Living in the In-Between

Living with chronic illness — especially something like FND or POTS — isn’t linear. Some days are manageable, even joyful. Others knock you flat. And a lot of it falls into the gray area in between — hard to explain unless you’ve lived it.

For me, the most disorienting part of FND is the unpredictability. One day I’m doing fine, and the next, my body decides it has other plans. Add in the challenges of POTS — like dizziness, fatigue, and feeling like your heart is running a marathon without your consent — and you start to realize how much of your energy goes into simply getting through the day.

It’s a lot. And it can feel isolating.

That’s why I write.

Not to offer polished advice or silver linings — but to make space. To share. To say, “same,” when someone else is struggling. And to leave something behind that might help someone feel just a little less alone.

For me, writing is both therapy and connection. A way to get the noise out of my head and onto the page. Sometimes it’s reflections. Sometimes it’s a brain dump. Sometimes it’s just a list of what didn’t totally fall apart that day. But it helps.

And what I’ve learned is: people don’t always know how to ask. So instead of pushing updates out, this blog becomes a “pull” — a way to quietly invite people in. If you’re curious, if you care, if you want to understand — it’s here. No pressure. No explanations required.

There’s power in that. In saying, “Here’s my story — take what you need.”

Everyone’s experience with chronic illness is different. But every story is valid. Every story is worth hearing. And if telling mine helps someone else feel seen, understood, or just a little more human — that’s reason enough to keep writing.

And then there’s the systems.

One of the hardest — and most invisible — symptoms I deal with is the loss of executive functioning. If you’re not familiar, executive functioning is the part of your brain responsible for planning, organizing, starting tasks, switching between tasks, remembering things, managing time — basically, the behind-the-scenes engine that keeps life moving forward.

When that part stops working reliably, everything gets harder. Things fall through the cracks. Simple decisions feel impossible. I lose time. I forget what I was doing mid-task. I start fifteen things and finish none. And it’s not because I’m disorganized — it’s because my brain is glitching in ways I can’t control.

At work, that can look like needing help structuring my day or breaking a project into steps that used to come naturally. At home, it looks like laundry in the washer for two days because I genuinely forgot it existed. It’s frustrating. It’s exhausting. And on the hardest days, it makes me feel like I’m failing at things I know I’m capable of doing.

So I started building systems — not because I’m Type A, but because I had to. Bullet journals, shared calendars, AI check-ins, visual boards, color coding, task flows… slowly, those systems started making things feel possible again. Not easy, but possible.

And when you combine that need for systems with a brain that processes emotions best by “talking it out” (even if it’s just onto a page)… this blog sort of built itself.

It’s part coping mechanism, part connection point, part gentle broadcast for the people who love me and want to understand what’s going on without needing to ask every time.

So whether you’re here as a fellow traveler, a curious friend, or just someone stumbling through their own version of figuring-it-out — welcome.

This space is for you, too.