Welcome to the broad experience, the show about women, the workplace, and success. I'm Ashley Milthight.

This time, working with an illness. We have a stereotype of women is weak or weaker. So I think that

when you have a chronic illness and you're sitting there thinking like, oh, I am weaker than my

male colleagues. I do have more trouble with this. I think that that part wrinkles in a way that

would be very different than it would be for men. And how or whether to let the office know about it?

Two people at work asked me, oh, what happened to your arm? And I lied. I said, oh, I just fell and sprained my wrist.

That's what I really started thinking more about, okay, how am I going to handle this at work? What am I

going to say? Coming up, we look at our attitudes to health and strength at work.

Okay. health and strength at work. Mary Ratliff lives in Virginia just outside Washington, D.C. She was one of several

listeners who wrote to me after the show I did on working with Asperger's. I was interested

to know if some of you would be interested to hear more about people with some kind of health

condition and whether you'd like to contribute. And part of the reason I wanted to talk to Mary

was because of something she said about being in a creative field and having a chronic condition.

She's a documentary filmmaker, but like so many filmmakers,

that's not how she earns all of her living.

She handles social media for a Washington think tank 15 hours a week,

and she does various other gigs.

And her condition isn't the kind of illness

where people offer you immediate sympathy or understanding.

We spoke on Skype.

When you wrote to me, you said you had a sleep disorder.

Yeah.

...