Working With Chronic Illness

This site focuses on giving people with chronic health conditions the strategies, tools and insights they need to thrive in their work and their lives.

Rosalind Joffe

Rosalind Joffe is passionate about coaching people and giving people the tools they need to thrive in their work while living with chronic illness. Rosalind Joffe built on her experience living with chronic illnesses for over 30 years, including multiple sclerosis and ulcerative colitis, when she founded ciCoach.com . This unique career coaching firm is dedicated to helping people with chronic illness who care about their work lives develop the skills they need to succeed. A recognized national expert on chronic illness and its impact on career, Rosalind is a seasoned and certified coach, the co-author of Women, Work and Autoimmune Disease: Keep Working, Girlfriend!, publishes a widely read blog, Working With Chronic Illness and can be found on twitter @WorkWithIllness.

Subscribe to feed

Apr

Comments

Can You Find A New Job With Bad Health?

Posted by Rosalind Joffe in Health

"Can you tell me how I should look for a new job when I've been told that I have to leave my job because of my bad health?"

I'd say that's a tough one, wouldn't you? Esther is angry, feels totally alone and is really scared. Seems understandable to me.

Continue reading →

Feb

Comments

Are you more like Mr. Bates or Mrs. Pattmore?

Posted by Rosalind Joffe in Career

Struggling to stay at your new job while living with chronic health conditions? Struggling to keep your job while living with a chronic health condition? Then you might want to tune into Downton Abbey, Season 1, to see what to do and what to avoid. Maybe they should make a series called, "Working and Living With Chronic Health Problems"? I'm doubtful the scriptwriters set out with this intention but they really nailed it with Mrs. Patmore and Mr. Bates. Let's start with Bates. While interviewing for his new job as Valet to Lord Grantham, he really wants the job. Grantham, who seems eager to...

Continue reading →

Jan

Comments

Are You Acting From Confidence or Fear?

Posted by Rosalind Joffe in Life

A former client sent me a Holiday e-card with a note that she'd lost her job and with it, her family's health insurance. In follow up emails she told me that she was part of a lay off last month, she's been feeling sicker since she's left work and feels lost. She wants to work with me again and thinks it would help as it did before. But she won't do anything that would cost money or wear her down even more physically. She's too afraid to look for a job. Because she's been reading my posts for years, she suggested I write...

marshalling your resources and energy after a job loss

Continue reading →

Oct

Comments

Living with Chronic Illness: Are You Talking?

Posted by Rosalind Joffe in Health

Living with chronic illness means that life's challenges become ... even more challenging. After more than 10 years of coaching people around living with illness and their work life, blogging on this topic, and in my personal experience, I've decided that the basics matter. The basics allow a person to thrive, not just survive. Here are my top 3 thriving skills:1.Communication 2.Communication 3.Communication Yup. It's that important. Let's look at why. First, most illness symptoms are invisible. No one knows what your symptom/health is today/ in this moment-- unless you tell them. And even where some of effects are visible,...

communication skills when you have chronic illness

Continue reading →

Sep

Comments

Time For Your New Career, Join the Boomer Bandwagon

Posted by Rosalind Joffe in Health

Debilitating chronic illness can lead to twisting career turns to accommodate waxing and waning symptoms. Sometimes it means "reinventing yourself" to be able to keep working in some capacity. 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...

looking for a new career with chronic illness

Continue reading →

May

Comments

Is Career Change What You Need?

Posted by Rosalind Joffe in Health

At a recent dinner event, our table of 10 was 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 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 to try something new. Why? My guess is because we can. Jobs and careers are more fluid these days -- for good and for worse. What's...

Continue reading →

Jan

Comments

Can You Meet the Expectations You Set?

Posted by Rosalind Joffe in Health

When I woke in the middle of the night for the 3rd time to go to the bathroom (incontinence again!), I found myself muttering. Of course, the middle of the night is the worst time to think about anything, and I was panicking about what wouldn't get done today. One thing I'm good at is capitalizing on what happens to me and using it in my work. Hence, today's post. It's a new year and you've probably made plenty of useless resolutions. Why not think about this? What can you do to GET RID OF THE SHOULD and FOCUS ON THE CAN...

setting realistic goals and expectations

Continue reading →

Nov

Comments

The Single Trait that Predicts Success - Do You Think You Can?

Posted by Rosalind Joffe in Health

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will. Vince Lombardi Motivation and will power fascinate me. Maybe because I didn't have much of either when I was young and then they each blossomed. Illness in my late 20's was transformational for me. My gut response to devastating disease shaped how I responded to events from that time on. From that dark place -- in which I saw parts of me I didn't know existed -- I was able to create intention. It was an easy...

Continue reading →

Nov

Comments

Thinking for yourself when thinking about work and chronic illness?

Posted by Rosalind Joffe in Health

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...

Continue reading →

Nov

Comments

Walk for MS disclosure

Posted by Rosalind Joffe in Health

Recently, my daughter, Lucy, a legislative aide to a New York City Council Member, contacted another Council member's legislative counsel, Q. When Lucy didn't hear back after a few days, she contacted another member of his office. Not long after, Lucy got an email from Q explaining why he had been unavailable. He had been on a short sick leave because of multiple sclerosis (MS). Would you tell a colleague, whom you don't know well, that you were unavailable because of a chronic illness? I'll bet not. Maybe you're even thinking: "Are you nuts? Why not just sign me up for...

Continue reading →

12 »End

What do you want to know?

Working With Chronic Illness