What Chronic Illness has Taught Me About Resilience, Persistence, and Awareness

20 Things I've Learned from Chronic Illness that have Helped Me Pursue New Goals

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor or therapist. This blog is based on personal experience and is for informational purposes only. Please consult a qualified medical and/or mental health professional before starting anything new. Full Disclaimer can be found at the bottom of this page.

Let’s not sugar-coat this: chronic illness sucks. It's stolen years of my life, stripped away my identity, and left me to rebuild everything from the ground up. And I’ve spent a good chunk of the time since my diagnosis bitter and resentful about it.

But if you're here reading this, you're probably through that stage, and approaching the can-I-still-do-something-with-my-life phase. Wondering if there's anything useful to salvage from the wreckage. Spoiler alert: unfortunately, there is.

Nine years after my diagnosis, as I'm learning to shoot arrows from horseback with a broken balance system, I've finally lowered my defenses enough to realize that chronic illness didn't only take things from me. It forced me to develop a skill set that many people spend their whole lives avoiding. Skills that are now helping me navigate, not just learning an awesome new sport like as mounted archery, but life in general.

I don’t want to sound like that person. The one who finds silver linings in train wrecks and calls suffering a "journey." I rolled my eyes at this concept too. The first 30 years of my life, nothing could stop me—riding horses daily, working cattle, training horses, traveling, film school. Then I turned 30, and bad days became unimaginably worse.

So trust me when I say I'm not talking about inspiration porn or pretending limitations don't exist. I'm talking about practical, hard-won lessons that come from years of adapting to a body that no longer cooperates on schedule.

The Surprising Skill Set of Chronic Illness

I’m just going to say it and you’re probably not going to like it. But chronic illness has given you mental, emotional, and even physical skills that you and everyone around you has overlooked.

You’re here because you want me to challenge your conceptions. So I’m going to do just that. And it might suck a little or sound cheesy or cringe-worthy. But I’m going to say it anyway.

Chronic illness interferes with everything—making us defensive, paranoid, and frustrated. And it doesn’t give you a choice about whether to pay attention to your body. It forces you into a masterclass on self-awareness, whether you signed up or not.

Your body has been teaching you, even if you haven't recognized it yet.

I'll ease you into this concept. Here’s the easy stuff: you've learned to read your body's early warning signals like a meteorologist tracking storm systems. You know the difference between "I'm tired" and "I need to sit down, now."

You know which body part aches when the weather is changing, and what your mood change means. You’ve learned a deep body-awareness that is, frankly, astounding to most people.

Still with me? Great!

Mental Resilience & Adaptability

What is resilience? Well, if you were to go into the gym motivation space, it would be all about pushing through, being disciplined, doing it anyway, keep going even when tears start leaking out of your eyes or an involuntary yell rips from your throat. (“That’s just the weakness leaving your body, rawww!” Side note: I love listening to those, they soothe my soul. I know I'm a weirdo. I'm okay with it.)

But there's a deeper kind of resilience, one where you've been on the edge of a cliff and managed to take a step back instead of going over. You know, what I'm talking about. You've clawed your way out of some dark places, and are now looking to turn on the light. You've found the deepest part of resilience, now let's break it down into bite-sized lessons from chronic illness.

1. Discipline isn't about pushing through—it's about showing up wisely. I’m going to repeat that second part: it’s about showing up wisely. It’s still about showing up. It’s still about respecting yourself enough to keep a promise to yourself. Showing up and pushing today, might mean you need to rest tomorrow. Oops. But now you can plan the next day you’re going to push yourself and make a decision on how long and how hard. It means forgiving yourself for not being able to push yourself today like you planned, but still doing a milder version or practicing a small skill. Once you know your current limits, once you write them down (check out this free workbook!), you can get better at being disciplined by showing up within your personal scope.
   

2. Adaptability is a superpower. You’ve learned to roll with the punches—I know you have because I have too. We’ve learned to adjust and readjust our expectations. Sometimes on a small scale, like when a dinner party you were going to host has to move, or on a large scale, when you’re chronic illness flares before an interview or school exam. Every day has taught you how to pivot. Now it’s about pivoting without losing your path, about allowing your path to adjust to your needs, without letting the path overgrow and getting lost.

   
   

3. Patience is no longer passive. When you’re waiting for a flare to pass, you’ve learned it doesn’t have to be passive. You’ve organized dinner, chatted with friends, and learned something new all while sick. You can only scroll for so long. You can only watch so much YouTube or TV. So you’ve picked up a book, or started learning a language, or planned your weekend. Because you’re forced to rest when your body decides it’s time, you’ve learned to make it an active kind of rest.
   

4. You can hold discomfort without quitting. “You don’t know what you’re capable of until your tested.” Well, we’ve been tested. And tested. This lesson isn’t just about physical pain— you’ve learned how to hold and deal with discomfort of all kinds, mental, emotional, and physical, without giving up. You’re here. You have goals. You have a desire to improve. And you got here all on your own, despite all that pain and discomfort.
   

