A fireside-style podcast for people living with chronic illness and the people who want to understand them better. Each episode features an intimate conversation between our host, a lived experience guest, and a trusted expert, blending life with practical, empowering insight. This is a space for validation, honest conversations, and reminders that your illness is part of your story but it doesn’t get to define all of it.
The Friends Who Stay: Navigating Chronic Illness Together
What does true friendship look like when chronic illness changes everything?
Host Gigi Robinson sits down with her longtime friend Maggie Clayton, jewelry designer, entrepreneur, and advocate living with a rare form of Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT), for an honest conversation about navigating friendship through diagnosis, disability, surgeries, and life's unexpected turns.
Together they share how they met through the chronic illness community, the realities of being misdiagnosed, learning to advocate for themselves, adapting careers and relationships around health, and why the strongest friendships aren't built on perfect attendance, but on showing up in the ways that matter.
Whether you're living with chronic illness, supporting someone who is, or searching for people who truly understand your experience, this episode is a reminder that healing isn't something we do alone.
6 Jul 2026
Patient Power: Matthew Zachary on Cancer, Advocacy, and Fixing Healthcare
At just 21 years old, Matthew Zachary was a concert pianist whose life changed overnight after being diagnosed with brain cancer. Thirty years later, he's become one of the most influential voices in patient advocacy, founding Stupid Cancer, launching one of healthcare's first podcasts, producing award-winning documentaries, and authoring We the Patients.
In this episode, Matthew joins host Gigi Robinson to discuss what it really means to live beyond a diagnosis. Together, they explore the power of community, navigating survivorship, balancing advocacy with everyday life, fertility, social media, holistic and traditional medicine, and why patients must move beyond advocacy toward collective civic power.
Whether you're living with chronic illness, caring for someone who is, or simply trying to better understand today's healthcare system, this conversation offers practical wisdom, hope, and a powerful reminder that healing doesn't happen alone.
In this deeply personal conversation, host Gigi Robinson sits down with chronic illness advocate and founder of Chronicon, Nitika Chopra, to explore what healing truly means. Together, they discuss grief, identity, nervous system regulation, self-advocacy, community, ambition, and the complex reality of living fully while navigating chronic illness. This episode challenges the idea that healing requires symptom elimination and offers a more nuanced, compassionate vision of what it means to thrive.
8 Jun 2026
Healing Out Loud: Lyme Disease, Ambition, and the Power of Self-Advocacy
In this candid conversation, host Gigi Robinson sits down with media personality, content creator, and Miss New Hampshire Volunteer 2026, Sophie Sargent, to explore what it means to pursue big dreams while navigating chronic illness. Sophie shares her journey from years of unexplained symptoms to a Lyme disease diagnosis, the realities of balancing health with an ambitious career in media, and the lessons she's learned about self-advocacy, mindset, and sustainable healing. Together, Gigi and Sophie discuss biohacking, social media misinformation, tick-borne illnesses, lifestyle changes, and why hope and community remain essential for anyone living with chronic illness.
24 May 2026
Post-Traumatic Growth and the Courage to Keep Going
In this deeply reflective conversation, Gigi sits down with psychotherapist and mentor Dr. Victoria Grinman to explore the intersection of chronic illness, post-traumatic growth, spirituality, mentorship, and emotional healing. Together, they unpack what it means to live with uncertainty while still choosing hope, possibility, and self-trust.
From navigating chronic pain and medical trauma to understanding the mind-body connection, Dr. Victoria shares how growth is not about becoming “perfect” or pain-free, but about becoming more integrated, compassionate, and connected to yourself. The conversation also dives into energy healing, Tony Robbins’ six human needs framework, mentorship, and how people living with chronic conditions can begin reframing their relationship with fear, uncertainty, and healing.
This episode is a powerful reminder that healing is not linear, growth is rarely comfortable, and sometimes the most important thing we can do is keep walking the path.
10 May 2026
No Mud, No Lotus: Choosing Joy Through Chronic Illness with Sally Joy Wolf
In this deeply honest and hopeful episode of Seen, Not Fixed, Gigi sits down with metastatic breast cancer advocate Sally Joy Wolf to talk about what it truly means to thrive while living with chronic illness. From navigating a stage 4 cancer diagnosis to redefining identity, purpose, and joy, Sally shares how she transformed unimaginable uncertainty into a life rooted in meaning, advocacy, and connection.
Together, they explore the concept of “no mud, no lotus,” the idea that suffering can become the soil for growth, and unpack the difference between toxic positivity and authentic hope. The conversation dives into post-traumatic growth, patient advocacy, the emotional realities of chronic illness, and the power of choosing how we move through hardship.
This episode is a reminder that a diagnosis does not define a person, and that even in life’s hardest moments, there is still room for joy, purpose, movement, and deep human connection.
26 Apr 2026
Seen Beyond the Surface
This conversation explores what it means to truly be “seen” while navigating chronic illness, neurodivergence, and life after a major health diagnosis. Kaitlyn Carroll shares how her experiences with cancer, late-diagnosed autism and ADHD, and burnout reshaped her relationship with work, self-compassion, and support. Together, the hosts unpack invisible effort, the grief that accompanies identity shifts, and the importance of language like “capacity” and “resourcing.” The episode centers on a powerful truth: being supported and understood can transform how we move through even the hardest realities.
