EPISODE DESCRIPTION:
In this episode of "What If? For Authors," Claire Taylor tackles the anxiety-inducing topic of chronic health issues and their impact on an author's career. Drawing from her experience as an Enneagram coach and her own health journey, Claire explores how chronic conditions can affect work and life and provides compassionate strategies for managing your author dreams alongside your health needs.
Key Takeaways:
Chronic health issues do not mean you have to give up on your author dreams. Modifications and self-compassion can help you thrive.
Connecting with your three centers of intelligence can provide valuable insights into how to handle chronic health issues and their impact on your work.
Acceptance and care are essential skills for managing chronic health conditions effectively.
Developing a loving connection to your body, mind, and heart is crucial for long-term well-being and success.
Seeking medical treatment and advocating for your health is vital, even in the face of potential challenges within the medical system.
Why Listen? If you find yourself struggling with chronic health issues and wondering if you can still achieve your author goals, this episode offers a thoughtful and empathetic perspective. This episode is a must-listen for any author seeking to balance their health with their passion for writing.
Links Mentioned:
Join the Conversation: Have a question or fear you'd like me to explore? Reach out to me at contact@ffs.media.
Access the transcript for this episode here.
Happy Writing!
TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If for Authors, I'm so glad that you're here. My name is Claire Taylor and I'm an Enneagram certified coach for authors as well as a humor and mystery writer myself. You can check out my latest book Sustain Your Author Career on basically any online retailer by going to books2read.com/syac Sustain Your Author Career and that "2" in books2read is the numeral, books2read.com/syac.
I have a feeling that this is going to be one of the top downloaded episodes of this podcast. So like 10 whole people are going to download it. Yay! Honestly, I'm so grateful. For all ten of you. So today we're asking and then answering. The question, what if I have chronic health issues? [00:01:00] And then tagging along to the end of that is the concern that's sort of implied of can I still reach my author dreams?
Is it futile to try? I remember having depression in my teens, that really high-functioning stuff that no adults knew how to recognize at the time. , and giving up on some of my dreams. I did that because I never saw any examples of people with depression out there doing the things that I wanted to do.
I used to want to be some sort of performer, oddly enough, like really wanted to. I've always loved the adrenaline rush of being on stage and performing for like a delighted audience. I specifically remember a moment while I was driving I 35, my freshman year of college. And I asked myself what it was I actually wanted to do with my life and what I had any talent with, that was also a factor.
So the only thing, two things that came up for me were writing and performing, so acting, singing, that sort of thing. [00:02:00] I didn't think it could be a singer or actor. With the kind of depression that I had. So I chose writer because, well, clearly some more obvious role models there. That moment and my rationale still really stand out to me though, as probably a pretty common experience of people who have any sort of chronic condition trying to figure out.
What can I do with this? What is now out of my reach? Unfortunately, although as we'll see very little is probably out of your reach. So we're gonna talk more about that And I think that's why it's important to talk about chronic health issues and how you may not see a ton of authors dealing with theirs After all, we're mostly at home dealing with it, but there are plenty of folks living their author dreams dealing with the time suck that chronic health issues can become, and taking good care of their body.
You don't have to choose between caring for your needs, however burdensome they may seem, and following your publishing [00:03:00] dreams. Modifications? Sure. We love those, but there's not really a norm in anything about this job. So in that way, there's no default to modify. Right? Everyone's modifying to their individual needs.
I can't tell you how many of the authors I know in this community experience chronic health issues. I'm one of them, even. If you are also one of them, or if you're listening to this because you want to support the authors you know who are dealing with health issues, very kind of you, by the way, I'll say that this is , eventually an issue that comes for us all, health issues, everyone, our bodies break down.
This is not to lessen the impact of it because when you have a chronic health condition, especially from a young age, it feels incredibly unfair. So I'm only saying that to remind us all that the ableism. You might be facing from others if you are in this position, it will bite them in the ass eventually.
It'll [00:04:00] happen. Sleep well at night knowing that, my type 8s and type 1s. In all seriousness, this episode will probably end up being mostly about the internalized ableism that tells us we shouldn't have the needs that we do. And I know talking about ableism makes some people roll their eyes. It's almost a buzzword on the interwebs lately, but that doesn't make the concept of it any less important because at the end of the day, your or my internalized ableism is a form of garbage perfectionism that can erode our connection to our heart, mind, and body.
Not great. That being said, I'm not here to shame anyone because I still have internalized ableism. I haven't rooted out yet. Just like I've been a feminist for, you know, as long as I can remember, and I still have internalized misogyny that pops up from time to time. And I'm just like, Whoa, where did that come from?
