Sarah Wells Coaching

Sarah Wells Coaching Chronic illness, done differently. Bespoke support to live well with long-term conditions. Links: https://welcome.sarahwellslifecoach.com/links I've got you.

I’m not a magician, but I’ve got a trick or two up my sleeve to help you start to live well with chronic illness + prevent and recover from burnout. I’ve had the guilt, the anger, I felt the loss, got the battle scars but one thing I know for sure … having the right people in your corner makes all the difference.

Progress with chronic illness is quiet.It doesn’t look like a clean test result or a pain-free week. It doesn’t arrive w...
11/06/2026

Progress with chronic illness is quiet.

It doesn’t look like a clean test result or a pain-free week. It doesn’t arrive with a certificate.

It looks like knowing the difference between tired and crashed. Making the right decision and feeling guilty about it anyway. Arriving somewhere you wouldn’t have gone six months ago.

For years I measured my progress by my symptoms. How bad were they. How often. How long.

I was looking at the wrong thing entirely.

Save this for the week you can’t see it. Share it with someone who needs to hear it too. 🤍


After years of working with high-achieving women with chronic illness, I've noticed the same pattern again and again.Not...
10/06/2026

After years of working with high-achieving women with chronic illness, I've noticed the same pattern again and again.

Not everyone is in the same place. But almost everyone is in one of three.

Phase 1 — Stabilise.
Life feels like constant firefighting. You push, you crash, you push again. Rest doesn't feel restful. Good days trick you into doing more and you pay for it.

Phase 2 — Clarify.
You're steadier than you were. But you still say yes when you mean no. Guilt runs the diary. You can see the pattern now — breaking it is harder than spotting it.

Phase 3 — Lead.
Things are more sustainable. You're beginning to trust yourself again. But identity still feels uncertain. You're not quite sure who you are now.

Every phase needs something different.

What works in Phase 1 won't work in Phase 3. What you need in Phase 2 isn't what you needed at the start.

The first step is knowing where you actually are.

I've mapped all three, what each phase feels like, what's actually happening underneath, and what shifts. Comment MAP and I will send it over.

High-achieving women with chronic illness are often the most capable people in any room.They're also the ones who find i...
09/06/2026

High-achieving women with chronic illness are often the most capable people in any room.

They're also the ones who find it hardest to stop.

Not because they don't want to.
Not because they don't know they should.
Because somewhere along the way, often very early, often in circumstances that required it, choosing themselves stopped feeling allowed.

The responsible part learned to be responsible and it was good at its job.

So good that it still runs the show, even when the circumstances that created it are long gone.

Rest needs justifying. Play needs a reason. Doing something just for themselves feels like a luxury they haven't earned yet.

This isn't a self-care problem.
It's not a discipline problem.
It's not even a chronic illness problem.

It's a permission structure that was built a long time ago and never got updated.

The work isn't to push through it.
The work is to understand where it came from and slowly, deliberately, build a new one.

You are allowed to choose yourself.
You don't need a reason.
You don't need to earn it first.

I spent thirty years getting very, very good at the performance of fine.This is what I understand now.
01/06/2026

I spent thirty years getting very, very good at the performance of fine.

This is what I understand now.





We talk so much about getting to acceptance.The grief.The loss.The letting go.That work is real and it matters and it ta...
28/05/2026

We talk so much about getting to acceptance.

The grief.
The loss.
The letting go.

That work is real and it matters and it takes as long as it takes.

But here's the thing nobody tells you.

Acceptance doesn't mean your ambitions have to die with the version of you that existed before.

Acceptance means you stop spending energy on resistance. And when you stop fighting what is, when the illness becomes neutral, when it just is, everything changes.

The decisions get clearer.
The life gets bigger.
You're still running. But you know the terrain now.

And you've stopped waiting for a finish line that was never coming.

That's not shrinking. That's building.

And it's where the real work starts.

Save this for when you need to remember: you are not the version of you that chronic illness took. You are the version y...
27/05/2026

Save this for when you need to remember: you are not the version of you that chronic illness took. You are the version you are choosing to become.

26/05/2026

I spent years thinking that I’d lost myself.

What I’d actually lost was the evidence.

Before I got sick, every time I said “I’m going to do this” my body showed up. Not perfectly. But enough. I had proof of myself.

After my diagnosis, that proof kept getting interrupted.

Cancelled plans. Bad weeks that came from nowhere. Commitments I had to renegotiate with myself again and again.

And so slowly, without realising it, I stopped making commitments to myself at all.

I called it being realistic.

It wasn’t. It was a trust collapse.

The ambition was still there. It had never left. It was just standing in a room with someone who’d stopped believing she could follow through.

That’s not a capacity problem.
That’s not an ambition problem.
That’s a relationship with yourself problem, and it looks completely different from the outside.

The work isn’t to want less.
The work is to rebuild the evidence, carefully, one kept commitment at a time.

Your ambition didn’t go anywhere. You did.

You can't build a stable foundation if you don't know what's making it shake.Building that foundation when you have a ch...
14/05/2026

You can't build a stable foundation if you don't know what's making it shake.

Building that foundation when you have a chronic illness is not easy.

Save this — and notice what comes up when you read it.

Today is ME/CFS Awareness Day.My son came out of school when he was 12 because of ME/CFS. For a long stretch, he was sev...
13/05/2026

Today is ME/CFS Awareness Day.

My son came out of school when he was 12 because of ME/CFS. For a long stretch, he was severely ill and bedbound. I'm not going to write one of those posts that wraps it all up with a bow, because the truth is messier than that. Not everyone gets better. Some people live with this for years. Some for life.

So this isn't a post about hope, or recovery, or silver linings.
This is for the parents who are in it right now.

The ones watching your child disappear into a body that won't cooperate.
The ones googling at 2am.
The ones who've been dismissed by doctors, schools, family members, friends.
The ones running on empty and still showing up.
The ones drowning in guilt for things that were never your fault.
The ones who don't know where to turn, who feel like you're failing on every front, who have almost nothing left to give and are giving it anyway.

I see you. I've been you. I know what it's like to be the mum of a really sick kid, in the middle of it, with no map and no certainty and no capacity left over for yourself.

I'm not going to tell you it will all be okay. I am going to tell you that you are not alone, that the love you're pouring into your child matters more than you can see right now, and that it is allowed to be this hard.

Sending love to every family living with ME/CFS today. I'm thinking of you. 🤍

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