You’re a woman with a chronic illness and you’re struggling to keep your career in gear. Is it hard? You bet!

Especially when you have an autoimmune disease:

• which generally have poor treatment options
• which is usually invisible and means other people haven’t a clue about what you’re going through unless you tell them
• which is always unpredictable.

Now let’s fill in this picture some more: you’re a mommy with young children — or a young married — or have elderly parents — needing to devote as much of your limited energy as you can to this part of your life.

Hmm — makes me wonder why I didn’t hide my head under a very big blanket instead of plugging along working all these years.  But I didn’t.  In fact, I loved to keep working. Over the years, working with people like you, clients who want to work but struggle to figure out how, I’d get lots of ideas about what people could do.

And that’s when I had this realization: Working is beneficial to your health - regardless of your state of health.  That’s not a message most women get.  Which is why we devoted an entire chapter on this question in our book.

Let’s start with why it’s a mistake for even healthy women to leave the workforce. There’s a very interesting book on the subject (see The Feminine Mistake by Leslie Bennetts.)

Here are 5 reasons she gives why a woman stops working:

• She believes that it’s better for her family if she doesn’t work.
• She believes that being a full-time mom and not working should be seen as a feminist option.
• She is unhappy in her career and sees quitting in the name of motherhood as a way out.
• The workplace is not amenable to part-time working mothers or high-powered-career working mothers

And here are 4 reasons why they should continue to work:

• A salary puts food on the table, pays the rent, and hopefully provides decent health coverage.
• Work adds external structure to your day and gives you a place where you have to show up.
• It’s not as easy as you might think to get back into the workforce once you climb out—certainly not at the same level as when you left.

I think that all of these reasons apply just as well to women who have health challenges even more so!

Do you? Have you left the workforce? What’s been your experience trying to re-enter? Tell me about it (comment please!)

In my next post, I’ll give you some research from our book to support my belief. Stay tuned…

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