I’m excited beyond words to introduce my new non-fiction book, How To Do Life With A Chronic Illness! The book was published on 18th April 2024 in paperback, eBook, and audiobook format, and you can order a copy from wherever you like to get your books. Keep on reading to find out more!

• Order your copy on Waterstones here*
• Order your copy on Amazon here*
• Order your copy on Bookshop.org here*
• Order your copy signed by the author here!

For a long time, I’ve wanted to write a book exactly like this one. When you’re diagnosed with a chronic illness, you’re usually dealing with very limited information. Post-diagnosis, you’re usually handed a few (well-intentioned but usually useless) leaflets containing information about the medical aspects of the condition, such as symptoms and any potential management strategies, and then you’re simply sent off back home to try and figure out the rest for yourself.

Now, most of us chronically ill folk are resilient and resourceful humans. We do what we can to take care of our physical health and adapt to our new reality. But what happens from there? Following my own diagnosis, I remember spending years wondering how on Earth I was supposed to… Do Life now. I was getting to grips with managing my symptoms and accepting that there was only so much I could do to help with myself, but what about the rest of my life? How was I going to engage with the things that bring me joy? What impact has this had on my identity and my place in the world? How would I preserve and cherish my relationships with others? What could I do to still feel like ‘myself’, even alongside a life-altering health condition?

It’s of course important to take care of ourselves and we must continue advocating for more medical support and treatment options, but I can’t help but feel like chronic illness has been confined within the medical model of disability for too long. We deserve lives as rich and fulfilling as any other person, regardless of whether we have wonky bodies or not. Therefore, I decided to focus this particular book on the areas of life that are often pushed to one side when we speak about chronic illness management. It contains practical tips in areas like friendship, socialising, and dating, to bespoke advice on rediscovering your identity, learning to self-advocate, and figuring out the stuff that truly matters to you. I want this book to serve as a reminder that even with our shared experiences of chronic ill health in an ableist world, we are all our unique and glorious selves and that our happiness matter just as much as anybody else’s.

Throughout the book you’ll find additional resource lists and links to related videos, and each chapter concludes with a series of journal prompts. There’s space for you to complete these in the book if you wish, and there are also digital pages you can download if you require assistive tech or typing is a more accessible form of writing for you. No two chronically ill people are the same, so it felt important to regularly hold space for you to reflect on your own circumstances and identify the things that are most resonant with you.

Essentially, this book is a cumulation of all the stuff I’ve had to figure out for myself over the past 10+ years. It contains plenty of my own lived experiences as well as those from a range of other chronically ill contributors, and I hope that the advice we share not only affirms and validates your own experiences, but equips you with the tools to Do Life in a way that works for you. It took me a good few years to find my feet with all of this, but I hope this book helps you avoid some of that anguish and get to the good stuff in life *much* quicker and more painlessly than I did. No toxic positivity or squashing down negative experiences. No patient-blaming. No guru woo-woo. Instead, just realistic and genuinely useful advice to help you along your way… with a little touch of humour, of course.

Releasing this book is one of my biggest dreams come true. As a chronically ill writer, I never thought I’d be able to find a place in the fiercely competitive world of traditional publishing. To know that this book is being published by JKP, part of Hachette and an imprint of one of the Big Five in the UK, feels utterly surreal. I’m grateful beyond words to my literary agent Jane Graham-Maw and the team at JKP (in particular Elen, Carys, and Abbie) for making this book a reality and such an incredible experience, even in the midst of one of the most difficult times of my life. Together, we’ve turned a decade of lived experience into a beautiful book that I can hold into my hands… and one that you’ll also be able to experience in eBook and audiobook as well as in paperback! Like I say, utterly surreal. I still can’t quite process that any of this is happening but I’m so, so thankful that it is.

You can order your copy now via the links here…

• Order your copy on Waterstones here*
• Order your copy on Amazon here*
• Order your copy on Bookshop.org here*
• Order your copy signed by the author here!

If you’ve ordered a copy or helped to spread the word, I want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart. There’s more to come, but I can’t begin to tell you how much this means to me.

Here’s to How To Do Life With A Chronic Illness, and the beginning of a whole new adventure! Eeeeek!

* [ad – affiliate links]. I earn an additional commission from any orders made via these links, at no extra cost to you!