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About the episode
“When life is hard, you need to take a break before you break.” – Marisa Renee Lee
Some experiences in our lives don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Chronic illness is one of them. As clinicians, supporting our clients means more than managing symptoms or finding the right protocol. It’s about helping them to learn to live inside a body that no longer feels predictable, while still trying to hold onto identity, purpose, and connection.
What makes this kind of experience especially complex is that it doesn’t exist in isolation. It’s shaped by culture, by expectations around productivity and independence, and by the very real pressure to keep going even when your body is asking you to slow down. For high-achieving women who wear multiple hats, that tension can be profound. And when uncertainty stretches on for months or years, it often brings a kind of grief that isn’t always obvious, because nothing has technically ended and yet everything has changed.
In this episode, I’m joined by Marisa Renee Lee, author of Waiting for Dawn and Grief is Love, to explore life with chronic illness through the lens of grief and uncertainty. Marisa shares her journey with long COVID, the identity shifts that come with becoming disabled, how internalized beliefs around independence make it harder to ask for help, the loneliness of navigating unpredictable symptoms, and what it means to live well even while acknowledging your limitations.
Enjoy the episode, and let’s innovate and integrate together!
Highlights
- Marisa’s experience with long COVID and how it reshaped her daily life and capacity
- What it looks like to live well in the face of chronic illness
- Why perimenopausal women face higher risks of chronic illnesses
- How internalized ableism and cultural pressures make it harder to accept disability
- The moment Marisa realized her limitations and how that realization impacted her
- How COVID’s politicization has shaped stigma around masking and public health behaviors
- Grief vacations and why breaks from suffering matter during chronic illness
- How Marisa’s mother’s story reshaped her perspective
- What surrender, patience, and presence look like in the day-to-day reality of chronic illness
- The loneliness, unpredictability, and boundary-setting required to manage chronic illness
- The identity shift from being the helper to needing help
- The problem with wellness culture’s focus on personal responsibility
Learn more about Marisa Renee Lee
- Book | Waiting for Dawn: Living with Uncertainty
- Book | Grief is Love: Living with Loss
- Substack | Holding Both
- Website | MarisaReneeLee.com
About Marisa Renee Lee
Marisa Renee Lee is the award-winning and bestselling author of Grief is Love. For her work on grief and healing, she has been featured on Good Morning America and NPR, in Vogue and The Atlantic, among other outlets. Her new book Waiting For Dawn (out in April 2026) reflects on her experiences with chronic illness and grief, offering solace to folks living with all kinds of uncertainty. A longtime rabble-rouser of social healing and equity, Lee previously served as a deputy director in the Obama White House and is now CEO of Beacon Advisors, a social-impact consulting firm. She is a graduate of Harvard College and lives with her husband Matt and son, Bennett, in New York.
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Click here for a full transcript of the episode.
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