What does it take for a person with chronic illness to continue working ?  And, if possible, to do so in a rewarding way?  I’ve wrestled with  this personally for over 30 years, and more recently in my professional life as a coach/writer/activist of sorts in the past 10 years.

A recent New York Times article profiled a  self-described “high powered executive” with schizo affective disorder .  Against all odds, she discovered for herself that the best medicine for her is an intense work environment.  The very idea defied what everyone around her believed.

The article cites recent research on a small group of high achievers living with this diagnosis.   ‘“It’s just embarrassing,” said Dr. Stephen R. Marder, director of the psychosis section at U.C.L.A.’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. “For years, we as psychiatrists have been telling people with a diagnosis what to expect; we’ve been telling them who they are, how to change their lives — and it was bad information” for many people.

Sound familiar?  So what can the rest of us learn from this?

1. There’s much to learn from others living with a chronic health condition.   Don’t be fooled by a diagnosis.  In my coaching practice, working with more than 300 people living with all forms of chronic illness, I’ve found that most disease symptoms bring on some debilitating level of fatigue or pain.  And it’s these defining experiences that hurt performance.  Isn’t that what matters?

(If only researchers shared more of their findings among different disease and branches of medicine,  science would move much more quickly to finding sources and cures of disease. )

3.   You are responsible for figuring out what you can and cannot do, what is ‘good for you’ to do and what harms you. Yes,  that’s hard.  When your healthcare practitioner (your psychiatrist, surgeon or acupuncturist, you name it)  tells you what you ‘need’ to do to ‘take care of yourself’, you should listen and try it.  But as you test this out keep an open mind to question if this is right for you.

3.   Stress comes in many forms and each of us has to figure out what it means .  We all  have different tolerance levels for stress.  It affects people differently and it can affect each of us differently at different times.   Let’s say you believe that your job makes your health worse because it’s  ‘stressful’.  Ask yourself:

• Does this mean that  all work is “stressful”  for you?
• Are you working in a high stress environment (everyone finds it to be so) or is this your unique response to the stress that exists there?
• Is there another way to look at the ‘stress’ so it doesn’t feel harmful?

Bottom line?  Life is a teaching opportunity.  What are you learning from it?

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Sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn can land you a job if used correctly — or ruin your chances if mishandled. The good news for those living with chronic illness is that these social networks make it easier than ever before to build a personal brand, and establish and grow your network from your computer or mobile device.

The first step to leveraging these tools is to get acquainted with each one and establish your network. LinkedIn has positioned itself as the professional’s social network and should be your primary focus when looking for a job. Set up a LinkedIn profile, add your work history, current position and connect with your colleagues by uploading your email contact list. Research the companies you are interested in; some may already be advertising positions on LinkedIn. If not, look for someone within your network who is connected to the company in some way and politely follow up with them. Also consider joining alumni, professional and interest groups to expand your network and your access to jobs, as people frequently post listings on group discussion boards.

While creating your profile, keep in mind that potential employers will likely peruse it. For those with chronic illness, a question often raised is whether or not to keep your illness private. Depending on your situation, you may decide to keep this private or you may list it if you are looking for a position that is in some way related. You should ask yourself if your illness has any impact on the jobs you are looking for. If not, why include it?  This is also important to remember when joining support groups through LinkedIn and Facebook as these groups will appear on your profile.

Facebook is not as obvious of a resource for job hunting as LinkedIn, but it can also be a rich avenue. There are number of tools which leverage your existing Facebook social network to connect you with jobs. IntheDoor.com is a site that compares your network on Facebook with current job listings to see how you can best leverage your contacts to gain access to those positions. A similar site, BranchOut.com, allows you to make your Facebook profile more professional and search a database of more than 3 million job listings.

Twitter can also be useful for establishing a personal brand, expanding your network and engaging with others in your industry. Fill out your profile completely and find people to follow, like colleagues, journalists and influencers in your field. Tweeting your thoughts on issues relevant to your professional interests and links to worthwhile articles is a good way to establish your presence on Twitter. Again, whether or not you choose to comment on your illness is up to you, but remember that unless you protect your tweets, anyone can read them. You can also find jobs on Twitter by searching hashtags like #jobsearch or #salesjobs, and by following the Twitter feeds of companies you would like to work for.

Using these tools in combination with one another will maximize your chances of success. Finding a job always takes effort, patience and perseverance. Social media will not eliminate these necessities, but it can make the search easier and broader for those living with chronic illness.