5. You can feel fear and still move forward. Guess what goes along with unpredictable bouts of pain or illness? Fear. What if I can’t do it? What if I hurt myself more? What if I let those around me down? What if I make myself sick by pursuing this? Somehow, with all that fear, with all those doubts, you’re still looking for something to achieve. That’s incredible. That is resilience if I ever saw it.
   

6. Self-trust grows through trial and error. Challenges suck. Being sick sucks. But you know what you’ve learned from it? To trust your own choices. To keep your boundaries in line with your health. You’ve learned to listen to your body and trust the choices you make for it, and hold to them firmly. That’s tough, especially when not everyone understands. You’ve been forced to respect yourself. And that’s a good thing.

Energy Management & Body Awareness

This isn’t something I wanted to learn, and you probably didn’t either. But this is how a lot of people get hurt. They push beyond their current capabilities. They haven’t figured out their limits yet. They haven’t come to terms with the fact that we are human. We are all Icarus, and not all of us figure it out early enough to avoid the fall. But we have. We know our body. We know our limits.

1. Body awareness is a high-level skill. You’ve become deeply attuned to the early warning signs of your body. To tension and posture. You understand fatigue and you can identify which body part hurts from what thing. For physical activities, body awareness is necessary, and you’ve developed an especially keen sense of where you’re at. This can help you make a plan to get where you’re going. (Side note: I know someone with PCOS and endometriosis that can tell which ovary is hurting. That’s high-level.)
   

2. Pacing matters more than pushing. This is a tough one for me. I spent a lot of time pushing myself in my teens and 20s. But learning to move at a pace comfortable for me and within my limits—a steady pace that still has momentum—has gotten me further than I could have possibly imagined 5 years ago. What’s that old quote? ‘Slow and steady wins the race.’
   

3. Consistency doesn’t mean rigidity. Consistency can be fluid in how and what you decide to do that day, because all your brain cares about is that you did something to take a small step toward your goals. Show up in different ways on different days and you’ll still develop that momentum you’re looking for, that habit you want to develop, and a consistent forward progression that you’ll look back and be proud of.

   
   

4. Recovery is part of the work, not separate from it. Like it or not, you’ve learned how to recover. You taken action by taking inaction. You’ve rested before going out to a concert with friends. You’ve planned a big outing with the next day blocked off as recovery. You take recovery seriously and your body thanks you for it.
   

5. Nervous system regulation is a survival skill. There was a large amount of time that I lived in a fight or flight state. It was brutal. Everything out of the ordinary felt like a bomb went off. It was exhausting. Then I started working on my mental state, reframing, developing stress management skills, and doing activity to release frustration and it has been a life changer. Chances are you've found something that has helped you too.

   
   

6. Breath is a tool, not just a function. Not just breath but other grounding tools as well. Breath, tapping, moving, sitting in nature. Slow down, ground, reset, and refocus. Take moments to be in the present. You’ve done it unconsciously before, you’re chronic illness has set you up for moments like these, now it’s time to make it conscious.

Rethinking Success & Progress

Throughout my years of illness, reframing has been a process for me. I'm not naturally optimistic—though I am an upbeat person, I tend to think about how things could go wrong before I'll consider how they might go right.

Goal setting and progress need a bit of an optimistic slant. When setting goals, you need to believe the goal is at least remotely possible. Sometimes, when you have a chronic or changeable health condition, you can spiral into questioning whether anything is possible again. These are hard-won lessons for me.

1. Success looks different every day. Some days, just showing up is the victory. It can feel so small, so unremarkable when all you do is drive up to see your horse, give her a pat and spray her with bug repellent only to leave again because you can't stand anymore. Or when you open a document, stare at the words, reread a few sentences, then close it to go lie down. But here's the thing: that horse now has fewer bugs on her, and your brain is percolating with those sentences you read. It matters. Keeping the habit matters.
   

2. Progress isn't linear—and that's okay. Progress for everyone and everything never goes in a straight line. There's science on learning new skills that shows it goes up and down day by day but progressively improves overall. So why would you think that with health struggles, you'd just get better each time you practice? It doesn't happen to anyone. Non-linear progress is still progress, and it still gives you that boost when you suddenly have a good day and all the pieces you've been working on finally click together.
   

3. You learn to let go of timelines. I still like timelines, but learning to keep them flexible has given me tremendous relief. Playing the long game is where you need to focus. There's a certain joy in setting a long timeline you'd be satisfied with, only to reach it three months earlier than intended. Allow yourself the freedom of long, flexible timelines, or remove them completely and work in stages.
   

4. The process matters more than the product. It's all about the journey. I know you've heard this before and it's cliché and not what you want to hear, but here I am saying it to your face anyway. The journey itself is part of the joy. Recognizing that you can still learn something new or relearn an old passion—that's where the gold is. That sense of accomplishment, purpose, and excitement at being able to do what you love. It's in the process. Focus on it.
   

