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A powerful spiritual companion on your journey through the seasons of chronic illness. Living with chronic illness has many challenges, and the journey is not just a physical one.
Tend to Your Spirit is a companion for this emotional and spiritual journey, offering tools to help readers practice self-compassion and self-care. With candor and vulnerability, spiritual leaders Julianne Lepp and Florence Caplow, themselves living with long-term illness, offer insights and practices that can benefit anyone facing the emotional impact of a new or ongoing condition.
Structured metaphorically around the four seasons, each chapter is devoted to a particular aspect of life with chronic illness, such as grief, hope, perseverance, anger, comfort, and finding connection. Interviews and quotes from people with chronic illness of all ages and backgrounds help readers feel less alone. Spiritual resources, including poetry, practices, meditations, playlists, journaling exercises, and discussion questions, offer additional guidance. Small groups can explore these resources together to help foster supportive relationships and community.
Tend to Your Spirit is intended for people at any stage of their journey with chronic illness or chronic pain, to help you live a full, spiritually connected life—a life informed and shaped, but not defeated, by your illness.
List of contents
IntroductionFALL
Chapter 1: Letting Go
Chapter 2: Grief and Compassion
Chapter 3: Anger
Chapter 4: Pain
WINTER
Chapter 5: Fear
Chapter 6: Isolation and Connection
Chapter 7: Strength and Fortitude
Chapter 8: Comfort
SPRING
Chapter 9: Hope
Chapter 10: Change and Unpredictability
Chapter 11: Caregiving
Chapter 12: Shame and Being Enough
SUMMER
Chapter 13: Rest and Sabbath
Chapter 14: Beauty and Bliss
Chapter 15: Play and Joy
Chapter 16: Acceptance
Guided MeditationsUsing This Book in Small GroupsRecommended Books and ResourcesAcknowledgments
About the author
Julianne Lepp has a background in finance, game design, and massage therapy. She lives with rheumatoid arthritis and supports those living with chronic illness in many capacities. She has served as the parish minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, since 2010 and trained with Meadville Lombard Theological School to become a spiritual director.
Florence Caplow has lived with chronic illness since 1999. As a Unitarian Universalist minister, she served congregations in Washington, Colorado, and Illinois. She is also a Zen Buddhist teacher, change coach, spiritual director, and editor of two previous books. She offers online classes for those living with chronic illness and pain.