Erica Moss is the social media outreach coordinator for the online Masters in Nursing program at Georgetown University, which has one of the nation’s leading nurse practitioner programs. She’s used her Twitter presence to help land a job, and outside of work, Erica is an avid dog lover who loves photography and meeting new people.

QUERY for HR Directors:  We’ve got a grant to study the effects of a coaching intervention on people working who live with chronic illness.   Employees who participate would receive coaching services at no fee.  We ask nothing from a partner organization other than to communicate our message about this study to their employees.   Are you an HR Director or work within organization that you think would be interested in ‘partnering’ with us?  For more information:  Alyssa.McGonagle@Wayne.edu

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That was  my story.  After 25 years of working in multimedia  (photographer, producer, production company v.p. sales , public school communications teacher and college professor), I threw in the towel when I became too sick  to work at any full time job.

When I wanted to return to work after a few years, I realized it had to be  different.  I couldn’t find work that could accommodate my health in my former career – not the early 1990′s at least.   So at age 43, I set out to develop a new career.  I knew I had a wealth of experience that I could draw on –  even if I didn’t have a clue what that meant.

But now you don’t have to do it all yourself.  Here’s one site that’s devoted to this very idea: Encore Careers.  In a recent newsletter, Marci Alboher offers 5  Online Resources for Encore Career Seekers.  Although the suggestions focus on “retired” folks, you can learn a lot from reading this information.   Adapt it to your situation and ‘mine’ the gold that’s there.

Check out the site because there’s lots of good information.  It targets older workers who want to or need to find new career options.  But think about the issues that an older, unemployed worker faces: skills no longer relevant, negative stereotypes, employment gaps.  Do you see some overlap?

Let’s face it.  Chronic illness is not a ‘hot button’ issue’. But, as boomers age in an increasingly difficult job market,  the older worker is going to become more vocal.   We might as well jump on and share the band wagon.

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Just the other day, a Twitter follower DM’d me (that’s twitter-speak for sent me a direct and private message) asking if  I’d written a post on “whether or not to note one’s illness/involvement in an association on your LinkedIn?”   No.  But it’s question/topic that’s  come up with clients and worth a discussion.  And I’d welcome your input!

LinkedIn offers extraordinary opportunities for everyone but especially for those of us who are limited in getting  ‘out in the world’.   LinkedIn allows you to expand your network and meet new people, create relationship and connection around shared interests, and showcase yourself without ever leaving the internet. All this without spending your physical energy.

Yes, I’m a big fan of this social media vehicle (even if I don’t make use of it properly or fully myself) and encourage job hunting clients to make use of  this tool

But back to the Twitter question: what to include in your profile?

First, have you created goals for creating your LinkedIn Profile?  Are they specific enough so you can use them to benchmark yourself as you write the copy?  For instance, you might set a goal as:  I want anyone who lands here to be interested enough in me that he/she will follow up with an email.

With that in mind, you should be able to decide what makes sense to include or not.  But I know it can be a slippery slope when chronic illness impacts your work life.

Once again, there are no rules when it comes to living this life with illness.  But I’ll offer some things to consider and welcome any comments you can add to this discussion:

1. Your profile page,  as the experts say, is your branding page.  Your task is to design your online identity so it’s a quick study for anyone looking at it.
2. If illness has nothing to do with the job you’re searching for, what reason do you have for mentioning anything about it?  Ask yourself, what makes me think this?
3. If living with illness is directly related to your job search, what do you want people to ‘do’ with this information?  What can you include that will achieve that goal?
4. If  demonstrating your activism in groups builds your “brand”,  will including disease associations hurt you or create an unfavorable impression? Ask yourself, what makes me think this?
5. If your activity in an organization will bring people to your page and that organization is a disease-related association, can mentioning your relationship to the association hurt you?  Ask yourself, what makes me think this.

Planning to use LinkedIn or already have a presence there?  Either way, check out this valuable tool written by my career colleague, Miriam Salpeter:  Social Networking for Career Success: Using Online Tools to Create a Personal Brand

Now, if only I would practice what I say and beef up my own Social Media presence…..

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I just celebrated my 60th birthday and a client (I’ll call her Laurie) was asking  what I ‘d done.  Describing the party we had with loving family and friends, I spoke of how great it felt to be healthy for it.  But now, just 2 days later, I was experiencing symptoms  – -some I’d never had before and some too familiar.