Same with racism. I've spent a lot of time reading and learning to practice anti-racism, but I still have, [00:05:00] you know, racist stereotypes popping in my head from time to time. Basically, we're all in different stages of our personal evolution on all of these issues, and it often takes a lifetime of work to counteract all these societal norms that, uh, help us internalize or force us to internalize these isms.
As far as my own journeys go, I would say that rooting out my internalized ableism, , is probably the one that I've made the least progress on, honestly, even though I've been dealing with chronic health issues my whole life, it's just wild how that can happen. So I'm here really just interpreting what my understanding of the Enneagram tells us about the importance of rooting out ableism and how some of the cultural mythos we take as law is actually hurting our relationship with ourselves.
There's so much to say on this topic of chronic health conditions, and I will absolutely not hit on all the points. Like, all the medical stuff is between you and your doctor, [00:06:00] for one. Uh, I'm not gonna get into the weird health conspiracy shit on that, though I do feel like I've earned a little bit of conspiracy in my life over the last few years of being exposed to it constantly.
And refraining from diving in the deep end. I don't know. I feel like I've earned a little, a little conspiracy treat. Doesn't it sound nice? Just let go and bathe in the conspiracy theories instead of all this critical thinking all the time. Ugh. Yes. I, I want to just pick sweet oblivion, but I'm not there yet.
I can't just let go in that way. Okay. So yeah, I'm not going to get into health conspiracies here instead. I'll stay focused as much as I can on the Enneagram specific approaches to our health and wellbeing, because those are things that you won't find in many other places. You can find health conspiracies just about anywhere nowadays.
So it's just gonna be Enneagram theory, not conspiracy theory. And it's going to be lessons from my time as an author mixed in.
I think the approach I want to take today is to talk about the three centers of intelligence. So these are three [00:07:00] intelligences through which we connect to ourselves. Lovingly, hopefully. In return, they provide us with important information. We can become disconnected from our centers if we don't value them, or if we disregard them, or, unfortunately, if we've suffered trauma around them.
I know this immediately sounds woo woo and new agey and borderline a conspiracy theory. So let me be clear that there are not three actual centers that you treat separately.
Describing us as having three centers is just easy language to talk about our patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that arise from our core motivations, perceptual filter. So when we discuss cognitive patterns. In the Enneagram, we discuss the head center, right? So people tend to associate the head with cognition and intellect already.
So it makes sense to just call this our head center, uh, for linguistic purposes. When we discuss emotional patterns, we discuss the heart center. [00:08:00] People tend to associate their heart with emotions, right? And when we discuss behavioral patterns, we discuss the body center, , sometimes called the gut center because people tend to associate the body with action.
And as a side note, intuition is talked about in the body center as well, which is why it's sometimes called the gut center. So I'll be calling it the body center through this episode, so just get ready. All of this comes from well established theory of human psychology, cognition, emotions, behavior, these are kind of the three things functioning inside of us.
So those, seamlessly. Our emotions can lead to particular thoughts. Our thoughts can lead to particular behavior, and our behavior can lead to, say, particular emotions. Think about how exercise influences serotonin and dopamine, for instance. So no one center is more important or intelligent than the other two when they're all [00:09:00] firing on all cylinders. Many of us were taught that the only quote unquote real intelligence was the head or intellect, but that's simply not the only or even the best way Of knowing emotions give us important information.
And so does our body. So devaluing the heart center, for instance, will cause us to disconnect from our emotions and possibly repress them. Almost everyone has a few emotions that they feel they're not allowed to experience. So we all have some emotional repression in us happening in us. Maybe at this very moment, , to varying degrees.
So it's normal, but unpacking that repression can be a huge gift to our health too. So this is why we learned to value all three centers. They all serve important purposes in our well being. A lot of the problems authors into can be solved by looking at the three centers and asking which one or [00:10:00] two is falling asleep on the job and causing the remaining one to try to do the knowing of all three.
Head centers are shit at emotion, for instance. Thinking through emotions can be useful sometimes. And you need the heart center present for that, and so on each center has its own purpose. There are two skills that really stand out to me about chronic health issues. And those are the skill of acceptance and the skill of care.
If you develop a health issue that will most assuredly not go away as long as you live, Then there's a certain amount of work around acceptance that we want to do to keep from pretending that it's not there, which can cause us to, to not make the accommodations we need and deserve. When this acceptance doesn't exist, I see authors trying to [00:11:00] ignore the condition and push through to get the words down, but that usually makes it worse afterwards, right?
