Uninvisible Pod with Lauren Freedman

Lisa Sniderman , aka Aoede , is an award-winning quirky folk-pop musician, playwright, author, and filmmaker from San Francisco. She’s been honored with more than 85 awards for songwriting, audiobooks, films, stage plays, and books since 2012 — all while living from rare autoimmune disorder dermatomyositis (or DM, as she calls it), a progressive muscle weakness disease. Her memoir,  A Light in the...

Trust Me I’m Sick is a docu-series produced in partnership with nonprofit Suffering the Silence that explores how chronic illness affects the everyday lives of five people living in Los Angeles, California. Ezra (18), Giuliani (29), Henriette (50), Matt (32), and Cassandra (28) share intimate stories about how lupus, HIV, and other conditions shape their relationships, careers and visions for the...

Sheryl Chan is the writer behind A Chronic Voice , a blog that aims to articulate lifelong illnesses through various perspectives. She herself lives with multiple diagnoses, which include autoimmune disorder antiphospholipid syndrome, Sjögren's syndrome, epilepsy, lupus (SLE) and more. Beginning with a mini stroke at the age of 14, Sheryl’s experience was followed by multiple blood clots in the lu...

Keisha Greaves is the founder of fashion label Girls Chronically Rock , and is a motivational speaker and former Massachusetts State Ambassador for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA). Diagnosed as a graduate student with limb-girdle muscular dystrophy, she is now largely wheelchair-bound. As a patient advocate, she worked with Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker to have September 30th offic...

Alicia Young (aka AP) is a writer, blogger and public speaker who lives her life out loud and unfiltered. She has built her platform to include in-depth, first-hand experiences of mental health concerns, body diversity, being a special needs mom (one of her sons has Tourette’s syndrome, ADHD, and is on the autism spectrum), and navigating life with chronic illness and disability (including autoimm...

Annelise Bretthauer is a certified financial planner (CFP) professional living in Oregon. Diagnosed with dyslexia as a teen, she’s always turned to hard work to overcome adversity. But that hard work only paid off so much…until she got sick. In 2017, Annelise was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. Faced with career overhaul and a choice between her passion and her health, she redesigned her life arou...

Danielle Gulden and Joe Teeters are IBD warriors and permanent ileostomates. They’re comedians, speakers, advocates and Two Best Friends without Buttholes! Danielle has had ulcerative colitis (UC) for over 27 years. After going through nearly every IBD medication available, going to the bathroom 20-25 times per day, and having a toilet installed in her car (this is not a joke, folks!), she finally...

TW/CW: This episode features graphic description of rectovaginal surgery, as well as discussion of suicidal ideation.   Tina Aswani Omprakash has been a Crohn’s patient for 14 years, and is the award-winning patient expert and advocate behind Own Your Crohn’s . Her aim is to normalize the rhetoric around chronic illnesses and disabilities in order to help patients own their ailments to live fuller...

Sarah Ramey (also known by her musical pseudonym Wolf Larsen ) is a writer and musician living in Washington, DC. She is a graduate of Bowdoin College, received an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from Columbia University in 2007, and worked on President Obama’s 2008 campaign. A recipient of the 2018 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Writing Grant, she is also the author of the new memoir The Lady’s H...

Lauren Reimer is a blogger, content creator, and chronic illness community leader based in Fayetteville, Arkansas. At the age of 13, she was diagnosed with Chronic Intestinal Pseudo-Obstruction (CIPO), which means that her digestive tract acts as though it is obstructed — even when it is not. Lacking peristalsis, the worm-like movement that moves food, fluid, and air through her digestive tract, h...

Lorna Alexis is the influencer, model, blogger, and creator of Cystum of Curves . An advocate living with PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome), the word “cystum” is derived from the word cyst, a characteristic of the syndrome. PCOS is known to cause weight gain and make that weight even harder to lose — so instead of letting PCOS get her down, Lorna decided to use her diagnosis as a platform for ins...

Dr. Jessica Shepherd is an OB/GYN and women’s health expert, founder of Her Viewpoint (an online women’s health forum with a focus on addressing what she calls “below the belt” topics in a stigma-free setting), and the host of the new wellness podcast Breathe & Bloom . You may recognize her from her many TV appearances: as a frequent contributor on The Today Show, Dr. Oz, Steve Harvey, CBS News, a...

