Uninvisible Pod with Lauren Freedman

Cassandra Rush is a lupus advocate born and raised in Los Angeles, CA. In 2012, after a two-year battle with an undiagnosed illness due to being uninsured, she was finally diagnosed with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (lupus SLE). Two years later she was diagnosed with lupus nephritis. An “accidental advocate”, she speaks out about the broken US healthcare system, with a particularly detailed lens o...

Faith Ashenden is the founder and CEO of That Healing Feeling . She is a global patient empowerment mentor, master mindset coach, and biohacking expert who helps women hack the system and get their health back holistically, using 1-1 coaching, online courses, a podcast, and social media accounts with over 40k+ followers. Faith empowers people to ask the right questions, bust through limiting belie...

Damian Washington is an actor who’s done 30+ commercials for brands like Fruit of the Loom, Realtor.com , and the NFL. Originally hailing from NYC, he attended the prestigious LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts ( Fame , anyone?!). A few years ago, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS)…and soon discovered that developing an MS community is the best way to share his light with the...

Dani Donovan is a purpose-driven designer who creates cathartic ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) illustrations and a community of validation and solidarity for adults living with ADHD. Her first infographic, “ADHD Storytelling, ” went viral within hours and amassed over 100 million views. Her work has been reposted by celebrities like Mindy Kaling and featured in publications like t...

Tiffany Yu is the CEO & Founder of Diversability , an award-winning social enterprise to amplify disabled voices; the Founder of the Awesome Foundation Disability Chapter, a monthly micro-grant that has awarded $49.5k to 50 disability projects in 8 countries; and the host of TIFFANY & YU , the podcast. She serves on the San Francisco Mayor’s Disability Council and was a 2020 Co-Chair of the World...

In 2012, while studying at university, Mimi Butlin contracted viral meningitis — from which she never fully recovered. Since then she has been diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, fibromyalgia, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, and ME/CFS (as Mimi wryly notes, “a really lovely bunch!”). For years, she felt completely alone and that convinced she was responsible for her pain. In 2018, sh...

In 2009, Juana Mata was diagnosed with lupus. One of three very close sisters, nobody in her family had heard of this illness prior to her diagnosis — or knew how to handle her support and treatment. As the family began to research education, resources, and the history of the disease, they began to discover that it was largely misunderstood, and that it needed awareness-raising to fund research fo...

Alexa Chronister is the founder and president of Fight Like A Warrior (FLAW) . She created FLAW after creating the Cards For Warriors program (sending handmade cards of encouragement to chronic illness warriors across the globe, reminding them they are not alone) in 2016. With the goal of creating a community of empowerment and improving the lives of those with chronic health conditions, she devel...

Julian Gavino (he/him) is a trans-masculine model, writer, coach, and sex-positive disability influencer living with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and comorbidities. An outspoken advocate for both the trans and disability communities, Julian grew up never seeing people in media who “looked like” him…and his work has become a direct response to that experience. Many may know Julian through his Instagram a...

Shayla Swint is a 25-year-old college grad from Houston, Texas. Like the old adage, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” Shayla is so much more than what we can see…she lives with connective tissue disorder Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), hypermobile type. She’s survived over 15 surgeries thus far, and lives in an almost-constant state of pain and anxiety due to the condition. When she says that “her...

In the last in our 2021 series on Lyme disease, we are joined by the first WOC to discuss the subject: Rhisa Marie Parera . Though she began experiencing symptoms from a young age, Rhisa grew up as an active young woman in Staten Island, NY, and got heavily involved in the salsa dancing scene and modeling from her late teens into her early twenties. At the age of 19, her health took a serious down...

Sharon Leggio Falchuk, FMCHC found herself bedridden by a serious illness in 2011, and when the mainstream medical system had no answers or help for her she took matters into her own hands. She spent every moment she could doing research, changing her diet and lifestyle, and assembling a functional medicine and alternative care team to help her forge a path to healing. Her inextinguishable will to...

Lisa Hunt, D.O., D.O.H. is a practitioner at Holtorf Medical Group in El Segundo, CA. She specializes in anti-aging treatment, natural thyroid replacement, menopause/andropause therapy (including bioidentical hormone replacement), chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, strengthening the immune system, neurotransmitter analysis/replacement, and nutritional support guidance. Dr. Hunt is a graduate...