I rarely discuss my health challenges or how they affect me unless I think there’s a benefit.   But this time, my frustration was bubbling on the surface and I shared my sadness.  I described how the onset of pain and fatigue had taken the glow right off.

At that, Laurie started to cry  and then talk  — about her own anger and sadness in living with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).  She hadn’t spoken of this in the 8 months we’d worked together.

Turns out that Laurie had just come from her yearly performance review (she’s a paralegal).   She’d been relatively healthy over the last year but  recently, new pain made it difficult to use her dominant hand.

In her review, her boss said that she understood that Laurie was working as hard as she could and she appreciated that the work always got done.  But her boss was having a tough time with the unpredictable nature of Laurie’s symptoms.   Then her boss  acknowledged that she knew she liked control and the unpredictable challenged her and made her irritable with Laurie.

Laurie got the yearly raise she’d received for the past 10 years at this job.  But she left that meeting in a state of shock.  She couldn’t believe that her boss had said these things to her and worried about her future at this law firm.

Laurie has lived with RA for 6 years.  She needs this job to send her kids to college.  She worries that if she loses this job, she won’t find another one.   But she struggles daily with the pain, the unknown and all that living with chronic illness does to a person.  There are days that she just wants to give up and not face other people and their disappointment in her — or her own.

How do you live with never knowing how you’re going to feel?  Or how you’re going to manage in a situation?

There isn’t a blueprint nor easy tips and if someone tries to sell you that line, ignore it.  But I can tell you from my own experience, it takes:

• vigilant self focus (without self absorption) so you notice what you’re experiencing so you can manage it,
• desire for self discovery and renewal so you continue to be resilient and live with hope,
• patience with yourself and others when you face disappointment.

I’ve also experienced in my work how imperative it is to have someone with whom you can talk.  That person should  challenge you to be more than you thought you could be –  a therapist or a coach.   That’s the best investment you can make in your health.

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At a recent dinner event, our table of 10 were sharing what we do professionally.  When I shared my business, career coach for people living with chronic illness, one person excitedly piped in that she was exploring how to reinvent her career. Another said he’d done it, himself,  five years ago.  I’ve noticed that this has become a hot topic  in just about any group – from young mothers, the unemployed in their 40′s and baby boomers wanting something new.

Why?  My guess is because we can.  Jobs and careers are more fluid these days — for good and for worse.

What’s true for the healthy people is even more true for those of us  with chronic illness.  I’d bet that if that dinner table was made up of people with chronic illness, the number wishing for career change would be closer to 80%.  I’ve seen it in my own coaching practice.

Some people living with illness are able to redefine how they work in their jobs and don’t need a big move.  But for many, as illness becomes more debilitating, the job they’ve been doing becomes correspondingly increasingly more difficult.

Which is the time you start to think, “I can’t keep doing this. I’ve got to leave this job?”

Do you imagine that if only you could find another job, you’d have a clean slate where they don’t know you and don’t resent your lowered performance?   But how likely is it that you’ll repeat the same story?  Maybe you can convince yourself you just need a clean slate– and the time and energy to look for a new job or figure out a new career.

Then you realize you can’t afford to be unemployed.  Even if you have some savings, you know how hard it is to find a new job, especially if it’s not the work you’ve got experience in doing.  So, you give up and keep doing what you’re dong, hoping you don’t get fired — and you don’t lose your mind from the stress this is causing you.

But there is another choice.  You can choose to take what energy you can muster to do this  strategically. Yes, it will take planning and resources.  It means that you have to carve time out in your life – both personally and at your current job.  I know that it can feel too hard – you don’t have it to give.  But do you?

Ask yourself:

1. What keeps me in  my current job?
2. Do I like/enjoy my current job – why or why not?
3. What don’t I like about this job and is there any way to change that here?

What did you learn about yourself? If you’re thinking it’s time to do something else, then you might start with a simple career analysis:

1. List your likes /dislikes regarding the tasks and jobs you’ve held thus far.
2. List your interests and what you value in an organization.
3. List your job, task or organizational dislikes

List Your Strengths:

1. What are my skills (the specific things you’ve learned how to do)?
2. What am I competent at (what makes you special at your job)?
3. What do I shine in – excel in?

Now, list your symptoms and their impact on what you can and can’t do.

