There’s a unique kind of grief that comes from being handed pain you didn’t cause. You didn’t make a bad choice. You didn’t ignore warning signs. You didn’t mess up. You just… got sick. Your body betrayed you before you ever had a chance to live the way you imagined. That kind of grief doesn’t […]

While doing research for my book More Person Than Patient, a woman in Great Britian living with multiple sclerosis shared something with me that hit so close to home, I could almost feel the echo in my own chest. She said: “The hardest emotional challenge—still, after all this time—is how the fear comes rushing back. […]

One of the things I’ve come to notice about caring for my health over the course of my life is that sometime . . . I just get tired of being the good girl. The one who follows the rules. The one who drinks the sparkling water and skips the wine. Who meditates in the […]

When I was barely 30 years old, over half my lifetime ago, a cardiologist diagnosed me with a genetic heart condition and told me, “You will have a shortened life expectancy.”  In the matter of one lunch hour my dreams of living a full and rewarding life vanished. That day he also told me, “The […]