By Chelsea Matherly

March 28, 2025

Life with Invisible Illness: Like an Embroidery, There's More Than Meets the Eye

At first glance, an embroidery looks flawless. The colors are vibrant, the stitches are neat, and the design or message often feels uplifting. You might admire how perfectly put together it looks, how every thread seems to be in the right place. Some people even stop to appreciate the details—the symmetry, the spacing, the way it all comes together so smoothly.
But flip it over, and it’s a whole different story. The back of an embroidery is messy—knots, tangled threads, random loops, and places where mistakes had to be fixed. It’s not polished, and in some spots, it barely makes sense. Yet, without that chaotic backside, the beautiful front wouldn’t exist at all.

Living with an invisible illness is a lot like that. From the outside, we might look “normal.” We smile, we go to work, we show up to events. People see the version of us that seems fine, just like the front of an embroidery. But if you could see beneath the surface—what we deal with every single day—it would look more like the tangled mess on the back. The pain, the fatigue, the endless doctor’s appointments, the medications, the symptoms that don’t go away no matter how much we rest... it’s all there, holding us together, even if no one else sees it.

Just like every stitch in an embroidery has a purpose, every symptom and every struggle is a part of our story. Some stitches are too tight—just like we sometimes push ourselves too hard trying to keep up. Some are loose and unraveling—like the moments when everything feels like it’s falling apart. And just like embroidery has areas reinforced to keep the design intact, we learn to adapt, finding ways to keep going even when our bodies are working against us.

The thing is, people with chronic illnesses are really good at making the front of their “embroidery” look perfect. We smile through pain, say “I’m fine” when we’re struggling, and push through exhaustion because that’s what the world expects. Not because we want to hide, but because explaining it all over and over is exhausting—especially when people don’t believe us.

Most chronic illnesses, especially autoimmune and autonomic disorders, are invisible. That means people are constantly being doubted—by doctors, coworkers, even friends and family. But the truth is, it takes way more effort to fake being well than to fake being sick.

So next time you admire an embroidery, take a second to think about what’s on the other side. And the next time you meet someone who looks “fine,” remember that you’re only seeing the front of their story. The real struggles, the real battles, are in the stitches no one else sees.