1. What disabling symptoms do you experience?
2. How does each symptom  impact your performance at work?  If it doesn’t impact you at work, write NA.
3. To what degree does each symptom impact your performance and if possible, specify how often this happens.  You might differentiate those that are constant and those that are periodic symptoms.

What did you learn about yourself?  Create a snapshot of what you’ve learned.
Write it down.  If you find that this energizes you to do more, then find the resources you need to help you.  From what you’ve written, what do you believe is possible and what is not?  If you decide to work with a career coach, you’ve got some valuable information to start with.

The above steps are the critical foundation to the transition process.  Briefly the next steps are generally:

1. Take what you’ve learned about yourself and research what jobs/careers are available to you?  Use online resources, the library and talk to colleagues and friends, telling them what you’ve learned.
2. Once you’ve come up with a few solid ideas, research the job market to find out what it would take to get such a job.  One really terrific and comprehensive online resource is my fellow blogger, Job-Hunt.org . You want to learn what you need to know.   My workbook, Keep Working with Chronic Illness, assessments and more, including goal setting,  networking and interviewing  specifically focusing on issues with chronic illness.  But there are many similar assessments and resources online.
3. Your resume from a decade ago needs to be revised to display your strengths and speak to your new market.  A resume writer (there are many great ones in the collective list below)  is particularly worth investing in when you’ve got an unusual resume – either due to employment gaps or changes.

I’ve seen first hand how critical it is to get help around illness and life changes.

As Tom Landry, a famous football coach said, “A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be.” Find the help that will work for you and get it if career change is what  you need.

Fellow Career Collective Bloggers thoughts on this topic:

• Are You Ready for a Career Change? @Debra Wheatman
• Changing Careers? Ask yourself these questions. @erinkennedycprw
• Changing Careers: Not for the Fainthearted, @GayleHoward
• Career Change Isn’t An Exact Science, @careersherpa
• The 10-Step Plan to Career Change, @KatCareerGal
• When it’s Time to Recycle Your Career, @WalterAkana
• Best Career Change Advice: Target & Plan, @JobHuntOrg
• How social media can help you change careers, @keppie_careers
• Expat Careers: You Are Not Your Job Title, @expatcoachmegan
• Changing The Direction Of Your Career, @EliteResumes @MartinBuckland
• Career Changer: Can You Quell Bottom-line Ache? @ValueIntoWords
• Top 3 + 1 Tips for Making a Successful Career Change, @KCCareerCoach
• Changing Careers: Look Before You Leap, @barbarasafani
• 10 Commandments for Career Changers, @LaurieBerenson

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Does this sound like you? Living with chronic illness and thinking about changing your career.  But haven’t a clue how or where to start.

Then my article,  “Career planning when you live with chronic illness”,  is what you need to get started. ( No surprise here – I outline  a strategic approach.)  It’s published  in this week’s  Job-hunt.org, ‘the web’s best job resource’  where I’m delighted to be a  monthly columnist.

But maybe you’re in a different spot. Maybe you’re currently employed but  wondering if this is the time to bail out of the workforce.  Are you managing people, reading about Steve Jobs and thinking, “Hey, why can’t I cut back the way he can?”  Vickie Elmer, columnist at glassdoor.com and The Washington Post, asked me my thoughts,  How to Know When Time Off Is a Good Thing”.   As usual, I had a lot to say.

I wrote more on this subject in my own post, Keep Filling the Bank. You don’t have to be a world class conductor to get the support you need but it helps to be liked and to add value!

All of this – - career strategy, when and how to talk about illness – - and more  in my career guidebook series, Career Thrive When You Live With Chronic Illness and my workbook, Keep Working With Chronic illness .  Check out these resources as well before you make any big moves.

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During  a  “check-in”  with a client about his coaching engagement,  he told me things were  going well after 3 months.  He described changes and how this was helping.

But then he said that this wasn’t what he’d expected.  “When we started, I assumed that within a few months, you’d do several career assessments, suggest a career path  and give me a plan of action.”

Delighted to hear honest feedback,  I didn’t share my surprise.   We’d agreed on specific specific outcomes for the engagement based on his self-assessment and a conversation and I had written it in a memo to him.    Nothing I’d said or written indicated that I’d suggest career paths and give him a plan.

His expectation –  that someone else would figure out what he needs and how to get there –   seems  fairly typical of how most people choose a job or create a career path.

