, and if I do it will be in a long time. So now’s the lucky time to sign up if you’re thinking about it.

Ready to believe my body

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Acceptance and healing aren’t opposites.

Let me say it again a little louder.

ACCEPTANCE AND HEALING ARE NOT OPPOSITES.

You can be working on your treatment plan, trying new medications, seeking new specialists, and still accept yourself and your illness exactly as you are.

Somewhere along the way, we all lost the plot.

We let the drive for perfectionism—the never-ending pursuit to be better, be different, be somewhere where the grass is greener—take over. We got on a treadmill with no off button, consciously or subconsciously, rather than stand on solid ground, where we get to choose when to stay put and when to take steps forward.

Somehow* we all lost the plot.

*And obviously by somehow I am refraining from getting into a full rant about ableism, fear-based marketing tactics that prey on our insecurities and health issues, or even how America’s Next Top Model probably ruined the body image of an entire generation?

I think acceptance is joyful

Acceptance as joyful is not toxic positivity. I am allergic to toxic positivity and break into spiritual hives at its pervasiveness in our culture—especially when it comes to how to and not to deal with illness and pain. I believe in moving through the big emotions like grief, fear, and shame—not skim past them like many of you probably do the words of this newsletter (it’s ok, it’s ok)—because that’s how you get to the good stuff.

I think of acceptance as joyful because it exists purely because we allow ourselves to recognize and move through the big emotions. You cannot reach acceptance until you are in loving conversation with the big, scary emotions, not treating them like an ex you’re trying hard to maintain a healthy coparenting relationship with.

Chronic illness acceptance is the process of moving through the big emotions, getting them out of your body, and reaching the other side. A side where you have room to breathe, emotional and mental space to just be, and energy to remember what makes you yourself and what makes you smile.

How do you get there?

I want to walk you through the Joyful Acceptance Method (see visual below) we’ll be working through in Believe Your Body. This is the framework I created from what helped me reach genuine acceptance of my body and my life with illness, and it’s the backbone of what I use with 1:1 clients.

The Joyful Acceptance Method is a process and it's not linear. But together these four steps will help you trust yourself. And trusting yourself is what allows you to live your life joyfully, illness included.

It has four steps:

1. Grieve what’s been lost
   Grief is sneaky. In this step you learn what grief sounds like for you specifically, how it impacts your life, and how to move through it skillfully without overwhelming yourself.

2. Acknowledge and accept your reality
   As we’ve mentioned, acceptance isn’t giving up and it’s not toxic positivity. In this step you uncover what acceptance actually looks like for you, what’s been making it difficult, and how to start moving toward it in a way that sticks.

3. Understand and advocate for your needs
   Advocacy is harder than it looks! I’m sure you know this. In this step you strengthen your capacity to understand what you actually need and communicate it clearly, to yourself and others.

4. Reconnect to joy and self-trust
   This step is about following what genuinely lights you up. Following that joy is what allows you to rebuild trust in yourself and your body.

What this looked like in my own life

When I look back at my own experience with illness, I can see these steps clearly.

Facing my grief in grad school was a major tipping point. I applied for my PhD because I wanted to be a professor. My health made that impossible. So for a long time I felt lost. I was still functioning, still moving forward, still trying to figure out my next path, but carrying this unnamed weight I hadn't let myself fully feel yet.

Once I named it as grief, things started to shift. I had to recognize the specific thoughts that kept surfacing—why me? what will I even do without this path? can I still be happy?—and learn to hold space for them slowly over time while staying within my window of tolerance (a skill we’ll discuss in the course).

Because once I could sit with the grief without drowning in it, I could start to acknowledge my reality. My body had limits. Accepting those limits—like actually not pretending I was all fine—is what allowed me to start understanding my needs.

For a long time I didn’t know what I needed when symptoms came up. Every flare turned me into an anxious little mess ball. Learning how to create safety in my body, trust my body, and speak to it kindly helped me understand what I actually needed, and eventually gave me the language to communicate that to other people.

And once I could understand what I needed, I had space to reconnect to joy and self-trust.

Creativity was my pathway to joy and self-trust. I started out small, just doodling for 5 minutes a day. Then I got bigger, writing music again. Then I got HUGE, publishing my creativity publicly.

What I know now that I didn’t know then: self-trust is what unlocks joy in your body. Not the absence of symptoms. Not being fixed. Trust. Because without it, joy gets robbed by self-doubt, second-guessing, and self-gaslighting.

For you: Can you skillfully move through grief when it shows up? Are you ready to accept your body and your reality? When you’re flaring, do you know what you need? Do you know what joy feels like in your body?

