Rebuilding Strength with Chronic Illness with Sharon Jones - S2 E26

Stacy Griffin:  Welcome back to Autoimmune Adventures. Today we're talking about one of our favorite topics, resilience. When you're living with chronic illness, resilience isn't just about being strong. It's about learning and adapting and finding new ways to thrive. Our guest today, Sharon Jones, knows that firsthand. She lives with ankylosing spondylitis, a rare autoimmune disease. And through her own journey with chronic pain and healing, she's become a powerful resilience coach, helping others rebuild and reclaim their strength. Sharon, welcome to Autoimmune Adventures. We're so glad you're here.

Sharon Jones:  Thank you for having me, ladies.

Alysia Thomas:  Yeah. So, we want to talk for just a second about how we look at chronic illness, living with chronic illness as a mountain climb, climbing a mountain. And some days we are making steady progress and other days we have to stop and catch our breath, and we're kind of figuring out our next step. Um, what mountains are you on right now? Whether you are still climbing or you have just reached a new milestone.

Sharon Jones:  Uh, I'd say at the moment I'm currently still climbing a bit of a mountain from my surgery or my five surgeries last year. 

Alysia Thomas:  Oh.

Sharon Jones:  I had um a spinal cord stimulator inserted last year. So, I'm still climbing that mountain of getting used to having a machine inside my body. Um, a battery pack that sits in my bottom and having to charge myself every second day. It's um. it's been a very. very strange journey, because not knowing how this the machine will work and how it will affect my body. Um, so I have the battery pack in my bottom and or the top of my bottom and then the cables are attached to my spinal cord and they come all the way up and then go back the way around and a plate is screwed onto my vertebrae where the cables actually sit as well. And just making sure that I monitor myself. I have a remote control that I have to carry with me and that puts my electrodes up and down depending on my pain, but it's been a a lifesaver, I can say, with having it because it's reduced my pain. I can't take opioids or codine, so my toleration to drugs is just not good at all. So, this was the next step of having something to trial.

And I did the trial and it was amazing. So, when they removed it, I was devastated cuz I had this massive flare. And then I had to wait 6 months for my body to reheal and the wounds to close for them to go back in and redo the whole surgery again, and implant it correctly. So I'd say my mountain I'm climbing is that one. Just adjusting my body, myself and my mindset to having something inside me that's a foreign body and shouldn't really be there. And especially when I go overseas, when I fly, because that's a big when I go I can't go through the machines and certain X-ray machines and things. Um, even going shopping I set the alarms off now which is quite funny because I'll walk out and they say you have nothing and I'm going I don't have anything. It's in my body. I have a machine and they just look at me go okay you can go. So that's probably my mountain I'm still climbing. Just slow and steady, just readjusting and getting to understand how it works in my body.

And at the moment, it's not working as well as we hoped. So, I'm looking at going back in for another surgery to reassess the machine and maybe remove the cables and adjust them slightly, because the cables have moved slightly to the right and they're impinging slightly. So, they've they've migrated too far into the skull. So they need to be pulled back down.

Alysia Thomas:  Oh,

Sharon Jones:  Um but that's okay. It's just another journey and it's just another something different to go through. So, so yeah, my journey at the moment is the spinal cord stimulator and living with that and adjusting and just slow and steady.

Alysia Thomas:  So was that surgery, was this device for the ankylosing spondilitis?

Sharon Jones:  It's for chronic pain. So, anybody with chronic pain can have a spinal cord stimulator because they can place it anywhere within your body to assist with the pain.

Alysia Thomas:  Okay.  

Sharon Jones:  Um, there's a lot of people with ankylosing spondilitis that do have it um inserted for trial. Sometimes it doesn't work. A friend of mine's got fibromyalgia. She's got one inserted and swears by it. So, yeah.

Alysia Thomas:  That's fascinating. I have not heard of this before. I've never heard of that.

Sharon Jones:  Okay.

Alysia Thomas:  That's really fascinating to me. Sounds a little terrifying, but also what an amazing advance in medical technology.

Sharon Jones:  It's, it's bizarre. I just would not think that I would get the relief I've got from it because when I researched it and they told me about it, I was like, "Oh, I don't know." Um, and then I did a lot of research um, through America. I was like, "Oh, okay. This is a really big thing. It's very, so, okay, I'll try this. See how we go. My week trial was amazing. Like, I just couldn't believe I sat up in bed in the morning. Was like, "Oh, I've got no pain. I can step out of bed. I can stand up tall. I'm not hunched over." It was, yeah, it was really amazing. It was one of them mind over matter. Is it really in my head? Is this really happening? So yeah, it's it's been a life-changer for me for sure.