If this has been your approach, how is it going?  Do you think you’re  taking charge of your life?

By the time I turned 40 years old, I’d held 6  jobs in 3 different industries.   I typically found jobs through the want ads. Once I developed multiple sclerosis, I changed jobs when I found my symptoms were getting in the way of high performance.

Over that 20 year period, I didn’t have a clue  of what I liked to do or what I was good at.  Even after developing a disabling disease, I didn’t have a good feel for what I could manage.  I never had a plan nor any ideas about what influenced my success.

But my40th birthday was a “wake up” moment. Very sick with two autoimmune diseases,  I realized that I had to approach work differently if I was going to be able to continue.   Since that time, I’ve come to believe that living with illness and continuing to create a sense of success in your career  relies on  resilience.

For most of us, developing resilience can take time and effort.  But the results make it worth it.  When you live with chronic illness,  resilience is the Foundation in developing a sustainable career path and a sustainable life.

I’ll describe what I call the building blocks for Resilience.

• Chronic illness means that frequent and unpredictable health changes.  This impacts the way you can be in the world which influences how others respond to you. You might have been hired for your engaging wit or your bubbly personality.  But at the end of the day, performance is what counts.  And your capacity to adapt to changing events will make a remarkable difference in your reliability.  This is one building block for resilience.

• Chronic illness takes up space in your  life and it’s easy to resent it. You have a choice about how much space i takesand what you want that to look like.  Ignoring  symptoms can lead you to misjudge what you can do.  You disappoint everyone – - and especially yourself.  If you let illness define you, you can become paralyzed with fear, consumed with narcissistic pity or just plain boring.  Living successfully with any of life’s challenges requires creating a space for that challenge to exist reasonably without letting it take over.  Developing the capacity for living with illness is another building block in your Foundation.

• Finally, it’s too easy for any of us, healthy or not, to let things happen to us rather than create goals and set intentions for ourselves.   But chronic illness creates obstacles that can throw you when you don’t know who you are.   Developing a clear idea of what matters to you, what you like doing and what you can do is a critical building block  in your Foundation.

Resilience relies on a strong and well-developed Foundation.  It’s  necessary to do this before you can figure out what you want to do with your work-life and how to best apply our talents and skills.   With a solid Foundation, you don’t need someone else to tell you what you should do.  You have the tools to figure it out for yourself and the capacity to live with whatever happens along the way.

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My clients primarily live with chronic illness.  For the most part, the challenges they face fall into the same “categories” that healthy people face.  The story and degree of difficulties might shift.  Over the years, I’ve developed some favorite places “go t” places when I’m working with clients  around career transition or career development.

1. Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes Strategies for coping with the difficult, painful, and confusing times in your life,  By William Bridges  – the 25th anniversary edition is out and that tells you how strong this book is. This is often the place I start when working with someone who is going through any kind of difficult shift or loss in their life, not just career.  Clients with illness find that this speaks to them on so many levels and that’s a great starting place to accepting and embracing what has to be done.  Bridges explores what makes change so difficult and offers concrete suggestions.   He has written subsequent books that are also quite good, including Making the Most of Transitions,with Susan Bridges.
2. New Job, New You: A guide to reinventing yourself in a right new career, Alexandra Levit.  This is timely because it speaks to where our society is right now regarding career dreams and the marketplace.  It offers examples and specifics but primarily serves as a motivator that this can be done.  Many of the folks with whom I work have to reinvent themselves (I did!) because their symptoms prevent them from being successful in their jobs.
3. The Right Job, Right Now, the complete toolkit for finding your perfect career, Susan D. Strayer.   It sounds too perfect and it is but there are some solid assessment tools that I use with clients.  This is helpful for the “do-it-yourselfer” who wants to figure it out.
4. I’d Rather Be Working, A Step by Step guide to Financial Self Support for People with Chronic illness, by Gayle Backstrom. Although it’s written in 2002, a lot of the information is still very relevant.
5. Keep Working With Chronic Illness  Workbook, by Rosalind Joffe.  I’ve included this resource because healthy people have told me that they find it useful, too.  I developed this, though, because I couldn’t find a career tool that reflected the challenges and needs of people living with disabling symptoms. Among other things, it includes tools for identifying how symptoms impact your needs and  jobs skills as well as career assessments and job search tools.
6. Resume Writers: I didn’t know that this is a profession, separate from career professionals until recently (twitter actually).  I’d always written my own resume and didn’t realize there were options that would make it more effective.  But more than ever, this is an absolute must.  With the increasing need for the right search terms in a resume, the of qualified people trying to get the same job, a resume is a critical tool to opening doors.   Anyone with  an unusual background, such as career change, job gaps, degree/experience mismatch particularly needs to frame this strategically.  A good resume writer should be able to do this.  Oh – and if you’re wondering where to find the right match for you, we’ve got some great bloggers on this list who can help you.

