Hello! Thank you for joining me for our second Sunday together. I’m so glad you’re here. Last Sunday’s letter was an introduction, my way of telling you a bit about who’s writing to you and why, so today is the first time we’re giving chronic illness a seat at the table. As much as I’ve been looking forward to writing this particular letter, I’ll admit I was dreading it a little, too. That’s because there’s a fair amount in it I’d have been perfectly happy to keep to myself, since it doesn’t exactly show me at my most sensible or my most practical. However, I’ve come to believe there are more lessons in my mistakes than in the times I happened to get it right. So I wrote this one for the woman who gets to the end of her day and goes back over it like a report card, holding herself to a standard she’d never dream of applying to a friend, and marking down every last thing she didn’t manage to complete. I was her for the better part of a decade, until I decided something needed to change. What I’d like to tell you about is how I got from there to here, and how I eventually learned to show myself the same patience I’d always had for everybody else in my life. I’ll leave the rest for you to discover as you read it, though I will say that Charles has a role in it, and so does a closet I should have had the good sense to leave alone. This week’s letter is below, and I hope you find it good company today. A gentle note: this week’s letter touches on surgery, a serious hospital infection and sepsis, and the months I needed help with even the most basic care. Please read it whenever the time feels right. There’s no rush. Warmly, Kelly Life Season Letters