I never planned this
showing you my journal again
I never planned to be a content creator. Or to write a newsletter to you.
I never planned to outgrow collared shirts buttoned all the way up, after they became my unenforced uniform the last few years.
And I definitely never planned to be an entrepreneur after running on empty for the five years of my psychology PhD.
But life is exciting, and I feel more like myself (I know this is a cliché thing to say, please forgive me and keep reading) than I ever have precisely because I have allowed myself to grow into someone I did not expect. Someone who pushes past my fear to share my creative and perceptive thoughts with the internet.
The fear isn’t gone. But I no longer hide from, or let it delay action.
Look, it’s little Talia
I love this picture of little Talia.
My boldness, expressiveness, and comfort in my body are impossible to miss. I can see the disinhibition that most of us lose along the way—a willingness to drop the calculation of being. To release control over emotional reactions and facial expressions. A willingness to show how I felt, publicly and loudly. To jump into the waves of life you might even say, knowing I could and would fall. Feeling free to just be.
I have a couple friends who make fun of me for my lack of affect. For saying things like “that made me smile” or “I think that’s so funny” instead of, well, just smiling or laughing. This has shifted in the last few years as I have inhabited my body more deeply. Now I’m smiling and laughing in action, not words.
Action, not words. That shift is embodiment.
My collage journals are sending me messages
I’ve been noticing a theme in my collage journals (the last time I showed my collage journal it was quite popular, so here we are again).
It's this drive to do what I love. To pursue what motivates me uniquely, even if the path doesn't make sense to others. To start a movement—not only for myself, but for everyone living with chronic illness—guided by my intuition.
Years ago I had a goal for myself: “To create something from nothing.” And little by little, I experimented. I expanded my capacity to make things that didn't exist yet. Things I wasn't being told to create, unlike the assignments I so diligently followed throughout school. Anything that came entirely from me.
So I started.
I worked my hands, despite the pain in my thumbs, and upcycled jewelry from thrifted and old pieces. I trusted myself to lead when I co-created a mentorship program for college students with chronic illness & disability that reached 150+ individuals and continues to run without me. I channeled difficult emotions into an album of songs and played them for a select group of friends.
And now I’ve created all of ~this~. A community, a newsletter, a business, a new freakin’ awesome course that originated completely from the neurons firing in my very own mind.
There's something delicious about creating because it feels like if you don't channel the energy into tangibility, it will live in your body, nagging at you incessantly. And then. And then! The delectable experience of others engaging with, participating in, consuming, and benefiting from your very own creations. Something that you know was once a minuscule seed and that your hard work watered into bloom. But that nagging is only apparent once you’re already connected to your body. Once you’ve lived in embodiment and self-trust.
It took many years, but that one thought—“to create something from nothing”—has transformed my life.
To create something from nothing
I create from nothing every. single. day. And I’m brave enough to ask to be compensated for my art, my insights, and my expertise. It’s not easy. It not only requires intensive time and energetic resources—which are already on low reserves from being sick—but also a daily battle against my fears and insecurities.
I always say having a chronic health condition is a second job.
Fighting your fears and insecurities to keep showing up to make money from your own creations? That’s another full-time job. And it will knock everything out of you on the daily, or at least the weekly, until you learn how to get the f*** back up and piece yourself, your dignity, and your self-confidence back together.
We’re all tired of ads
I am hyperaware that people with illness are inundated with ads for products and services—some promising inflated outcomes we’d label as simply too good to be true. Because I am also inundated with the same things.
For the last six months I've been sitting with a real heaviness: the discomfort that now I too am selling to the chronic illness community. And I go into a thought spiral about whether I am part of the problem.
But I always end here: I know my intentions wholeheartedly, and they are not to take advantage of suffering people. I KNOW that what I am offering supports people, my people, and I have proof through client feedback and my own experience.
I deserve to be paid for the incredible amount of work I have put into my new course, Believe Your Body. And I am 100% positive that people will benefit from the course. I am not promising a cure; I am not promising “root cause healing;” I am not promising a changed personality, a Lamborghini, and an all-expense paid vacation to the Maldives that I have no intention of delivering.
What I am promising: you will enter a new relationship with your body if you take the the course. And if you read my newsletter, you may have already felt some of those effects.
I am putting myself out there for an offering that—in my heart, and through testimonial—I know works.
So selling myself is harder than refraining from yelling at a doctor who brings up anxiety. But I am grounded in the fact that my motivations are pure, and more than that, they are expansive. My goal is genuine: to support the emotional & physical wellbeing of the chronic illness community.
The truth about building & creating in public
Sometimes, like a normal human, I get wrapped up in the metrics of it all: I worked so hard on that reel, but the algorithm hardly showed it to anyone! Why didn’t more people like and share this post? Will enough people sign up for my course?
But I do believe that who is meant to see my content will. Who is meant to read my writing will. And who is meant to take my Believe Your Body course will. I remind myself that if my newsletter or Instagram post make a difference for even one person it was worth it. Even if they never tell me.
So if you’re seeing this, and feeling a pull—a curiosity that now may be the right time to believe your body and build a loving and communicative relationship with it, I invite you to sign up for the waitlist.
Spots are limited, and I’d love to have you there.
Sending lots of love for joy and healing always <3,
Dr. Talia
P.s. Join 24 others on the waitlist for Believe Your Body: Stop Doubting Your Chronic Illness Symptoms & Reconnect to Self-Trust to be the first to hear when enrollment opens. Happy to answer any questions at drtaliaphd@gmail.com.
More ways to connect with me:
🌻 1:1 Coaching — A space to be supported in moving from fixing yourself toward acceptance, self-trust, and body safety while living with chronic illness.
🌻 My guide, “What I Wish Your Therapist Knew About Chronic Illness” — A resource for purchase that bridges lived experience and clinical care.
You can also find me on Instagram, guiding meditations on Aura Health, and at my website
Some previous posts you may enjoy:
i’m tired of focusing on my health; letting go of the old me; how i find clarity
the urge to create something from nothing is real, I think especially when chronic illness strips away everything else
that makes (at least) two of us - I also never planned on being an entrepreneur. yet, here I am, about to start doing something very similar to you. in fact, I guess I already started, even though the "proper" business is still in "to-be-launched-once-I-finally-get-out-of-this-relentless-continuously-ill-with-something" rut. but that's ok. I have a very similar mindset to you - it will find the people who are meant to find it, when the time is right.
💛