Maybe you deemed it worth it to push through, but why? Really think about the result at the end. You push through. Great! But now you might have severe pain or fatigue as a result. And pain and fatigue lead to mood disruptions. So maybe you also feel like shit emotionally now, and it also disrupts thinking.
So you're struggling to focus on the book. , you know, maybe this is a book that you're trying to read for pleasure. You deserve it. Or maybe you're struggling to focus on the conversation you're having with a loved one. Basically, you left nothing for yourself when you pushed through. And listen, we've all tried to push through.
Of course we do. Of course we try. No one wants to feel that restriction or limitation. It can feel like our dream is slipping away in those moments. But spoiler, it's not. It's not. You don't have to push [00:12:00] through. Acceptance is really fucking hard y'all. When you truly accept your chronic health condition, here are some things you might be asked to accept along with that.
Letting certain people down. Being criticized, being called lazy, irritating people, feeling needy, asking for help regularly, missing out on what others are doing, and even losing connection with certain people. Not the great people, but certain other ones. so yeah, there are drawbacks to acceptance that you're going to face.
And I think that's why we don't face it sometimes. We don't allow ourselves to accept something because we're also accepting the possibility of those negative side effects.
But here's what you don't have to accept when you opt for self acceptance. Hating your body, mind, or heart, taking shit off anyone, giving up on your [00:13:00] dreams, having close friends, and, you know, just enjoying your one perfectly imperfect life. Those things can still happen even while accepting the reality of your needs.
If you can't accept things from that first list, you're likely going to fight through to hit those deadlines. You're going to push yourself farther than you know is healthy to please people and avoid criticism. You'll wait to ask for help until you really, really need it and are in serious trouble, and so on.
If you allow that to happen, you're forfeiting a whole lot of love for yourself. And in doing so, you're hurting your connection to your three centers. And you need those centers healthy, for daily functioning and thriving.
So there's the Buddhist idea that transforming the world starts by transforming yourself. I really like this idea, and I don't think it's as selfish as it may sound at first. It doesn't mean you navel gaze all day long, or you never offer anything to [00:14:00] those around you. But rather, it points to a deep truth, which is that you cannot be more connected to others than you are to yourself.
Ever wonder why you can feel lonely around other people? This may be the answer. If you feel disconnected from yourself in a moment, if there's some part of you crying out for attention that you're uncomfortable looking at, then you'll disconnect from it. The result is that you feel disconnected from others, too.
So that's not great. That's not great at all. Especially when writers tend to be such solitary people to start with. We gotta feel that deep and nourishing connection with others whenever we can get the chance.
So this center work is really important. If all you did was try to get in touch more with your least developed center, you would see transformation in your life and your writing career that you didn't even think possible before. Here's the problem though, we often have a chronic illness existing in our least developed center.
It doesn't always work out that way of course, uh, we could have mental illness and have our [00:15:00] head center be our primary center, in which case the overuse of the head center might be exacerbating the symptoms. Uh, we could do a little work around lessening that burden by connecting more deeply to emotion in our physical body, maybe.
Give that head center a vacation, essentially. Closing off to a center is not a route forward that will serve you well for long. I promise. I totally understand the impulse though. If your body hurts all the time, why would you want to feel connected to it? That's super valid. So like, for instance, I'm a big fan of body scan meditations.
I love them because they put me right to sleep. My body has such a pattern of muscle tension that the moment I pause and relax, Tune into what's going on. I'm out. I'm out. Don't don't threaten me with a good time of relaxing my muscles So I never make it down to my feet when I do body scans. I have no idea what's going on in my feet Well, actually I do it's plantar fasciitis So maybe it's good that I don't make it down to my feet [00:16:00] Or maybe I really really need to make it down to my feet in a body scan just to hear what they have to say You Even if they're just cursing me out, the point is that body scans might not be for everyone.
If you have condition like chronic joint pain, body scans might actually hurt your connection to your body because they lure you in and then drag you through the mud. Look, pay attention to your body. Doesn't it fucking suck to be in it right now? I mean, yeah. So if a practice does not make you feel better, don't do it.
, but there are other ways to connect to your body and that's the good news. Because the authors I know who disconnect from their body center have a hard time moving the manuscript forward. They think they're just disconnecting from the physical pain, but if, if they don't find some other way to connect to their body center, they'll disconnect from their knowledge around taking focused action, too.
