Psychology Today | 15.11.2025 06:55
To live with chronic illness is to live with loss: loss of bodily functions, loss of trust in one’s body, loss of relationships, loss of experiences, loss of a hoped-for future, and loss of the pre-illness self. I want you to read that sentence again and really take it in. To live with chronic illness is to live with loss. Can you acknowledge this, not just at an intellectual level, but at a felt-experience level? Your illness means that loss is your constant companion. “Gee, thanks,” you might be saying. “Good talk.” But hear me out — I’m making the case that tending to our relationship with loss can be empowering and liberating, and that we are more fully human if we relate to our grief instead of push it away, minimize, or demonize it.