Career Collective Bloggers:

• If your industry does not participate online, you can lead the way, @Keppie_Careers
• Your Best Job Search Resource? You!, @WalterAkana
• In a Job Search, Knowledge is Power, @barbarasafani
• Jump Start Your Job Search Now!, @resumeservice
• Favourite Resources for Jobseekers, @GayleHoward
• The Best Job Search Tool Ever, @careersherpa
• Find What You Do Best, Know Your Stuff, and Connect, @chandlee
• 27 Recommended Blogs for Entry-Level Job Seekers, @heatherhuhman
• Invaluable Resources for Job Search Success, @heathermundell
• Favorite Social-Media Resources for Job-seekers, @KatCareerGal
• Canadian Resources for Job Seekers, @EliteResumes @MartinBuckland
• A Self-Empowering Job Search Resource, @KCCareerCoach
• Covering your bases: 5 ultra-useful online career resources, @LaurieBerenson
• Favorite resources for Job seekers, @DawnBugni
• Top 3 Resources for Job Seekers to Position Themselves as Experts and Increase their Visibility, @expatcoachmegan
• Time as a Career Resource: How “Not” to Squander It, @ValueIntoWords

• Favorite Internet Resources for Jobseekers, @ErinKennedyCPRW

• The Facts Behind Why LinkUp Is the Most Revolutionary Job Search Engine Available to Job Seekers, @GLHoffman

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If chronic illness impacts your work life, a job interview can feel like a massive hurdle you can’t climb over.  But I’ve seen how much easier this becomes when you normalize your situation.

What’s normal about chronic illness you ask? Nothing, really.  But isn’t there more to you than just this illness?  Here are two examples of what I mean.

Jody,33,  has 3 young children and a husband whose work requires constant traveling.  She also lives with multiple sclerosis (which is relatively mild at this point) and has recently had cancer.  Jody’s current job is very demanding and the organizational culture doesn’t support creating boundaries between job and personal time.  Jody has come to realize that this pace isn’t healthy for her.  She needs a job with  flexible scheduling and clearly defined hours.  She realizes that most likely that means underemployment.

Jody panicked at the thought of interviewing and describing  her reasons for change.  But once she saw that she doesn’t have to talk about illness in an interview,  she felt comfortable.  Although her family’s demands won’t work in her favor, most hiring managers are familiar with the “mommy juggle” and will accept the realities that come with it.   Jody doesn’t have to bring up illness at this stage.  It’s unnecessary because she already has understandable reasons for her choices.

Jim, 58,  plans to take advantage of a different cultural shift.  Severe chronic asthma forced him to leave a good job as a mid level manager in a Fortune 100 a few years ago.   He wants to return to work but understands he needs to be in a physically protected environment.   This has meant reinventing his career self by capitalizing on what he knows and gaining new experiences.  He’s  volunteered extensively for two years in the “green” tech field to learn a new industry and make new contacts.  This  gave him the credibility to get a  part time, short term contract job  in a “green” tech firm.

Like Judy, Jim’s  life situation means that he doesn’t have to give much detail when asked about his unemployment and why he’s changing careers.  It’s not unusual to lose a job at his age in this economy.    Encore careers are becoming accepted and older workers reinventing themselves are the norm.  Now he’s ready to start interviewing for more permanent work in this field.

Both Jim and Judy have looked beyond illness.  They’ve normalized a difficult life situation and seen how they aren’t so different.   To do this, you have to:

• Be willing to take what is available, even if it’s  “underemployment”,  if your goal is to keep working.
• Recognize your skills and  limitations so you can apply for jobs where you can succeed.
• Create  your story that allows you to be truthful about what you want and need without jeopardizing your prospects.

Can you do that?

(Please note: I change the names and details of clients to protect their privacy.)

FYI:  If you’re a mom with chronic illness, Cafe Mom know has a knew discussion board on Mom’s with illness.  I hope they address working moms with illness, too!

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