Welcome to the Phoenix Helix podcast dedicated to maximizing autoimmune health through the paleo diet and lifestyle.

While there is no cure for autoimmune disease, the choices we make every day can have a powerful impact on how we feel.

I'm Eileen Laird, your host from PhoenixHelix.com, and I reduced my rheumatoid arthritis pain by 95%, which took me from a life of excruciating pain and disability back to a full and beautiful life.

A short disclaimer, I'm neither a doctor nor a nutritionist and the opinions expressed here are personal.

Always consult with your health care team before making medical decisions. Now let's get

on to the show. Our topic today is grief and autoimmune disease, and our guest is Carrie Jeffrey.

Living with chronic illness is hard.

Even when you're empowered to do everything you can to reclaim your health and live a vital and beautiful life, that's not the same as a cure. And it's

natural to grieve the life we had before, when life seemed easier, when our bodies seemed more

predictable. And eventually, I do believe it's possible to reach a place of gratitude for some of the

gifts that come with life's greatest challenges like autoimmune disease. We often

discover strength we never knew we had. We find a community of like-minded souls. And it's often a wake-up

call to what's truly important in our lives. But that doesn't mean we don't also have moments of

fear, anger, sadness, guilt, and self-doubt along the way,

or repeatedly. So we are emotional beings. And today's podcast is all about navigating these feelings

as they arise and providing a roadmap for processing the grief of an autoimmune diagnosis.

Carrie Jeffrey is the blogger behind emotional autoimmunity, where she writes about the emotional side of life with autoimmune disease.

She is also a counselor, hypnotherapist, and life coach, and she has autoimmune disease herself.

So she understands this topic of grief both personally and professionally.

And she recently wrote a short e-book called Moving Through the Grief of Chronic Illness.

And I have had listeners request this as a podcast topic.

And when I saw that e-book, I contacted Carrie right away and welcomed her back onto the podcast.

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