Surviving Chronic Illness: Life in a Body That Rebels
Surviving Chronic Illness: Life in a Body That Rebels is a lived experience podcast about surviving sarcoidosis, heart failure, rare disease, and the strange daily reality of having a body that does not always cooperate.
Hosted by Tate, a private chef, writer, husband, pet parent, and long-term sarcoidosis survivor, this podcast is not about miracle cures, medical lectures, or pretending that a positive attitude fixes everything. It is about the honest middle of chronic illness: the fatigue, fear, grief, humor, stubbornness, absurdity, and small victories that come with surviving day after day.
These are first-person stories about illness, identity, marriage, work, memory, resilience, and learning how to live inside a life that changed without asking permission. Some episodes are reflective. Some are funny. Some are angry. Some are tender. All of them come from the lived experience of someone still figuring it out in real time.
This podcast is for people living with chronic illness, sarcoidosis, rare disease, heart failure, autoimmune conditions, invisible illness, or any body that feels like it has gone off-script. It is also for caregivers, spouses, family members, and friends who want to better understand what illness feels like from the inside.
If you are tired of toxic positivity, pity, miracle-cure noise, and being told to “just stay strong,” you are in the right place.
This is a podcast for the sick, the tired, the stubborn, the scared, the sarcastic, the hopeful, and everyone trying to build a life in a body that rebels.
Surviving Chronic Illness: Life in a Body That Rebels
Why I Walked Away From Support Groups (And Found My Voice Instead)
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Living with sarcoidosis is already its own exhausting full-time job, so the idea of a support group sounded…promising. Or at least not disastrous. But back in the early 2010s, when my lungs and heart were misbehaving like rebellious teenagers, the search for “people like me” turned into something far stranger than comforting. I won’t spoil the whole story here, but let’s just say it involved Christmas ornaments, long train rides, and me realizing the person I actually needed to find was somewhere else entirely. Maybe someone like you.
This podcast is narrated using an AI voice. The words, reflections, and lived experience are my own.
If you’d like to share a quick thought about the episode, you can text the show using the link in the episode notes. I read every message, but I can’t reply by text because your number is blocked to protect your privacy.
If you’d like a reply, or want to share more about your experience with sarcoidosis or chronic illness, please use the contact form at tatebasildon.com. I’m not able to respond to solicitations or outside project requests.
To donate towards Sarcoidosis research or to learn more about the disease, please visit The Foundation For Sarcoidosis Research
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