You don’t get a warning when life is about to change. There’s no moment where everything pauses and gives you time to catch up. No neat beginning, middle and end. For me, it wasn’t one diagnosis. It was a slow build. Things not feeling right, my body doing things I couldn’t explain, appointments, tests, more appointments, and then one label, followed by another, and then another. Multiple sclerosis was one of the first big ones, and I remember thinking that was enough. But it wasn’t.
After that came three heart surgeries. Before I had time to process any of it, more came. Melanoma, leukaemia and lymphoma, with the lymphoma already at stage four. I was also dealing with two blood conditions, including livedo reticularis and mixed cryoglobulinemia. When you say it out loud it sounds huge, but when you are in it, you don’t sit there thinking about how big it is. You deal with what is in front of you. Appointment to appointment, surgery to surgery, treatment to treatment. You keep going because there isn’t really another option.
Life doesn’t pause while all of this is happening. You are still expected to show up, be reliable and keep up. On the outside you can look fine, so people assume you are fine, but inside everything has shifted. Fatigue has been one of the biggest things for me, and I don’t mean tired. I mean full body shutdown, brain not working properly, not being able to string a sentence together or take in new information. Sitting there knowing you are capable but not being able to access it the way you used to. That messes with your head, because it is not visible. People don’t see it. They just see you not keeping up.
Finding a new ‘you’
There is also a mental load that comes with that, constantly trying to keep up with a version of yourself that no longer exists in the same way. Remembering how you used to think, how quickly you could process things, how much you could take on without even thinking about it, and then having to adjust to a completely different pace. That adjustment is not just physical, it is emotional. It is letting go of the old version of you while still figuring out who you are now.
There came a point where it was taken out of my hands. My doctor told me I couldn’t work anymore. Not dramatic, not loud, just very final. For someone like me, that hit hard. Work wasn’t just about income, it was about purpose, identity and contribution. Being told I couldn’t do that in the way I always had forced me to look at what life was going to look like moving forward.
My kids are adults now, and I have grandchildren, which is something I never take for granted. That stage of life shifts things. You’re not raising young kids anymore, but you still want to show up, still want to be present, still want a life that feels meaningful.
Even though my kids are grown, being a mum doesn’t stop, it just changes. Being a nanny is no different. There is still that drive to be present, to show up, to be someone they can rely on. Chronic illness doesn’t take that away, but it does change how it looks. There are still days where my body doesn’t cooperate and my energy isn’t where I want it to be, but I’ve learnt that being present doesn’t always mean doing more, sometimes it just means being there and being fully there in that moment.
I wasn’t ready to sit still and just exist, and I knew that if I did, it would impact me mentally just as much as physically.
So I found another way, and for me that started with art. It wasn’t a business and it wasn’t a plan. It was something to fill my days and give me a sense of purpose when everything else felt like it had been taken off me. It was a hobby, something quiet that I could do at my own pace without pressure. Then I sold my first piece for three hundred dollars. That moment shifted something in me. It made me realise this could be more than just something to pass the time. Then I started winning a few awards, and that was when it really clicked. This wasn’t just something I did, it was something I could build. It became my future.
From there everything started to evolve. Not overnight and not perfectly, but steadily. I stopped trying to force myself into a version of life that clearly wasn’t working and started building one that did. That is where I started to really understand what ‘moxie’ meant for me. Not the word people throw around, but the lived version. Backing yourself when things don’t make sense, adjusting when the plan falls apart and continuing anyway.
What started as art grew into more. I now own five businesses, and I stand on stages as a keynote speaker sharing what this has actually looked like behind the scenes. My audiences walk away with real tools, real perspective and the understanding that they don’t have to wait for things to be perfect to move forward. I speak about moxie the way I live it: Mindset, Ownership, Execution, Inner strength and Energy, not as theory, but as something you build in real time and actually use. One of those businesses is Morpheus Publishing, where I help people share their stories, particularly those who have faced adversity and never thought their voice mattered. That work is deeply personal to me because I know what it is like to feel like your story is being written for you. Through Morpheus, I get to help people take that back and turn their experiences into something powerful. Watching someone go from doubting themselves to holding their own book in their hands is something I will never get tired of.
None of this came from a perfect plan. It came from adapting, backing myself and building something that works with my life, not against it. It came from being willing to try, to fail, to adjust and to keep going even when things didn’t look the way I thought they would.
Dangers of toxic positivity
Something I feel strongly about is toxic positivity. I have had it said to me more times than I can count. Just stay positive, you’ve got this, at least it’s not worse. I know people mean well, but it doesn’t help. What it actually does is shut down honesty. The moment you say ‘this is hard’ or ‘I am struggling’, it gets brushed over with something that sounds nice but doesn’t acknowledge what is really going on. It creates this pressure to perform wellness, to look like you are coping even when you are not. It leaves no room for the hard days, no room for frustration, anger or grief. And those things are part of the reality of living with chronic illness. Ignoring them doesn’t make them go away, it just makes people feel more alone in it.
We are expected to hold it all together, keep smiling and keep showing up without making anyone uncomfortable with our reality. But the truth is, it is hard. Living with chronic illness is hard. Rebuilding your life around it is hard. Saying that out loud should not be a problem.
You can be grateful and still be struggling, you can be strong and still be exhausted, you can be resilient and still have days where you feel like you are running on empty. That does not make you negative, it makes you honest.
For me, strength is not about pretending everything is fine. It is about being real about what is not fine and continuing anyway. That is moxie. Not the polished version people like to talk about, but the real version where you are tired, frustrated and sometimes overwhelmed, and you still show up in whatever way you can that day.
Living like this has changed me. I don’t chase the same things anymore and I don’t measure success the same way. I don’t try to fit into spaces that don’t fit me. I build around what works, around my capacity, my energy and what actually matters. Some days, that looks productive and other days it looks like rest, and I have learnt that both are necessary.
And if there is one thing I would say: You don’t have to do it the way everyone else is doing it. You don’t have to force yourself into something that doesn’t fit, and you don’t have to pretend everything is okay when it is not. You are allowed to be honest, you are allowed to build something different and do it in a way that works for you!
Justine Martin is the author of Moxie: How I learnt to Harden the F*ck Up (Morpheus Publishing).
