An Exclusive Guest Post From Michelle Rial, Author of Maybe This Will Help

I didn’t make this chart about the pandemic even though I made it in 2020. 

I made it for my book, Maybe This Will Help. The chart was intended to illustrate the experience of having a chronic condition and trying *everything* and thinking things are about to improve and then there’s yet another roadblock. 

The book details my own experiences with pain and loss during and before the pandemic, and the “this too shall pass” platitudes that seem laughable and sinister at times, and optimistic and inspiring when things are looking up (or when you’re a few sips into your first morning coffee).

I feared that this book wouldn’t find its people—that the specificity of the chronic issues I illustrated in my book would be too foreign to most. But the journey of not getting better, of thinking things are improving and then having another debilitating, hope-crushing flare up, has felt much like what we’ve all been going through these last two years.

It turns out that a two week quarantine turned into two years of isolation ends up looking a lot like a single injury that’s supposed to heal like anything else, and then doesn’t. 

It reminds me that we’re all going through something, and sometimes the thing that helps the most is talking to, leaning on, and laugh-crying with those who are going through it too.

And maybe, eventually, little by little, that will help.