Alysia Thomas:  Wow.

Stacy Griffin:  I am really happy to hear that you are finding some relief, because I know chronic pain... the consistent weight that it brings on your life is is overwhelming. So, I'm going to have you explain what ankylosing spondylitis is because I think a lot of our um, followers aren't going to necessarily have a clear understanding of it.

Sharon Jones:  Yes, ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is a rare autoimmune disease, and it's, we carry the gene the HL27 gene and some people can carry it and not have the disease, and what it does is our white cells when we're in bed, the white cells supposed to heal your body. Our white cells attack our body and they attack our organs. So when we're sleeping, the body's not healing, it's being attacked. And when I wake up in the morning, I feel like I've been hit by a big truck because my whole body is just sore. It's an inflam, it's an inflammatory disease as well. So your body is constantly inflamed. Your muscles, your everything's inflamed. And it's more about the AS goes through the system and it fuses your bones together and then the bones crumble eventually and then it affects your organs. So it slowly kills off the organs and it attacks you know all your main organs including your eyes.

So it's a slow degenerative disease where there's no cure. And there is biologics that we can use whether they be tablets or injections to try and slow the progress of disease and reduce the inflammation. But it doesn't always work. So it's more about the inflammatory disease, and then it just slowly is affecting the body and just impacting on the bones and then they just crumble, and then fusions are required. Um so I've had spinal fusion in my C456.  So, this is all fused. I have a cage in here holding my neck together. So that's fused, caged, and it's got pin and plates all around it to keep it all together. Um, and then we we regularly have MRIs to make sure to see how everything's going with the body because to make sure how the AS joints and everything because they predominantly say it affects the spine, but that's not necessarily true cuz mine my whole my whole um chest is now fused. So all this is all fused together. So my breathing capacity is limited, and now my lungs are being compressed because my sternum's all fused together and then my pelvis is full of holes, because it's just slowly crumbling and...

Alysia Thomas:  Wow.

Sharon Jones:  I've had one knee surgery um to try and protect the knee. I need to have knee replacements and hip replacements which we're just waiting. So, it's just a degenerative disease where the bones crumble, they fuse, they crumble, and then we end up in a wheelchair whenever that will happen. 

Alysia Thomas:  That sounds incredibly painful.

Sharon Jones:  Um, it was absolutely painful. It's it's a very painful disease and people unfortunately look at us as normal people with autoimmune diseases. And I have a disability parking sticker, and I use it on my bad days. And I've been abused and screamed at and yelled at by males, not females, by males telling me there's nothing wrong with me and how dare I abuse this system. Um, it's a very painful disease and it's something that we block out that pain. And I didn't realize how much pain I actually was in until I had the stimulator inserted, and realized how much that did take from me.

Alysia Thomas:  Mhm.

Sharon Jones:  Um, so it's a whole new world of living. Um, because when I, before I got diagnosed, my doctor kept telling me it was ladies issues. Oh, it's just your periods. It's you need a hysterectomy. It's this. Oh, it's this. And it's like, no, it's there's something not right with me. And it was only that my friend took me to her doctors, because I was full of bruising and he thought I had leukemia, and he called me the next day and said, "I'm really sorry." He said, "You don't have leukemia. You have ankylosing spondilitis, and there is no cure, and I don't know what to do for you."

But he was the best doctor that I had because it took him 20 minutes of seeing me to diagnose me with something whereas my previous GP had seen me forever and just kept telling me just to go away. And I did have a hysterectomy and that didn't stop my pain.

Alysia Thomas:  We all have stories like that. As women especially, we are dismissed often by medical professionals, and um we get gaslit and dismissed and ignored and talked down to and sometimes it is a long, painful, miserable journey to get a diagnosis.

Sharon Jones:  Yes.

Alysia Thomas:  So, you're not alone in that experience, because we've all been there as well.

Sharon Jones:  Yeah, absolutely.

Alysia Thomas:  So, I'm sorry you had to experience that.