That's the gut. The gut tells us when it's time to move. So, those are in the same center of intelligence. And writing books takes a [00:17:00] little of that action fire to keep going.
I guess we're starting with the body center for this episode, so let's keep it going. Some ways to connect with your body center are movement, sure, and that includes whatever's comfortable for you. If it's wiggling your toes, great. If it's scrunching up all the muscles in your face and then relaxing, awesome.
If it's a nice gentle walk, go for it. , if you can do more with whatever physical condition you have, Great, do it. But if you can't, all hope is not lost. Connecting to the body center is less about working yourself to the bone or trying to get your body to look a certain way. In fact, it's never about trying to look a certain way.
But rather, it's about creating a bond of love between you and your physical existence. I even use drinking water as an excuse to connect to my body. Get that big, cold glass of water, start drinking, mmm. I send love to all my cells in my body that need this water to function. It's like, here you go, cells.
[00:18:00] And then, I often finish drinking the water by going, Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. God, I fucking love water. Cause it's true. Water is amazing. Uh, just, you know, bring your attention to the kind of things you do to nourish your body. So, give some focused attention to that. As you are connecting to your body. And that leads to the second thing I wanted to talk about outside of acceptance.
Which is the skill of care. So accept that your body is doing the best it can, and that might mean that you can't be like a superhero to everyone, but practice that acceptance without neglecting to care for your body and give it the best shot it has at feeling alive.
Just to drive the point home, any body center practice can be done through vengeful attention or through loving attention. So running on a treadmill until one of your legs gives out because you hate the way your body [00:19:00] looks and want to punish it, that would be vengeful attention. Even though you're exercising, which is, I guess, fine, you're just pumping hate and rejection into yourself, and that severs the connection between you and your body.
I know plenty of very athletic people who would have what much of society deems an acceptable body, but who are totally disconnected from that center because of the beliefs they have about their body that they use for exercise fuel. So just keep that in mind. If you exercise, experiment with how to do it with loving care.
Figure out what an exercise gift for your body would look like. Acceptance and care. I can't say that enough. Your body, it's doing the best it can. Treat it the same way you would treat a child who's doing the best they can, while not necessarily feeling that great, right? Unless, you know, unless you're shitty to kids, then don't do that.
Don't spank yourself or, or do, just, you know, [00:20:00] do it with loving kindness, I guess. lastly about the Body Center, I want to point out that our career of sitting and writing is probably the worst possible thing we could do to our bodies. But we know that, right? There's research about sitting all day. But also, we tune out from our bodies when we write.
We lose ourselves in the story. It's a great feeling in many ways. But we end up sitting in our chair and looking like a damn shrimp. But also we don't sometimes notice whatever pain we're experiencing until it's pretty bad. So a way to care for your body when you're a writer is to set alarms to take frequent breaks and check in with how your body is feeling.
What does it need to be happy right now? And then go do that.
Mood disorders are also a thing that a lot of writers deal with and it can get quite a bit of stigma because people want to call you emotional, which like, Yeah, that's the thing I'm struggling with, dude. Thanks for your help. Uh, but also there's this big emphasis on consistency [00:21:00] that I hear around the industry.
So, like, to be successful, you must be consistent. People put consistency on this fucking pedestal. And that is super ableist. If you're a person whose health issues have flare ups You're not less of a serious writer because you have to take unplanned days away from your work. Fuck off with that nonsense.
People with mood disorders, I hope you hear me when I say that you get to go do what you need to do. If you never know if you'll be in a place to write from one day to the next, that's just fine.
Writing will be there when you come back. You're still a writer like everyone else. And, you know, maybe just stay off social media while you're riding those waves. That might be a good way to, , give some loving care to your heart center. Social media is already disorienting and destabilizing to our moods.
Like, God, TikTok screws with my brain's ability to produce serotonin so bad. I just feel like, Generally down for days at a time [00:22:00] when I have that app on my phone and just scroll it endlessly. Anyway, it can be a very loving thing to avoid social media. When you need that energy for yourself, you never know what someone will post on social media.
So you're almost guaranteed to run into something triggering, which is not ideal if you're struggling with mood. If you want to reach out to people and feel human connection, which can be really healing, reach out to people, you know, who love and accept you. You're also likely to regret anything you post when you're managing the mood fluctuation, and I'm speaking from my own depression here.
Take the apps off your phone if you have to, go outside if that's safe for you at the time, and see if you can't activate your body center a little bit to alleviate the burden from your heart center and lightness load. That's not medical advice, by the way. If you need medical intervention, a loving thing you can do for yourself is go get it.
