They say you have nothing if not for your health. If health is the foundation to happiness, what happens when you’ve lost life’s most valuable asset?

Welcome. I’m Lauren and I’m trying to figure that out. I’m also a chronic achiever living with a chronic illness—a chronically ill overachiever, if you will—a little lost and stuck in the middle of what might be some sort of my own recovery.

If you’re here because your body betrayed you by disrupting your plans, your pace, and your peace — my dear friend, you are not alone. If you’re an overachiever struggling to find purpose and fulfilment in your life — I see you. If you’re a chronic achiever living with a chronic illness — I invite you to join me on this journey.

Becoming Type C is a space for living with chronic illness after a life familiar with winning. It’s written from the perspective of someone who learned to measure their own worth through productivity, ambition, and success — until illness changed the rules.

I didn’t stop because I wanted to. I stopped because my body did. This isn’t a story about recovery in the traditional sense. I am aware that I will never return to who I was before (and, perhaps, I don’t want to but we’ll explore that later on). This is about learning how to cope with grief, accept diagnosis, embrace a slower pace, sit through the discomfort of uncertainty, and live within limits and according to one’s values. Mostly, this is about discovering who I am when productivity is no longer available as a form of currency, busyness can longer be used as a mask to feel virtuous, motivation is no longer dependent on the promise of accomplishment, success is no longer attained through discipline alone, and achievement can no longer be used to measure my worth.

Here, I write about perfectionism, adversity, loss of identity, navigating disability in a world obsessed with hustle culture, and grieving a life before illness while quietly struggling to build a new one — because there is no other option. The objective isn’t to offer solutions but to offer empathy, community, advocacy, philosophy, reflection, and (maybe) a bit of inspiration along the way. My intention is to give you a soft place to land in the loneliness of chronic illness — a cozy space online to better cope with a not-so-cozy reality. My open letter to you consists of honest, insightful blog posts where I aim to challenge modern achievement culture through the lens of whom it harms most.

In our world, hope can live in the presence of grief. Optimism and pessimism can co-exist. Despair can be present with gratitude. Support can be found in loneliness. Courage can be found through failure. Purpose is often found in the unknown. Living with chronic illness is a full-time job that none of of asked for. It is a lifetime of trying to master a balancing act without a guidebook. Through our stories and experiences (which I invite you to share), resilience and achievement live in the form of truth, vulnerability, and authenticity.

This space exists for the uncomfortable in-between: not for who we were, not for where we’re going, and definitely not for what we thought we were supposed to be — but who we are now. I’m not here to tell you that everything will be okay (you probably have other people in your life who tell you that) and I will never tell you to work harder (because I know your inner voice is already screaming this). Instead, I am the one holding your hand, saying “maybe we should rest today”. I’m not only giving you my permission to rest—I am challenging you to try it.

Perhaps we’ll discover that the most important form of growth—what we call meaningful growth—can only be “achieved” once we finally make time for rest.