Stacy Griffin:  And I, we're both very sorry you had to experience that. It, I think the reason we like to talk about resilience on our podcast is because it's a necessary trait you have to have when you have autoimmune disease. You have to learn to be resilient, which brings me to my next question. So, obviously, you've learned resilience, because you've had no choice. Life forced that on you.

Sharon Jones:  Yes.

Stacy Griffin:  So, when did you decide to make that your work and become a resilience coach?

Sharon Jones:  Um, I've been coaching for a long time, but I decided last year to become a resilience coach after my five surgeries and realizing that, hey, I'm still here. I'm still positive. I am still moving forward. I was still working in my other business. And even though I'd still coaching people within disabilities, I felt like there was something missing. So last year I decided that I was going to do resilience coaching and focus more around autoimmune conditions and work with people around their autoimmune and to show them that as much as we all suffer, we're all here to support each other, no matter the outcome. It doesn't matter if we're having a bad day, and we can't do that one thing and we just feel really really low.  It doesn't matter. So I decided last year I was going to focus and put more into resilience and autoimmune, because that's where my passion is, because that's what we live every day.

Alysia Thomas:  You are doing a very important work. Uh, we always talk on this podcast about how important it is to have support, and we as sisters have each other.

Sharon Jones:  Mhm.

Alysia Thomas:  Um, and we're very blessed. But we started this podcast because we know not everybody has support.

Sharon Jones:  Yeah.

Alysia Thomas:  Not everybody has that. And you are, I am certain, a huge piece of, of your, your patients, clients, whatever you would like to call them, you're part of their team. You're and um, they we need this kind of stuff. We really need people because not everybody knows, like it's not resilience is not something that you are naturally gifted with, usually you you have to learn it. You have to learn it and it's not easy and you have learned from your own experience.

Sharon Jones:  Mhm.

Alysia Thomas:  So I think that that is it's very inspiring that you are doing that. So next question would then be looking back what are some of the biggest mindset shifts or lifestyle shifts that you used to help you move forward from simply surviving to actually living with this diagnosis?

Sharon Jones:  I think for me the big one was that I always pushed myself, and I'm a perfectionist. So I realized that I don't have to be perfect, and I don't have to push myself. And if I don't get everything done today, it doesn't matter. If I just get out of bed today, have a shower, and put my clothes on. It doesn't matter, because I used to push myself so much and so hard. And I was really hard on myself. And I think that was that comes from a trait from my childhood, because I didn't have the best childhood. So I always pushed myself to be better and be perfect. And then that way I wouldn't be in trouble and I'd be okay and I would survive. And I think just sitting there and realizing one day that hey, it's okay to not be okay.  

And I just sat there and just thought, I'm fine the way I am. It doesn't matter. And if people see me for who I am, does that really matter? Because this is who I am. And I think we put that mask on at times when we're not okay. Whereas now, every day I'm quite open and happy to say to people, "I'm actually not having a good day, but I'm here. I'm showing up and I'll just do what I can do." So, the resilience for me was just stepping out of my shell and realizing it's okay to not be okay. And you can make yourself a coffee and sit there all day or go back to bed. It doesn't matter. There's another day tomorrow.

We can move forward. It's not about pushing each other to get the results on the day. If we can't do it, then we can't do it. And that's fine, too. And it's just having the support. I used to push people away because I've never had the support. And now I let people in and I let them support me. And that's hard. It's hard for me to do even after surgery last year. My friends were, "Let's come over, you know, let's make you some meals."

"So, no, no, no. I'm fine. I'm fine." And then I was like, "No, you can come over. Come and make me a meal. Come and help my husband out." You know, it was I realized that's fine. That's what friends do. That's what support is. It's what family do. and just lowering my guard. That was a big thing for me was lowering my guard and letting people in. So, I think I've learned, excuse me, I think I've learned so much with my ankylosing spondilitis and how I've managed it to now it's more about it's here and I live with it and I don't let it manage me anymore. I live with it and we are one together and that's how it is. So every day is a day that we live together. I'm not managing it anymore. It's not managing me. We're just working together.

Stacy Griffin:  I really like that. I was going to ask you how you help people rebuild their resilience, but I think you really covered that nicely. Um, I think that if people apply what you did in practice, then they are going to do that. But are there any other tips that you'd like to share for people who are having burnout or self-doubt that they could use to help them rebuild their resilience?

