Enjoy your career ambitions 
without sacrificing your well-being.

What if you could feel empowered in your career while living with chronic illness?

There are five distinct stages of navigating your career while living with chronic illness.

Here you’ll find practical resources you can use at each stage, depending on where your career and health are right now.

You'll develop the skills to support a whole work-life arc, from the Cocoon, when capacity may be limited, through to confidence, ambition, leadership, and beyond.

We know chronic illness isn't linear, so you can start where you are and return for more resources as circumstances change.

Our Approach

I’ve spent the past decade working at the intersection of chronic illness, identity, and professional life.

What I’ve learned is that most career frameworks don’t account for the realities of living in a body that changes, requires care, or occasionally brings everything to a halt. And most support offered to people with chronic illness either focuses only on coping, or quietly assumes a return to “normal”.

My work is built for something different.

I have created practical frameworks and resources that help you make sense of where you are now, without overriding your health. You don’t have to know where you’re heading yet. You only need a place to orient yourself, and language that helps you think clearly again.

You’re welcome to start where you are, move at your own pace, and return to different stages as your life and work evolve.

— Michelle Irving

Meet Michelle

I’m Michelle Irving. I work with professional women navigating the intersection of chronic illness, identity, and working life.

My work is shaped by both lived experience and years of professional practice. I know what it’s like to have your capacity change, your certainty disrupted, and your relationship with work quietly and profoundly altered. I also know how important it is to have clarity, language, structure, and perspective when everything feels wobbly.

Career & Chronic exists because I needed a way to make sense of my own working life alongside chronic illness, without pushing myself into normative patterns that crashed me. The frameworks and resources here grew out of that need, and are designed to support you to think clearly, honour your health, and make decisions that are sustainable over time.