Is it possible to heal when you can’t afford to?

Content Note: This essay contains personal reflections on chronic illness, disability, financial hardship, emotional abuse, grief, suicidal thoughts, and the loss of a parent. My hope in sharing this story is not to overwhelm, but to help anyone who may recognize themselves in these experiences feel a little less alone. Please take care of yourself as you read and step away if you need to.

I’ve been working full time again and it’s been hard on my body. After almost two years of not being able to work due to my compounded traumas and mysterious autoimmune condition, I’m finally back at it.

During my time away from work, my health improved dramatically. And it wasn’t because I found a magic modality, did everything perfectly, or tried harder. It was because I had something most sick people don't have: Time. Rest. Access to care. Space to recover.

And ya wanna know something? Now that I’m back to paycheck-to-paycheck living, lots of my previous symptoms are getting loud again. The gray cloud of fatigue, nervous system overwhelm, dizzy spells, appetite issues, and a weak immune system are all forcing me to face a question no one seems to know the answer to.

Is it even possible to heal when you don’t have the money to?

The system we live in wasn’t built for us. It wasn’t built to accommodate disability or support healing. It was built for able bodies, and if you’re not an able body, you’re often swept aside and reduced to “lazy.”

I’m a licensed massage therapist and manual lymphatic drainage practitioner by trade, and I’ve noticed the same through line in conversation after conversation: you need regular care, but care is expensive, and sometimes groceries are more important than a massage.

Being unwell is expensive.Staying unwell is expensive.Trying to get better is expensive.

I see this in my own life. I see it in my clients. And I see it in the conversations I have with people just like you every day.

Back in the spring of 2024, my mental and physical health reached their lowest point. I was in an emotionally abusive marriage and had been sleeping only two or three hours a night for five years. I experienced rapid weight loss because food made me too nauseous. My fatigue and anxiety were unmanageable. Being confined to the couch for months at a time was humbling.

At the time, I was spending over $1,000 a month on doctor visits, labs, therapy, supplements, and acupuncture—often putting those expenses on credit cards. I was working my sick body into the ground so I could “afford” the care I needed to stop being sick.

I was doing everything perfectly and still somehow getting worse.

A diabolical hamster wheel if I’ve ever seen one.

Do you want to know the comically fucked up thing that saved me? The cherry on top?

I lost my estranged father to a heart attack.

A few months later, I received a lump sum of inheritance money that I never thought I’d see in my life. I remember sobbing in the parking lot after depositing the check. Grief and gratitude holding hands.

Right when my body and mind were unable to financially support me, my dad dropped dead and then dropped money in my lap.

It’s okay, you can laugh. Dead parent jokes are good for my health.

What that inheritance really brought me wasn’t just money. It brought me time, safety, rest, and space to grieve and nourish myself. It allowed me to receive care without financial ruin. It created the conditions my nervous system needed to soften—and my autoimmune symptoms softened with it.

That experience changed my life.

It changed the way I relate to myself. It changed the way I understand illness. It distilled a truth that I carry with me every day: we can be doing everything “right” and still be sick because it is so devastating on the nervous system to live in survival all the time.

Having money, time, and access to critical care saved my life.

And I see how these systems disadvantage people who don’t have the resources they need to be well.

I’ve been that person.

This is really the gap I’ve been trying to fill ever since: the space between the reality of our circumstances and what healing is still possible for us.

So is it even possible to heal when you don’t have the money to?

I honestly don’t know. Not in the way our culture tends to define healing, anyway. But I do know that waiting until life is perfect isn’t an option for most of us. There has to be another way to soften the burden. To find moments of safety. To reconnect with ourselves even while the circumstances around us remain unfair.

Because you deserve to live a dignified life.

You deserve to have support. To feel understood. To be believed, listened to, validated, held, and advocated for.

If you’re going to be constantly re-traumatized by being sick and in pain in a system that doesn’t serve you, you might as well have some support and camaraderie to balance it out.

I don’t believe healing comes from squeezing harder or trying to be the perfect patient. I think it begins when our pain is finally witnessed. First by ourselves, and then, if we’re lucky, by people who can hold it with us without trying to fix it.

This premise is what has been guiding my work behind the scenes.

I’ve been creating something specifically for people who live in the gap between wanting to heal and lacking the resources they need. I can’t fix your autoimmune condition or chronic pain. I can’t make you rich. I can’t make healthcare affordable. The ex-evangelical, missionary, fixer in me really wishes she could.

What I can do is help create conditions where healing becomes more possible, despite everything you’re up against. In my program, I’ll offer practical tools, education, validation, and community from the lens of someone who is living this experience alongside you.

I’m not trying to fix you or sell you a magic cure.

This program is what I needed when I had no money, dwindling health, and nothing to hold onto.

Truthfully, it’s what I need right now.

If this is hitting close to home, know that I see you and you are not alone. If you’ve been trying to heal while surviving, this work is being built with you in mind. If you’d like to be the first to know when it launches, you can join the waitlist here.

I believe that community is medicine and that our stories hold resonance and power.

At the very least, I hope sharing my story helps someone feel a little less alone in theirs. Because even if I can’t promise healing, I can promise this: your body is making sense of everything it has survived. And you deserve to do that work in the company of people who remind you that your life is bigger than your symptoms.

This is why I do the work that I do.

Because it’s deeply, intrinsically personal to me.

Warmly,

Abby