Sharon Jones:  Absolutely. The burnout and the self-doubt is a horrendous one. And for them, I would say, "Just sit down and take a breath and have a look around you and just see what you've got, and just take that time," because we, we all should take the time. Um, sometimes we don't. And it's not about pushing through. It's just take the time and then move forward. As I say, even if it's just getting out of bed in the morning, that's fine. You've achieved something today. It doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be big.

We don't need to achieve everything in one day, in one hour. Just take that breath and just do some slow breathing. Put some nice light music on. I always help find that that helps me and my other peop, ladies when they call me if they're having a moment and we put that music on and we just do that deep breath, and we breathe in and we breathe out and then we just say, "What are we thankful for today?," and that's "I'm thankful I'm out of bed today." I'm thankful that the sun's shining. Go and sit in the sun. Just take 10 minutes. It's just all about just taking that time out and getting out of our own heads because we're in our own heads thinking what if? What should I do? How can I do this? What if this doesn't work? Let's just do one step at a time and write that list. What do we want to achieve today? And put three things on that list. And if you don't achieve three of them, it doesn't matter. Go back tomorrow and do the second and then the third.

Alysia Thomas:  I, that's, it sounds like a uh mindfulness combined with self-compassion, right?

Sharon Jones:  Yes.

Alysia Thomas:  So, I, I really love it.

Sharon Jones:  Yeah. Absolutely.

Alysia Thomas:  Sounds like a lot of the things you were saying sound like you did a lot of work to develop self-compassion. And so I know that that's something many of us struggle with, especially uh with autoimmune disease. It predominantly affects women. Women specifically struggle with self-compassion. And what what role do you think that plays in building resilience? Like what especially when our bodies aren't cooperating with our plans?

Sharon Jones:  Oh, I think for us as women are the expectations we put on ourselves and also the expectations of family members because they don't see what we're going through. They don't understand. So, they can tell you they understand. They can tell, "Oh, you're going to be okay." But they don't know. They don't get that.

Alysia Thomas:  Yeah.

Sharon Jones:  And unless you've got your family members, your partner that fully understands and gets you, then you're sitting there on your own, because you don't feel that that person has your back. And until that person fully understands what you're going through, they don't have your back. as much as they love you, and they say they've got you until they sit down with you and they understand what you're going through. But we have to be open to them. And as women, we're very resilient. We're very strong. And we always put it back on ourselves. It's our role. It's our job. And it's not our job. Nobody said to us it's our job. We took that role on as women, as parents, as wives, partners. We took the role on and we need to hand that back. And it's a hard one. It's a hard one to hand back, especially to your partners, to say, "Hey, I'm actually not okay. Can you do this?"

It took my husband a long time, because I never asked for help. And I would just say to him, "Leave me. It's fine. I'll do it." And it took him a long time to realize I actually wasn't okay. and he actually needed just to step in and say, "No, Sharon, step out of the kitchen. I'm doing dinner today." And even with our children, they would say, "No, Mom. I'm doing the laundry today. You're not doing it." But it took me a long time to be able to go, "Okay, I can do this. I can take that step back and let my family step in." But it's giving yourself that power and that control to go, "It's okay," because we don't need to have that full control. We feel we do but we actually don't. We just need to take that step back and go, "I'm going to give this to you. Can you please do this for me?"

Alysia Thomas:  That's hard for me.  

Sharon Jones:  Yeah.

Alysia Thomas:  So hard.

Sharon Jones:  It's so hard.

Alysia Thomas:  It takes a real level of humility, right? It takes a real level of humility. Uh, and it's interesting because you're you're as all the stuff you're saying and I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, I really need to do that. I need to do that more. But I've been thinking about it and um for me lately I've actually been doing pretty well physically. My struggles lately have been mental and emotional um, struggles. I've, I've hit I've entered perimenopause and it has derailed my life and my mental health and that is where I'm finding and it's so much harder than I can't just say can you do can you do this for me because it's not a physical act I need done. I need to share the mental load, the mental labor that I've been doing my whole life for myself and my family and my home and all of those, you know, my work and all of these things.

Sharon Jones:  Mental.

Alysia Thomas:  And it's it's a little easier for me to pinpoint and say, "Can you please do this in the home with the pets, with whatever, laundry, and cooking?"  

Sharon Jones:  Yeah.

Alysia Thomas:  When it's all in my head and my head is overloaded, that's the hard part for me is, is figuring out how to hand off mental labor. That's hard for me.

Sharon Jones:  Do you journal?