But I also understand that mood disorders can lead to a lot of strife in the medical complex. Uh, medications that don't work well. You might have those. You might [00:23:00] experience some gaslighting from doctors and so on. So, um, best of luck. I'm, I'm just being, you know, sort of flippant here. All I can really offer is that there's never a good reason to stop loving yourself and stay as connected to your heart center as you can.
And finally, head center health conditions. Most of the ones I ran into working with authors are mild, like slight paranoia, circular thinking, and so forth. So when I see people who are struggling with these mild Mental health setbacks. I actually get kind of excited because I know the center work can be hugely beneficial to them.
, these are more cognitive patterns than any official condition I'm talking about though. So the Enneagram is all about decoding cognitive patterns. , often these happen when we're asking our head center to do the work of the other centers. So building up that connection with the heart and body can open a flow of new information to the person that allows them to know in the deepest [00:24:00] sense of knowing.
What action to take and how they feel about a situation. The head center can only ever collect 33 percent of the information in a room or situation. If you don't have the other two centers offering their intelligence, yeah, the brain is going to be exhausted. So if you're dealing with sort of these mild cognitive frustrations, then this is where you start.
Now, if you have an actual mental health condition, remember acceptance and care. Accept that you have it. And care for it accordingly and with love. There's this idea that mental health issues, and sometimes mood conditions like depression are lumped in there, but it's this idea that those things are somehow beneficial to your writing, and if you treat them, you'll lose your touch.
I don't know that I agree with asking yourself to suffer untreated, and that that would necessarily serve your writing, and It certainly doesn't serve you the best. A lot [00:25:00] of comedians, for instance, fear that if they treat their depression, they'll stop being funny. But what actually happens, turns out, uh, and they find this out, if they go get treatment, is that if they treat their depression, They're still funny, and now they are not depressed.
That's all that happens, right? So if you feel like, well if I go get treatment, then I'm not going to be able to write, I'm not going to be the same kind of writer. You might be the same kind of writer, and just not suffering. And that's great.
Also, if you're wondering if depression is a mood condition or a mental condition, let me just say that I don't know. This is really where the line gets blurry. So, my experience of depression is that it's very much in all three of my centers. So, there are the mental patterns of thoughts I used to have that were very mean.
And rude and added to the depression. I've unpacked most of those now, and I really feel like it's a disruptive cognitive pattern anymore, or rather with the thoughts [00:26:00] come through. I'm like, Whoa, easy there thought not today. And then I kind of help it move along and there's the mood around it. And I've been working through that and I mostly don't have the moodiness of depression, but when I do, it's usually a sign that there was a big emotion I was ignoring for a while.
And it just needed to have it's say so I invite it through and it does its thing for a bit and then it moves along And then there's the physical element of depression, which I still have to write out. So that's the the fatigue of it there are days at a time where I kind of drag ass around the house because there's not like a single drop of serotonin to be found in my body if I can muster it on these days I'll go for long walks to try to remind my body that serotonin is, is kind of important and would it please, please give me some, that I have to do all this work to accept and support myself in this way might come as a surprise to some of you listening, but that's because you [00:27:00] don't see it. There's so, so much we don't see about each other's lives. When I'm feeling this way, I cope by retreating like a sick dog. So by nature, you won't know about it.
That's my own learned response, uh, in my own baggage, even after all this inner work I do on a daily basis. I can't quite shake this belief that it's, it's my responsibility to take care of myself completely. And that my needs are too much to bother anyone else with. So I know that's wrong in my head. And I've gotten to the point where I feel comfortable asking for the support I need from like John or my inner circle.
And for now, that's just where I'm at. I don't mind talking about it though, because I don't take it personally. So these are just patterns I picked up at a young age. They don't align with my values and yet they still keep happening. So I don't know. I find it pretty fascinating to observe.
Also, as a side note, what I described was just my kind of depression. There are all flavors of depression out there. Your flavor may be very different and [00:28:00] that doesn't make it better or worse. And that doesn't mean that you're going to approach it with the same success that I have had doing it the way that I have done it.
So, yeah, your mileage may vary, and I'm really not trying to add to any stigma about depression. I'm trying to share my experience so that we maybe see that there's a little bit of hope there. If you're wondering when the depression blows in and my exhaustion starts, No, I don't usually get my writing done.
