Hey, welcome. If you’re here, it means you care about someone living with chronic illness—and you're trying to figure out how to not say something accidentally awful. Good job. You’re already doing better than 60% of people.

This week we’re unpacking a big one: what it actually means to live with a chronic illness—especially the kind that doesn’t always “look sick.” The official term here is invisible illness, and unofficially, it’s “why are you still at brunch if you said you were sick last night?”

First, let’s talk about the Spoon Theory. It was created by a woman named Christine Miserandino to explain energy limitations with a metaphor: spoons = units of energy. You only get a 12 per day. And every task costs one (or more).

So if your Spoonie cancels plans, bails on a phone call, or needs 3 business days to recover from one errand... it's not drama. It’s just how their body works. This isn’t laziness. It’s logistics.

In this module, we’ll help you spot the common myths, decode invisible symptoms, and figure out what NOT to say when your Spoonie uses their last spoon to text you “I can’t today.”