Are you ready to trust yourself? Your body? To do life with symptoms?

If yes, that’s exactly what we’re doing in Believe Your Body: Stop Doubting Your Chronic Illness Symptoms & Reconnect with Self-Trust starting April 12th.

Each week we'll move through the Joyful Acceptance Method together, but the JAM is just the larger method. Within each step I'll be sharing additional frameworks that I’ve either created or found useful to help you at whatever stage you’re currently at.

We're going to have a genuinely good time doing some genuinely hard work accepting ourselves—which isn’t giving up ;).

I’d love to have you there. Pay what you can structure: $65, $125, $165 USD.

🌻 You have four days left to sign up for a chance to win a free 1:1 coaching session with me.

Sending lots of love for joy and healing always <3,

Dr. Talia

P.s. Do you like the Joyful Acceptance Method visual? Did it help?

Ready to believe my body!

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Some of you already received part of this newsletter. It went to the Believe Your Body waitlist first. But I've kept thinking about my visit to the Met, and I've gone down a deep research rabbit hole since, so it felt wrong not to bring the story here too.

I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Sunday in NYC and just needed to tell you all about it.

First, because I just felt so much joy! A kind of joy I really didn’t know was possible with chronic illness a few years ago. And the joy had nothing to do with which symptoms were or weren’t showing up that day (I’ve been dealing with some pretty intense neck pain & stiffness. My head could not move to the left this past weekend **eye roll**).

And second, because what happened there was one of those serendipitous moments I absolutely love.

What a coincidence (or was it intuition?)

The exhibit I planned to see was paintings by Finnish artist Helene Schjerfbeck. I felt called to go to this exhibit despite knowing nothing about her. I didn’t even have the idea to go to the museum until an hour before I got on a bus and did!

And now I know why. Not only were the paintings beautiful, and emotionally-resonant, but Helene lived with chronic illness her whole life, including periods of deep isolation and chronic, severe pain.

Again, I did not know this before I decided to go to this exhibit!

If there’s one thing I love, it’s people who were dealt the shittiness of chronic illness and found their joy anyway. And if I hadn’t gotten on the bus Sunday morning with an intuition I needed to see that exhibit, I wouldn’t have found her.

Lots of painters lived with chronic illness

Last night, feeling restless in bed, I broke my rule of not using my phone while trying to fall sleep. I was just so jazzed about researching other artists who lived with chronic illness and chronic pain—and when a former academic PhD researcher wants to research, she will research, let me tell you. During this frenzy, I found 15+ artists and read about their stories. Stories of pain, abrupt injury, lifelong illness, late-in-life illness.

Here are just a few:

• Frida Kahlo (this one I knew already), iconic Mexican artist, lived with polio and underwent 30 surgeries in her life.

• Vincent Van Gogh, Dutch Post-Impressionist painter, who likely lived with bipolar disorder and temporal lobe epilepsy. I was able to visit the asylum he lived at in the South of France a few years ago.

• Pierre-Auguste Renoir, French Impressionist painter, who continuously adapted his painting techniques when Rheumatoid Arthritis impacted his hands and he became a wheelchair user.

• Ijeoma Ogwuegbu, contemporary Nigerian artist, who uses bright colorful art as a way to cope with Fibromyalgia.

These are only four of the interesting stories that I found beyond Helene. It reminded me how completely human illness is, and how it doesn’t need to dictate what creative pursuits one can pursue.

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Even more motivated to help people Believe Their Bodies

Joy. Creativity. Living life as yourself. This is why I’m so passionate about what I’m teaching in Believe Your Body.

Here's the thing about Sunday—I got on that bus because I was curious and I wanted to enjoy my day, neck situation and all. And I found Helene and ended up completely absorbed in an interesting rabbit hole.

That's what following your joy, and your curiosity, actually looks like with chronic illness. Doing the things with symptoms. And while it is absolutely your birthright, that kind of joy often gets beaten out of us by circumstance. Because connecting to it requires wading through the muddy waters of grief, acceptance, and advocacy before you can really trust yourself to be joyful again. And that's hard to do alone.

Chronic illness, for lack of a better phrase, just sucks. But it doesn’t get to co-opt your joy.

This is what we're doing in Believe Your Body. And if Helene and I running into each other at the Met isn't your sign to join, I don't know what is.

✨ Sign up before March 31 for a chance to win a free 1:1 coaching session with me.

Sending lots of love for joy and healing always <3,

Dr. Talia

P.s. Who is your favorite artist with chronic illness? I wanna continue to go down this rabbit hole... Lmk in the comments.

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