Nitika Chopra: Learning to Thrive with Chronic Illness

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illness community. So after nearly a decade in the lifestyle and blogging space, she pivoted to create Chronicon, a conference and community that elevates the visibility of more than the one hundred and thirty three million Americans living with chronic illnesses, because, let's be honest, this population deserves a lot more love and support. I've known Nitka since about twenty ten, and I've continued to be in awe of how much she gives.

Living with three chronic illnesses is something I'll never truly understand, but I can see her work in motion. Her mission to quote inspire radical self Love has developed into a community of thousands. Every time I talk to Nitka, I feel inspired, I feel motivated, and I just feel her light, including in this conversation.

some feedback. I got some feedback, especially as like a brown girl, you know, living in a home that was filled with lots of love, but definitely also a lot of rules. It was not so encouraged or people were so enthusiastic about my wanting to have the I guess, the center of attention in those ways, you know. And so yeah, I didn't really think of it that way. I just loved singing, but there was this part of it where I would, yeah, go out and just kind

of be myself. And then I found that, you know, life can kind of teach you to go in your shell a little bit. I think over time, and I think that's kind of what happened with me after a while.

it eventually. So we kind of thought that that's what it would be and it wouldn't be a big deal, but gout to going to the doctor them thinking it might be something different, and then I ended up getting a biopsy to confirm it, and we found out that it was a skin condition called psoriasis, and soriasis is an autoimmune disease. And within probably about a year, I went from having like a dime sized spot on my left arm to basically being covered from the tip of

my foot to the tip of my head. It was awful, to be honest with you. I think it's important to be honest about it because my story is not unique. Actually, it just doesn't get told very often. So what soriasis specifically is like, it's basically like having chicken pox all

the time. And what my form, because there's a few different types of psoriasis, but what my form of psoriasis is like is I basically got like thick scales of skin on top of my regular skin, and they itch constantly, and then if I did itch them, they would bleed and they would flake like how dandriff flakes. But that was happening from the tip of my foot to the tip of my head. So I lived like that for

the better part of seventeen years of my life. I ended up getting seriatic arthritis when I was nineteen as well, and yeah, I mean it was Yeah, we could have

a whole episode of how painful it was. And I think that's why when we started talking, I was like, I feel so emotional because these conversations are so important to me because I know I'm not the only one, and there are hundreds of millions of people out there who are living with a chronic illness, who are living with multiple chronic illnesses, and there's so many people out there who don't even know that what they are experiencing is a chronic illness, which is something that I've just

I never even thought about until I started my company because I had gotten my first condition so young. But it's something that I hear a lot where, you know, especially women will come to me and be like, oh, I have PCOS. Is that a chronic illness? And I'm like, yes, it is. The National Health Council says that anything with persistent symptoms for three months or longer is considered a chronic illness. And so that is that is so many things,

so many people, And it's not about over identifying. That's not necessarily what I believe. But I think that there is an opportunity for celebration around the amount of strength and the amount of resourcefulness and the amount of emotional empathy and all of these things that you really have to develop when you are dealing with a chronic condition that I think needs to be talked about more.

about that. It was about the fact that I felt like I didn't have to think about any of the other things that were going on in my life. I could just be a musician in that moment and I could just connect to this, Like really, I felt really divine part of me that was so much greater than me. So yeah, so I think that it was like always

my respite. You know. It just felt like I could just tuck away and I mean I was belting show tunes, but still like, you know, my version of tucking away and feeling like, yeah, it was just like me and my voice.

like so wrong. And then to be an artist on a stage where people are looking at you almost felt like you were flaunting your body in some sort of really extreme way, which of course was not like anything about I wanted to sing like Disney princess songs, you know what I mean. But yeah, that was a part

of it. And so those shoulds were really about how it looks to others, like making sure that you look at way in society, and then obviously like a lot of intensity around making sure you have a certain amount of money and income coming in, and especially like being first generation you know, my parents immigrated from India, Like that is so understandable that they would have those concerns and have that be an important part of what they wanted me to focus on.

And something I talk about a lot is I think that one of the hard parts of going through a divorce. We got divorced about four years later, is that people, I think often can feel really betrayed by their intuition and by their gut when they have feelings like that, Right, I knew with every fiber of my being he was meant to be my husband. So for us to not be married anymore was really devastating, obviously for so many obvious reasons, but then also that part that was like

how could I be so wrong? Like that doesn't make any spiritual sense to me, And it took me a very long time to understand I was not wrong. He was meant to be my husband. The things I learned in our relationship and through that experience, both positive, negative, good, hard, all of that were exactly what I was meant to do.