Christina Kantzavelos (@buenqamino // @beginwithintoday) is a Lyme warrior, award-winning freelance writer/content creator, chronic illness advocate, and licensed psychotherapist. She was diagnosed with Lyme disease and co-infections in October of 2018. However, she struggled with debilitating symptoms and various autoimmune diseases for years prior. Her treatment has included a mixture of Eastern...

Casey Kelley, MD, ABoIM is the founder and medical director of Case Integrative Health . Dr. Kelley is relentless about getting to the root cause of chronic disease and transforming health through Functional Medicine. On faculty at Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine, she is Board Certified in Family Medicine and was also among the first physicians to become Board Certified in Integrative M...

Whether it’s hiding the likes of Pamela Anderson from paparazzi or helping NeNe Leakes pretend to sell furniture… Alex Moresco has a story about it. A PR executive from Chicago, four years ago her life was turned upside-down by undiagnosed illness. It took her two years and eight specialists (a shorter time than most, she admits) to find a doctor that would eventually crack the case: tick-borne il...

Gena Chieco is a coach, adventurer, and connector who loves inspiring clients to step into their best lives by providing tools to help them tap into their inner wisdom and dreams. She grew up in a rural suburb of New York City running around barefoot in the summer, obsessed with nature, with dreams of becoming a zoologist. After earning a BA with Honors in Psychology from Northwestern University a...

Dr. Micah Yu is an integrative rheumatologist who incorporates complementary medicine with traditional rheumatology. He is double board-certified in internal medicine and lifestyle medicine. He obtained his MD from Chicago Medical School, and holds a Masters in Healthcare Administration and Biomedical sciences. He completed his internal medicine residency and rheumatology fellowship at Loma Linda...

Artist Rana Awadallah grew up surrounded by poverty, abuse, and trauma. Diagnosed with major depression and extreme anxiety at the age of 18, she always felt there was something “wrong” with her body. Then, at the age of 24 — after having dealt with chronic pain for a decade — she was diagnosed with osteoarthritis in both of her knees. Shortly after, she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, PCOS, and...

Michole J lives with rare muscle disease polymyositis (PM), which falls under the umbrella of muscular dystrophy. PM is an uncommon inflammatory disease that affects the entire body — and while Michole began to exhibit symptoms in her late 20s, she was diagnosed at age 30 with the rarest form. Living with the condition create mobility challenges, from climbing stairs, lifting objects, raising her...

Rachel Otis (she/they) is a somatic therapist , yoga teacher, abolitionist, writer, and pleasure activist who works directly, compassionately and non-judgmentally with the mind-body connection, infusing sessions, groups, retreats, and articles with radical self-love, exploration, and expression. She provides healing pathways of somatically-oriented coping tools and resources including yoga, art, s...

Samantha Reid is the Digital Director for Patients for Affordable Drugs . Growing up in Illinois, she suffered from a “bad stomach” and weakened immune system, having caught pneumonia nine times by the age of nine. But it wasn’t until she was in her late teens that she sought answers. A diagnosis of Crohn’s disease eventually led her into patient advocacy, where her passion for improving patient q...

David Mitchell  has an incurable blood cancer called multiple myeloma. The price of his current drugs is more than $875,000 per year. Like millions of Americans, David needs innovation and new drugs to survive, but he believes drugs don’t work if people can’t afford them. After more than 30 years at a D.C. policy and communications firm, he retired in December 2016 to devote his full energy to hel...

Kayla Harley is a certified GYROKINESISⓇ instructor, Optimal Life Breath Pathologist, doula, and energy healer helping dancers, athletes and everyday movers alike improve their quality of movement: for breath integration and to prevent injury. She is an International Practitioner and among the forerunners in the International Association for Blacks in Dance. She believes firmly that the body has t...

Join us as we launch a brand new series on Uninvisible Pod — INNOVATORS! In this series, we will periodically release episodes including short-form interviews with founders whose work is creating waves of change in chronic and invisible illness and disability. First up, as we dive in to the end of the year and look forward into 2021: Yale graduate Celine Tien, founder and CEO of Flowly , a mobile...