I Contain Multitudes

Letting myself be all of it

Jackson Hole, Wyoming in the fall looks like it was dipped in honey.

A moment for the YELLOWS

I spent last weekend on a dreamy girls trip with a group of women I’ve only known for a few years. This trip filled me up, but it also stirred something reflective in me.

Unlike my childhood, college, or early-20s NYC friends, these girls only know the version of me post-illness: the one who drinks electrolytes instead of wine, works in wellness, and knows her supplement drawer like the back of her hand.

When you meet people later in life, you realize most people only know a slice of you. It makes you wonder: who I am to them? And how does that version line up with how I know myself?

Sometimes, I feel tension there. I catch myself saying, “I used to be fun!” — half-joke, half-plea — as if I need to prove I’m more than what they see. It’s my own projection, assuming I’m being perceived only as the girl with “health stuff”.

My health story has shaped so much of who I am, but a big part of me resists being defined by it. For a long time, managing my illness was my full-time job (I traded my role in finance for one in appointment scheduling, protocol management, and endless research).

We’ve all heard the phrase “if you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything”. And there’s some truth in that: illness sharpens your awareness of what matters. But it can also be a confusing message for those of us who are chronically ill. Does nothing else matter aside from our healing? Sometimes, it can feel that way.

When you become chronically ill, it can feel like everything you were before gets stripped away. Your values, interests, aspirations, curiosities… they all take a backseat. And maybe, in certain seasons, that’s necessary.

Dr. Talia wrote in a recent post:

“I’ve spent too many years with health as my main focus, my main driver, and yes at times that focus was necessary as I learned about my body, my symptoms, my ways of recovery, my comfort. The learning phase cannot be skipped over, no matter how uncomfortable.”

When healing becomes your main focus, it’s nearly impossible not to over-identify with it. For me, it consumed so much of my energy, my identity, my sense of worth. I felt responsible for embodying this identity, afraid that if I didn’t, my life would continue to be hijacked by illness.

And now, sometimes, I swing the other way — wanting to dismiss the labels entirely.

But that doesn’t feel quite right either.

I don’t feel at home in chronic illness forums, I don’t resonate with wellness-obsessed biohackers, and I don’t always feel understood by people who have never lived it. There’s immense value in finding community with people who get it, but I’ve never liked feeling bound to any group or label.

Chronic illness is a part of me, not my whole story.

Maybe that’s because I’ve come to understand my authenticity as dynamic - something alive, shifting as I move through life. What’s true for me in one moment might evolve in the next, and I find that fixed identities rarely honor our wholeness or leave space for transformation.

Dr. Talia closes her piece with a realization that feels like a mirror for my own experience: that she can trust herself to care for her health without obsessing over it, and trust that focusing on what brings her joy is also a way of giving her body what it needs.

That kind of trust doesn’t come easily, especially after years of hypervigilance, of seeing my body as something to fix rather than live inside. It’s a slow rewiring.

Joy, presence, connection (and whatever else you value) aren’t detours from healing, they’re part of it.

Honoring my health doesn’t have to mean centering my identity around it. It’s still a part of my story (a big one), but it’s just that - part of it.

Rekindling my relationship with the other parts of me — the ones that were waiting in the backseat — has been its own kind of healing.

If this is something you relate to, join me in noticing what other parts of yourself are calling for your attention.

If you’ve read any of my other posts, you’ve probably recognized the theme of multiple truths existing at once.

What if, this week, you get curious about living in the and?

Healing and living
Intentional and spontaneous
Grounded and adventurous
Patient and passionate
Tired and inspired
Wise and learning

Let yourself be all of it. When we give space to different parts of ourselves, we expand back into the fullness of life.

“You are not a drop in the ocean.
You are the entire ocean in a drop.”

—Rumi

“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

—Walt Whitman, Song of Myself