12 Apr 2026
The Healing Power of Community in Chronic Illness
This episode explores the profound role community plays in the chronic illness experience, especially for those navigating invisible conditions. Jill shares how platforms like Inspire create safe, moderated spaces where people feel validated, understood, and less alone. Through personal stories and patient experiences, the conversation highlights how being seen, rather than “fixed,” can transform mental and physical outcomes, empower self-advocacy, and turn patients into advocates. At its core, the episode is a reminder that healing often begins with connection, not solutions.
22 Mar 2026
The New Normal: Energy, Pacing, and Life with Limited Spoons
This episode explores the psychological and emotional realities of living with chronic illness through a conversation between Nicole and Dr. Rachel, a behavioral medicine psychologist. They unpack the deep connection between thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, highlighting how unhelpful thinking patterns like “should” statements, catastrophizing, and rigid thinking can keep people feeling stuck. The conversation emphasizes practical mindset shifts, including focusing on what’s within your control, taking small and sustainable steps, and building awareness of your mind-body connection. They also address the importance of self-advocacy in healthcare, grieving the loss of a former identity, and finding a balanced, realistic form of optimism that honors both difficulty and possibility. Ultimately, the episode offers grounded tools to help listeners feel more in control, supported, and compassionate toward themselves.
8 Mar 2026
The Empowered Patient: Scripts, Questions, and Communication Frameworks
In this episode of Seen Not Fixed, host Nicole Pedra is joined by chronic illness advocate Anja Vesterhus Knustad and clinical hypnotherapist Lucy Seligman ACC, CCHT for an honest conversation about living with invisible illness. Anja shares her experience growing up with ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis) and the profound ways it reshaped her life from childhood, while Lucy reflects on decades of living with fibromyalgia and how that journey led her to become a practitioner supporting others with chronic pain.
Together they explore the emotional weight of not being believed, the misconceptions that surround fatigue and chronic illness, and the reality of advocating for yourself within healthcare systems that often struggle to understand invisible conditions. The conversation also highlights the role of hope, self compassion, pacing, and nervous system based healing practices in building a meaningful life alongside illness.
This episode offers listeners validation, practical insights on self advocacy, and a reminder that even in the face of chronic illness, connection, understanding, and purpose are still possible.
22 Feb 2026
Mental Health, Infertility and Chronic Illness
In this deeply honest conversation, host Nicole Pedra sits down with Deidra Murphy and Eli Weinstein, LCSW, to explore the complex intersections of chronic illness, infertility, marriage, mental health, and identity. This episode is a powerful reminder that there is no single “right” way to build a family, live in a body, or navigate partnership. Whether you are walking through infertility, chronic illness, relationship strain, or simply questioning the narratives you’ve been handed, this conversation creates space for you to feel seen, not fixed.
8 Feb 2026
Body Betrayal and Reclaiming Your Identity
In this episode of Seen, Not Fixed, Nicole Pedra is joined by Danny O’Malley, Lindsey Provencher, and Cara Bowman for an honest conversation about chronic illness, invisible pain, caregiving, and nervous system regulation. Together, they explore what it feels like to be dismissed by medical systems, to lose trust in your body, and to live with symptoms that others cannot see.
The group discusses hypervigilance, somatic care, co-regulation, and the exhaustion of constantly monitoring your body. They also reflect on the power of community, social media advocacy, and being truly seen rather than fixed.
This episode is about slowing down, finding anchor points of safety, and learning how to stay connected to your body even when healing is not linear and answers are unclear.
25 Jan 2026
The Caregiver Roller Coaster
In this episode of Seen, Not Fixed, Nicole sits down with Miel Johnson and Meli Kirkwood for an honest conversation about chronic illness, caregiving, nervous system regulation, and the quiet labor that so often goes unseen. Together, they explore childhood diagnosis, medical advocacy, food challenges, trauma responses that get mislabeled as anxiety, and what it really takes to listen to the body without pushing through.
This is a conversation for caregivers, parents, and anyone living in a body that requires extra attention. You are not invisible, and you are not doing it wrong.
11 Jan 2026
You're Not Imagining This: Making the Invisible Visible
Our first episode is a coming-together of voices, lived experience, and shared recognition. With Nicole Pedra, Spoonly founder Rachel Barnett, and Lauren Freedman of Uninvisible Pod, this conversation explores what it means to live inside a body and mind that others can't see, measure, or fully understand. We explore chronic illness not as a single diagnosis, but as an ongoing relationship with your body, your mental health, your identity, and the world around you.
7 Jan 2026
Welcome to: Seen, Not Fixed
Join us as we explore the real-life experiences, challenges, and triumphs of those living with chronic illness. Tune in for heartfelt conversations, insightful stories, and practical tips.
Our first episode is coming soon. We're so glad you're here!
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Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
3 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
5 ratings
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