I will generally skip it. Because if I try to push through, I know that it won't be fun, and it'll create resistance to the process of sitting and writing, and I probably won't get much done anyway. Also, if I don't address the needs of my body on those days, the shit will just drag on and on. I'd much rather take a day or two off to get myself back on track quicker.
I don't, don't like depression y'all. I don't like it. I'm not a fan. [00:29:00] And I found that when I treat myself lovingly by giving myself what I need, I surprisingly, who would have thought, I enjoy being alive much more. Uh, but I've also had chronic back and neck pain since I was about six years old.
I get migraines at least once a month, sometimes more. Uh, and I've never had a normal period in my life. TMI for some of you, but it's a medical condition, so grow up. Basically, I'm not talking completely out of my ass here when I say it's worth practicing acceptance and care. I've gone through the self loathing myself.
I've gone through the disconnection from my centers that were causing me trouble. I've tried it. Would not recommend. Zero out of five stars. Living in harmony with yourself is much better for your author career long term, as well as your general will to live and enjoy this one life.
Also, even with all the days I've taken off from my regularly scheduled writing to care for myself, I've still managed [00:30:00] to publish quite a few books over the long term. And frankly, who cares how many I've published? The measure of a person's life isn't what they produce, or at least I don't believe so. If you believe so, I do invite you to ask who taught you that belief, and if it's served you well, or forced you to disconnect from your centers of intelligence to get the job done.
Just a little line of inquiry. Lastly, I do want to touch on something that's just speaking straight from my heart here, from me to you. It's just the two of us. It might even just be the two of us. There may be no one else listening to this episode but you. If you have a chronic health condition that's interrupting your life, please seek medical treatment.
You deserve it. In the best way. Now, I know that if you're a cisgendered woman or a trans person, you've probably been treated like shit by at least a few doctors. You know, gaslighted, told all the pain is [00:31:00] in your head, that sort of thing. And if you're black, then we know that the statistical chance your pain has been dismissed by a medical professional is extremely high.
And I don't have to tell you that if you're Black and have experienced that as a result. So I am really, truly sorry that anyone has to go through that. I know it hurts to be disbelieved by someone in that position of authority who's the gatekeeper of your care. The number of medical professionals who have written off my pain and symptoms is almost as high as the number of medical professionals I've seen.
But please keep trying if you can muster it. What I suggest is to build up the support you need. Knowing what you're up against, and call in the troops if you have to, but then go get the help you deserve to care for yourself. Maybe leave time afterward to download the experience with a trusted friend if you need that, but create the conditions and support you need to [00:32:00] keep going.
Get that second opinion. In the US you can call bullshit on a doctor and nobody can stop you like you can say it to their face and they can't have you arrested. You might not get the greatest care from them after that, but you probably weren't getting great care to begin with if you find yourself at that point.
Advocating for your health is hard, but it's one of the most loving things you can do for yourself. And I encourage you not to limit it to the medical industry, but continue that loving advocacy into your author career. Be the advocate your body, mind, and heart need to thrive. Don't participate in their downfall just because you want to get a book finished by a deadline.
Or you don't want someone to be disappointed in your lack of productivity. Or you want to impress someone who probably doesn't think that much about you anyway. I know it can be hard, especially if you're an Enneagram 2 who can't stand asking for help, but this is the [00:33:00] only way you'll continue to be able to show up for the people you love. First, you ask for help from them, and they'll feel so grateful to be able to return all the care you've given them. And then, You care for yourself so that you can continue later on showing care for others.
So, to answer the question of what if I have chronic health issues, I say that is part of life. You can still do incredible things as an author, I promise. All of our personal struggles can become doorways to richer empathy for the struggles of others. And I think that's a beautiful thing. Accept the things you cannot change, take action to care for your health where you can make a positive difference, and then always put your connection to yourself ahead of the perceived demands of people who probably wouldn't even show up to your funeral.
The unspoken secret in this industry [00:34:00] is that most people are managing chronic health issues of some kind. The folks who are out there encouraging everyone to just toughen up and push through are simply the ones who will crash and burn. Eventually and have to learn a lesson the hard way that you and I.
Already know.
So that was a lot, wasn't it? It's hard talking about health. I probably shouldn't have done this episode, probably stepping in it, but it's worth the risk. I guess that's it for this episode of what if for authors, if you want to reach out to me, you can email me at contact@ffs.media.
Emails that are designed solely to disrupt my peace and lash out can be sent to thatsnice@ffs.media. And now I'm gonna go take a quick break and check in with my three centers. I'm Claire Taylor and thanks for listening. I hope you come back for the next episode of what if for [00:35:00] authors.