Alysia Thomas:  No, but I know I should.

Sharon Jones:  So, you should I would recommend that you journal because what you've got in here, you need to put on paper. And I say this to a lot of people and a a lot of in my other business. I work with NDIS as well in my other business. So I'm a psychosocial recovery coach with NDIS. So people with mental health, schizophrenia, bipolar and other disabilities.

Alysia Thomas:  Mhm.

Sharon Jones:  So I work a lot with them on journaling because their mental capacity... they can't get it out. They don't know how to express. So, we talk about journaling and I say to them, "On night after you shower, when you're ready for bed, that's when I want you to journal." And that's where I want you to put it out there on the paper. And you don't have to give that to anybody. You can just put it onto the paper.

Alysia Thomas:  Yeah.

Sharon Jones:  And you can burn it, or you can keep it for a while, and you can go back and reread it. But you don't need to show it to anybody unless you want to, unless there's somebody specifically that you want to show, "This is how I'm feeling. These are my emotions," and they're raw but they're you and they're what you need to bring out because it's obviously holding you in and you need to bring that out and you just need to journal. Journal for me has been a massive massive thing for me and it's really given me back, because I know where you're coming from from that mental clarity of the perimenopause and the hole and the head's just everything's in there swimming, and you're just drowning in there. and I journaled and I wrote down and I went back and read some of my things like, "Whoa, like really?" And then other stuff I laughed and thought that's just hilarious that's just but to me it was it was overwhelming and I didn't know what to do with it.  

So, I would suggest journaling just before you go to bed because that's when we seem to offload, and we can just relax and go, "Oh," and you you're just there and you're writing and you're carrying and that will just take some of that off and away from you and remove that weight because as you say, you don't want to give that to anybody because it's yours. But you need to out, you need to get rid of that. You need to offlay it. So you need to put it on paper.

Alysia Thomas:  That's great advice.

Stacy Griffin:  It is great advice. It's the advice I would give as a coach.

Sharon Jones:  Yeah.

Stacy Griffin:  So, um I'm also a coach and I'm a mindset coach. And one of the things that I always like to ask people who are all other coaches is when it comes to mindset and healing, what do you think are the physical benefits of doing things like journaling, meditating, these other things that allow us to enter that space of letting go?

Sharon Jones:  I think they are so important. Mindset for me is a big thing. And the journaling, the meditation, it's, it's huge, because it just gives you that relax. It gives you that flow. You know, I in the mornings I'm up early in the morning and I go out into my office in the backyard before my staff get here, and I will sit there with my music on just quiet and calm and just get me ready for the day. So, it's just a whole momentum for me of a little meditation before I start for the day. But it's so important because for mindset it really, it adjusts us, it resets us and it starts us for the day. And it ends us for the day, too. So, we're going to do journaling at the end of the day. It's going to end your day. It's going to end your day and reset you ready for the next day. It's so important. And I, I do enjoy my meditations and my music.

Um, even a little bit of yoga. I don't move as much as I used to and I would love to move a bit more. Um, but even with a little bit of yoga pilates, it's that movement and it's just that soft gentle movement. It's definitely good for the mind and the soul. Absolutely.

Alysia Thomas:  Shifting gears just a little bit. Um, we wanted to touch back, and we kind of touched on it earlier, but kind of going backward. Um, talking about connecting with others and having that support system. We feel that having a sense of connection is huge and that's why we love to bring guests like yourself on here. Um, we all have our different stories, but when you feel connected to somebody through different validating experiences, that can be really helpful and healing. So for those that are listening that are maybe loved ones that are supporting somebody who is trying to build resilience, somebody who is, you know, those people that are maybe in their, in a circle of someone who is struggling with chronic illness, how do they help that loved one build resilience without overstepping, without unintentionally minimizing that person's experience?  Because I, I know they don't tend intend to do that, but sometimes it can come off that way. Do you have any tips for that?

Sharon Jones:  I, I think I would say that with, well, family members or friends I would just make sure that you remember who you are, and don't take on that curer role, because we don't want them to be our carers. We want them to be our partners, family, friends, and just to for them to be mindful too of who they are. They've come into the family home. So, if it's a friend that's coming in to assist, they're still the friend. They're not the carer. And they need to listen. They need to listen to the person, and they need to acknowledge and not be pushy and not try and take over their lives, because we're still independent. We still have our faculties. We still want to do what we want to do, but we still need the support. So, we don't want somebody coming in being bullshy and bossy and telling us this is how it's going to be.  