Syren Nagakyrie (she/they) is the founder of Disabled Hikers , a community and resource for those living with disabilities (and their loved ones) that enables and empowers them to access nature. An activist for accessibility and inclusion, they come from a working-class background and have struggled to retain adequate healthcare for most of their life. Syren lives with multiple invisible condition...

Otolaryngologist Dr. Madan Kandula is considered Wisconsin’s thought leader for breathing and snoring/sleep apnea solutions. An expert in ear, nose, and throat medicine, his knowledge of healthy breathing has propelled him — alongside his wife, who is an audiologist — to found ADVENT, the largest independent ENT practice in Wisconsin, where they provide their patients with solution-based treatment...

  Chris Abdullahi is the founder of The Sound of Sickle, a non-profit organization that raises awareness of sickle cell diseases (SCD) and blood donations in the UK. He has spoken about sickle cell awareness on various platforms, including Google, Facebook, Guys and St. Thomas’ Hospital, and the BBC, and works closely with the NHS Blood Donations team to curate events and sign up new black blood d...

Andrew Kantor is an Associate at Kantor & Kantor, LLP . The son of the founding namesake attorneys, his practice is focused primarily on helping individuals obtain wrongfully-denied disability and life insurance benefits in both ERISA and non-ERISA (bad faith) policies. A client-centered attorney, he has emerged as one of the US’s leading experts on fighting disability denials, with a particular f...

If Jen Msumba of Rebranding Autism isn’t a staple on your social media feed, then take our advice and get her good vibes on your radar. Jen lives on the autism spectrum, and has been through hell and back in her journey to comprehensive care and self-realization. Much of her success has been in facing personal challenges, and seeking the joy in all things to live a full and varied life. An accompl...

Amanda Nicastro is a writer and actor based in NYC. In 2014, her sister Brenna needed a new kidney. While Amanda wasn’t a match, she was able to find an exchange program that allowed her to donate a kidney for someone in need, and for Brenna to receive a kidney that met her body’s needs. While Amanda isn’t the most comfortable with the idea of being a “hero” — a title often bandied about in respon...

Melissa Talwar was diagnosed with fibromyalgia at the age of 14. 20+ years later, living in chronic pain and regularly becoming bed-bound, she watched her symptoms stabilize and her decline subside at her discovery of biohacking and functional medicine. Not long after, she went on to establish the International Support Fibromyalgia Network , a non-profit patient-led organization created to fulfill...

Natasha Tracy is an award-winning writer, speaker, and social media consultant who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the age of 20. The author of The Bipolar Burble blog (named a top-10 health blog by Healthista, Health.com , Healthline, and others) and Breaking Bipolar for HealthyPlace.com , she aims to bring quality, insightful, and evidence-based information on bipolar disorder and related...

Sylvie Leotin is many things. She started her career in France as a gold-medal ballerina, later moving to Silicon Valley as one of the first women to research at Stanford Robotics Laboratory. She has held positions in engineering, products, marketing, sales, business development, and communications; she is the founder and CEO of Tech Atelier, a multidisciplinary strategy agency advising startups a...

Dibs Baer is a New York Times best-selling author and celebrity journalist. The author/co-author of six books, including, most recently, Lady Tigers in the Concrete Jungle: How Softball and Sisterhood Saved Lives in the South Bronx , she was formerly the executive editor of InTouch Weekly , and has worked on staff at numerous other publications. While she has been published extensively across vari...

A senior at Indiana University majoring in chronic illness advocacy and journalism, Sneha Dave is no stranger to #SpoonieLife. Diagnosed at the age of six with ulcerative colitis (UC), she is the founder of Health Advocacy Summit (HAS), an organization that hosts events in various cities around the country to provide education, insight, and community to an often underserved patient population affe...

When Lauren first sat down to chat with Brooke Geahan (also known as Everyday Expert, per her Instagram handle) she mentioned Brooke’s “9 lives” — it seems she has this many, as Brooke has come through skin and cervical cancer, Lyme disease and comorbid tick-borne illnesses, pernicious anemia, SIBO, chronic EBV, atrophic gastritis, and autoimmune issues (RA, Hashimoto’s, and Celiac, to name a few)...

Kelsey Darragh is a writer, comedienne , and f ormer Buzzfeed producer. She currently host s the podcast Confidently Insecure , and is a regular on Dating: No Filter , where she boldly shares some o f her best and worst dating escapades (season 3 premieres Feb 4 t h on E! ). You may also remember her from a series she did with former guest Lara Parker – Can We Cure – which took them both to a lase...