Therapist-Written Chronic Illness Grief Workbook: Identity, Pacing, Self-Compassion (Digital Download)

Living with chronic illness can mean grieving changes other people cannot see: energy, plans, independence, relationships, and the future you expected. I wrote this to help you learn skills to help you adjust to this illness and learn ways to cope and help you get through it. 💗

Living With What Changed is a 49-page chronic illness grief workbook for adults navigating new, lifelong, or changing illness and capacity. There is no required pace. Begin with one page, one prompt, or one sentence that feels useful today.

Created by Caroline Aaron, MSW, LICSW, a licensed therapist and the creator of Peppie & Bean Therapy Tools, this workbook pairs plain-language teaching with fictional examples, practical tools, and space for your own reflections.

Inside, you can explore unseen losses, identity beyond productivity, body respect, uncertainty, rest guilt, self-compassion, boundaries, and flexible hope. Practical pages include Plan A, Plan B, and Permission to Rest; medical appointment preparation; short scripts for asking for help; the optional How to Support Me sharing page; a flare-day comfort plan; and a three-column hope exercise. Low-energy pages and “If you answer only one thing” prompts offer a smaller place to begin.

The included 12-item reflection quiz, Where Is Change Weighing Most?, helps you notice needs across grief and change, capacity and pacing, identity and worth, and support and hope. Its four separate area scores point to relevant workbook pages. It is an original, non-diagnostic reflection tool, not a validated assessment or measure of illness severity. Scores are added manually.

You receive four PDF files:
Printable Color
Printable Low-Ink
Fillable Color
Fillable Low-Ink

Each edition contains the same 49 pages in US Letter size, 8.5 x 11 inches. Choose color or low ink, then print for handwriting or use a fillable edition for brief typed answers, checkboxes, and quiz choices. These are four formats of one workbook, not four different workbooks.

For fillable files, use a PDF app that supports forms. Save a copy and reopen it to check that your entries remain; some preview apps do not save form entries. Use separate notes for longer answers. This is a digital download. No physical item will be mailed.

This resource is for education and reflection. It is not therapy, diagnosis, medical treatment, a symptom checker, or crisis care. Use what fits your care plan. For immediate danger, contact local emergency services; in the U.S., call or text 988 for crisis support.

Copyright 2026 Caroline Aaron, MSW, LICSW / Peppie & Bean Therapy Tools. One purchase licenses the original purchaser. Personal purchasers may use the workbook themselves and share only their completed How to Support Me page with trusted people supporting their care. An individual professional purchaser may print or share individual pages with their own individual clients in direct services. Each additional professional needs a separate purchase or approved multi-user license. Do not resell, rebrand, redistribute the files, or upload them to shared drives, websites, client portals, courses, workshops, or organization-wide systems. Contact the shop for expanded-use licensing.