This is what you need. It's about asking what do you want? How can I help? They're the main questions that I would be putting forward because then that way we feel validated. We don't feel that somebody's coming in and taking over. I don't want somebody to come into my home and take over. I want them to come in and assist me, and remind me that they're here to help me as a friend and understand what I'm going through and to build that resilience for each other. It's just making sure that they understand each other and working together. Does that make sense?

Stacy Griffin:  I really...yeah, it it makes perfect sense.

Alysia Thomas:  Absolutely makes sense. Yeah.

Stacy Griffin:  Yeah, it really does. That's great. I think that it is a struggle that we all have is, is sometimes we need that help, but we don't ever want to be treated as someone that has to be taken care of. We just want someone who comes in and loves us and helps, just like a good friend, uh, you know, would, even if you just had a simple cold. I think because it is something that doesn't go away, a lot of people turn it into something where it becomes your identity. And one of the things we talk about a lot is that I am not my lupus. It is not mine.

Sharon Jones:  Mhm.

Stacy Griffin:  I have lupus. It's not my lupus.

Sharon Jones:  Yeah.

Stacy Griffin:  And so because of that, that it is important. So, thank you for sharing that. That's really great. Um, one last question before we get into contact for you and those kind of things. We always like to give our listeners something that they can try right away. So, I think you've mentioned journaling, and I think that's a great thing for them to try, but are there any other exercises or reflection practices that you can think of that would be a good example to reframe challenges and maybe give an emotional balance? Something that's simple that they can apply.

Sharon Jones:  I, I think um the mindset and breath is a good one to do.  Um, definitely if they're not feeling into that though, I think more just just taking that time out and just breathing and just listening to their own bodies. Um, and maybe a community group. You know, there's people out there that don't have friends, don't have community, but they can go out there and they can do that catch up and they can do even an online coffee chat just to catch up, because we know how it is. I have a few friends with different autoimmunes and I cannot hear from them for a while and then I text and go, "Hey, what's going on?"

"Oh, no. I'm okay. I'm fine. It's all good. Just taking time out." We're not we're not good. Um, so just having that person just to bounce back off and say, "Are you sure you're okay? What's happening? Can I give you a call?" I would do that sort of thing.

But that um for me it's more about the relaxation and just taking that time and whether it just be one minute or five minutes where I just sit and just do my breathing and just listen to my music. That's a real easy one to do. It's one that gets us out of our heads. It just gets us to realign and it's so easy. And there's lots out there of different exercises that they can do sitting on a chair um, in their office where they can just do that general stretching where they're sitting on the chair. They're not over-using their bodies. Um, there's a few there that you can do where they're just stretching their legs whilst they're sitting on the chair. They're stretching their arms. You know, arms above your shoulders if your arms will go above your shoulders, that sort of stuff.

Um, so just small little things are very important, but it's just about movement too. And just reminding yourself that if you are sitting in an office chair, you know, make sure you set that alarm for every hour just to stand up and walk around your office or go outside and then come back in or make a coffee, and then go back in and sit back down, because we're we tend to get so busy in our own work that we don't make that time to move. And move moving is really important, especially with ankyloing spondylitis. we need to we need to move, otherwise we get stiff and sore worse. So, so yeah, that's a few little ones that I do.

Alysia Thomas:  You've given us some really powerful reminders about self-compassion and, and working on your mindset and the strength that we can build that, the resilience that we can build and it it really is an exercise of practice. Um, but before we close, where can our listeners find you? Where can they connect with your work and learn more about your coaching?

Sharon Jones:  So, contact me on all my socials then, and the links (https://linktr.ee/SharonJonesCoaching ) will be up on the screen for you guys.  

Stacy Griffin:  We're happy you came to join us today. Thank you so much.

Sharon Jones:  Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Stacy Griffin:  And for...Oh, you're very welcome. We're happy that you came.

So, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Autoimmune Adventures. We're so grateful to have you as part of our community. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please like, subscribe, and share it with someone who might need a little encouragement on their own journey. You can find more resources, past episodes, and inspiration at autoimmuneadventures.com.

Remember, you are worthy of joy. Disease does not define your life. You do.

HELPFUL LINKS:

Contact Sharon at https://linktr.ee/SharonJonesCoaching