Hello! My name is Carly and I have struggled personally with illness for over twenty years. Uncontrolled epilepsy, severe anemia, systematic infections, endometriosis - seizures, surgeries, injuries, hospitalizations; a lack of control over my body has been a constant theme in my life. Finding and losing that control over and over again has taught me many things. Things like: how to speak to doctors and how to pronounce tricky medications and how to reach back and tie up a hospital gown fairly easily. But it hasn’t taught me how to be sick or how to get better or how to feel okay about not being healthy. And so, I am not here to give you these answers (although I could demo that hospital gown trick if you’d like!).

I’m here simply to talk about what it means to be well. Can you be broken and also whole? Can you be healthy and yet still sick? The messy disaster of illness is not unlike the messy disaster of living. Some days you’re upright and smiling, some days you’re facedown on the floor. You shuffle forward on the path, with your heartbreak and your joy, your laughter and your fury. You take your medicine, maybe you relapse, maybe you get better again. You lose the path, you find it, you fall, and you get off that floor as many times as you need to (and maybe you stay down there for a little while, too). Healthy can be a tricky term. But grace, hope, forgiveness, love – this is what wellness is made of.

This blog will explore the concept of putting down arms and understanding illness not as a failure of self, but as a part of the human condition. You will find a series of interviews about what it means to be sick, what it means to care for others who are sick, and what it means to love our fragile selves. Along the way I will also post articles and insights of my own. This is a place for anyone with a chronic illness, anyone in the middle of a health crisis, anyone who cares for someone facing these things, and anyone whose life or work involves the healthcare industry. It is also for every person who has ever struggled with the feeling of not being well. Whether you're in and out of hospitals or struggling to manage your day-to-day life because a cold has knocked you off your feet, this is a place for you to put down your arms and remember that this is not your fault. This is not your fight. Sick does not negate your value. Broken does not negate your wholeness. “In Sickness and In Self” is not a place to get cured. It is not a place to learn wellness. It is simply a place for feeling well.