5. Persistence is a muscle you can build. Until it's all bulky and strong. Chronic illness pushes you to the limits of your ability to persist, but you've learned it—it's in there. Those of us with changeable conditions have developed some serious persistence muscles.

Compassion, Connection & Perspective

Here's where chronic illness gets interesting in ways I didn't expect. I was already pretty empathetic before getting sick. But what I've learned is how to translate those feelings into something actually useful for other people.

1. You learn to give practical support, not just feelings. When a friend has a health scare, I don't only sit with them and offer support for their emotions—I can offer specific advice about navigating doctors, pacing recovery, or dealing with the mental side of health issues, if they want it. My empathy now comes with a toolkit.
   

2. Gratitude gets sharper. Small moments of freedom, strength, or connection feel amazing. You don't take them for granted anymore.
   

3. Humility makes you teachable. This wasn't something I'd originally thought much about, but it's true. I'm more willing to sit down and listen to lessons around me. I'm constantly trying to learn and better myself. Chronic illness keeps your ego in check, which helps you learn faster and with more openness.

How These Lessons Support Mounted Archery

So how has all this helped me revisit horseback riding and start learning a new sport?

Horses are deeply intuitive animals. They sense what you're feeling and often react to it—whether it's tension in your body or distraction in your mind. Being chronically ill has slowed me down, and horses thrive on this one-step-at-a-time mentality. They like working on one small thing today, then a few other things the next day when I feel better. Surprisingly, nonlinear progress seems to work well for them too.

In mounted archery, there are many moving parts. One day I'll practice with the horse, another I'll sit on the couch and spend 10 minutes nocking and unnocking arrows. Other days, I'll work on target shooting without the horses, or work the horses to keep them in shape without any archery equipment in sight. Nonlinear progress has been a game changer—I'll be writing about it soon because it's been that powerful for me once I understood the concept.

From Fragile to Fierce

Chronic illness may give us added challenges, but we can learn from it to better ourselves in other ways. You can be emotionally strong with chronic illness. You can be resilient with chronic illness. You can learn and grow and have purpose and passion with chronic illness.

Listen to your body. Learn what it has to teach you. Let go of resentment and bitterness, and approach your body with curiosity and questions about how you should proceed, what works and what doesn't, where your lines are right now regarding physical capabilities.

Remember, not all physical activities are extremes. They're not all fast-paced or strength-based. There's a variety of sports and activities that can be adapted or that you can start with just you and a few friends who will go easy on you. It is possible. But it takes balance.

Once you shift from fighting your body to learning from it, something interesting happens. Patterns emerge. You begin to understand your rhythms. Suddenly, you're not just surviving your health condition—you're working with it to figure out what's actually possible.

What Now?

Learning to gauge your body and pace correctly takes time and practice. But once you have a handle on it, it's worth noting and sticking to in every way you can. Dealing with unpredictability is hard and can drag you into some pretty dark mental places. Understanding what sets off your body is part of learning to accept this aspect of your life, and it helps you set goals without destroying that tenuous compromise you've reached with your body.

Now comes the hard part: taking stock of the signals and figuring out which come from your body and which from your over-reactive, helicopter-parent brain. When is rest necessary because pushing yourself will backfire, versus when you just think it will backfire?

I've found techniques like EFT tapping and sometimes guided meditation (though I hate meditating) have actually become useful—not as cure-alls, but as tools for calming the mind and lowering frustration enough to get a clearer picture of whether it's your body or your mind talking.

Slowly, through trying and failing and working toward my coaching certification, I relearned how to set goals, how to start old and new activities again, and how to highlight the good days in a way that brings fulfillment and shines a light on what my body is still capable of despite its limitations.

Once you shift from fighting your body to learning from it, something interesting happens. Patterns emerge. You begin to understand your rhythms. Suddenly, you're not just surviving your health condition—you're working with it to figure out what's actually possible.

I'm only at the beginning of my mounted archery journey, and perhaps my health will decide this isn't right for me. But even just starting—taking my first few steps, going to my first few lessons, reaching for something a little bigger—has me excited about my next day off. I love my new bows, learning how they differ from my traditional recurve, showing them to the horses.

Even if these first steps don't lead anywhere because of my health, I'm so happy I started this journey. It's given me such a huge infusion of energy and focus that I really didn't believe I'd have again. It's been worth it.

You're not starting behind everyone else when you decide to pursue an activity or passion with chronic illness. You're not in a race; you're not competing against anyone else or even yourself. You're on a road trip: flat tires, closed gas stations, and singing good tunes with the top down. Sometimes it rains on your head, sometimes the sun shines, but the wind is still in your hair.

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What are your own health challenges teaching you?

"Kintsugi is a pottery technique. When something breaks, like a vase, they glue it back together with melted gold. Instead of making the cracks invisible, they make them beautiful." — Leah Raeder

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