A health, wellness and chronic illness blog that aims to articulate lifelong illness and disabilities from various perspectives.
*Note from A Chronic Voice: Lisa does have a way with words, as she pours her heart out into this powerful piece about M.E. (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) and her struggles with it. She is a regular contribution on this blog, and I always look forward to what she has to say. The coping strategies and knowledge […]
Continue reading "Hey You…It’s Me (M.E. Struggles & a Tribute to the Human Spirit)"
*Note from A Chronic Voice: Lisa is writing a series of guest posts on the blog on effective methods to cope with chronic illness, principles which she has applied to her own life with success. In this article, she shares how her initial skepticism (and even derision!) about using a gratitude journal turned into an […]
Continue reading "The Value in Seeking Out Moments of Gratitude (and How to do it)"
*Note from A Chronic Voice: As Lisa demonstrates in this post, we can glean inspiration and insight from many things in life, even if they may seem irrelevant or unrelated. I do believe that knowledge gained is never wasted. It expands our capacity for understanding, and often helps with problem solving in other areas of […]
Continue reading "Find Your Way Back to Happiness with a Chronic Illness"
*Note from A Chronic Voice: I’m excited to have Callie on the blog today, as she shares some thoughts about self-identity, both from the perspective of a patient and also as a psychologist. She talks about the emotions many of us experience when first diagnosed with an illness, such as confusion, anger and grief. Often […]
Continue reading "Finding Your Self Behind the Illness (Your Story Isn’t Over Yet)"
My Name is Ray, and I Have Rheumatoid Arthritis I was lucky and did not always have Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). I did not have RA as an infant, nor as a child, teenager or younger adult. Like I said I was lucky, unlike millions of others who have Arthritis. This is my story, with a […]
Continue reading "Rheumatoid Arthritis – the Biggest Street Fight of My Life"
*Note from A Chronic Voice: Rose does a beautiful job articulating the struggles with self-worth and self-trust that many of us with chronic illness experience. Society has many pre-conceived, rigid notions of how a person should and shouldn’t be, which can strip away the essence of our humanity. We form stories about ourselves. Read Rose’s […]
Continue reading "The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Prisons or Paths to Freedom"
*Note from A Chronic Voice: The term ‘PTSD’ is often associated with war veterans, yet trauma can stem from many other life circumstances as well. This includes things like accidents, childhood abuse, chronic pain, and other stressful situations. Some of the signs of PTSD are suicidal thoughts, insomnia, and recurrent flashbacks of the life-changing moment. […]
Continue reading "How Trauma Therapy Helped Me to Deal With PTSD"
*Note from A Chronic Voice: Angela and I met at a party through our ex-boyfriends (talk about how life goes 😉 ), and I never knew that she suffered from chronic illness too. She was living overseas – which can be especially tough for a spoonie! – and seemed so outgoing. After I started this […]
Continue reading "I May be Chronically Ill, but I’m Also Chronically Resilient"
*A Note from A Chronic Voice: Desi Mazdur lives with fibromyalgia, and uses a number of tools to improve his quality of life. One of these is speech recognition, which powers voice assistants. He runs a website, “Disabled Messenger”, where he shares many tutorials about “Dragon NaturallySpeaking”, which is a leading voice assistant software with […]
*Note from A Chronic Voice: Many people who live with chronic illness have probably heard of the term ‘spoonie’, if not, the original explanation can be found on Christine Miserando’s site. I personally use it because it’s much more succinct than repeating ‘chronic illness person’ ad nauseam 😉 Sierra is a writer for “XO Faith”, […]
Continue reading "Empathizing with a Spoonie: What You Need to Know"