heartbreak and disappointment in what I went through. And that's happened many times in my life, you know, especially through my health and so many things that I've been through. But with my marriage, I think, for one, it really did teach me a lot about my value. To be honest, my ex husband was a wonderful is a wonderful man, and he really saw me in a way that was

incredibly healing for me. I was very different than everyone in my family growing up, and so that was really hard, even though there was a lot of love in my household and my ex husband when we started dating, he was sort of the first person that saw like the woman that you see today. He saw her when I was like nineteen, and I had no idea that she existed. I didn't know where to look for her. I didn't

have any clue about her. And so like seeing yourself through someone's eyes in that way is such a kind, loving, bet beautiful thing. It's it's incredibly healing, and I know that him being in my life in that moment allowed me to sort of keep moving forward. It also happened to be one of the most devastating times in my

life for my health. It was when I was the sickest I had ever been while we were married, and so there was a big part of me that could have just sort of, I guess like left it there, just been like I'm sick, that's it. And he never saw me that way. He never ever did. And so to have that teacher in your life who loves you so purely and in like your truest essence and for the best parts of you, and of course also loves you through the hardest moments as well, that is so

healing and so beautiful. And so I think now you know, in looking for another partner, I really know, like when I fall in love again, it will have to be someone who who honors me at that level, and we'll also have like a much healthier relationship and a lot of other ways. You know. It obviously didn't work for reasons, but that piece is so pure and so beautiful, and it did teach me a lot about my value, which I hadn't learned as a kid.

a show, And that's essentially what happened. I ended up meeting the founder of the skincare company Fresh Love, Glasman, and we became good friends. And yeah, we were literally like out one night and he was talking about going to QBC and just like his hectic schedule, and I was like, you should just hire me to do it, and he was like, well, that's a great idea. It was really a beautiful marriage of talking about my skin journey and also like how skincare can be a really

beautiful access point to self love. And I had always felt really left out of the skincare conversation because it was always just like a means to an end for me. It wasn't like a very nurturing experience while I was dealing with my skin. So yeah, I just felt like a really natural progression.

out there who are listening, were brown. It's like z TV is always on the background, in the background, It's just always on, Like in my grandparents' place, my parents' place. It was a show called Naturally Beautiful, and yeah it

was great. The day that I auditioned for the show, I was going to a really bad flare, so my psoriasis was all over And this is a show called naturally Beautiful, okay, And I'm coming in there with like flaky as flaky skin, red spots everywhere, and I'm just like, Hi, guys, yeah, don't worry about it. It's gonna be fine, like just trying to not even trying, just really committed to like I was born for the show and you're going to

hire me like that kind of energy. I ended up getting the job because I was right for the job, even though I had all this stuff happening with my skin, and I ended up trying a new treatment that helped me so that I could get clearer skin by the time we started filming. But it was actually I'm super proud of the fact that, like, even though I had all that going on with my health, that they still saw that I was the right person for it, you know.

And I think it's just like good to remember that, like when you're meant for something, it'll happen.

I thought people needed to know. And I would do these events, you know in New York City, and oh my god, I would hustle, Okay, I would try to get as much stuff as I could for free. I would like barter partner, like doing so so many things brick by brick. This was never ever anything that's been like funded in some fancy way or like any of that.

And yeah, I guess that was my version of influencing where I felt like, you know, you should come to this thing that I'm doing because I'm going to introduce you to all these really amazing people and brands, and that was like really pure. It wasn't about like some hierarchy. It was really about this is like from my heart and this is what I love. And if you like want to get connected to that, great, If you want to just come and like enjoy yourself, that's great too,

you know. But now it's become this like competition. How many whatevers can you get? And you're not good enough if you don't get a certain amount and all these things that I'm sure people are aware of, and it just doesn't feel pure to me.

like very dark. I had spent the first part of my career doing these conversations around beauty and lifestyle, and I really genuinely loved the conversations I was having, but I wasn't talking to the person that I was born to talk to, right And I didn't even know that I could talk to that person. There were so many things I didn't understand, and so I feel like the universe, God, whatever or things were just perfectly timed where stuff just

really didn't work for those two plus years. And what I mean by that was I was doing like those events or those like partnerships or media things or whatever like that, We're coming very easily in some ways. Initially, they just stopped in a major, major way. And whenever I would go to a brand or a company that I had a great relationship with and I would say, Hey, like, I'm finding this is happening a lot. Do you have any advice for me? Is there something that I'm missing?

I love getting that kind of feedback, especially when you know it's like someone who really wants you to win, and you know what I mean, Like, that's such a really wonderful gift you can give someone to let them know, like this is what I see that you might not be noticing. But everyone came back to me and was just like, the market is just what it is, or the political scene is so intense right now. People feel

like there's so much unrest and so much uncertainty. We're cutting back on marketing budgets like things like that were coming up, and I'm sure a lot of people are probably hearing that right now because there's like another cycle of that right So it just kind of stopped, and it made me have to really reevaluate. It made me have to really ask, is this what you want to

keep doing? And I think the best thing that I did was the year before I started chronic con, I did this exercise where, because I felt so lost, every time I would meet someone or do a talk or an interview, I would say that I did something different each time. And what I mean by that is I wouldn't lie, but I would I would sort of try

on different parts of the things that I did. So like with you, i might say I'm a talk show host and then I'd go to an event and I'd say, oh, I'm a chronic illness advocate, and then with someone else I'd say, oh, I'm a blogger or whatever. Right, So it's all true, but it was just different aspects of what I was doing. And every time I said that I was a chronic illness advocate, I had the most meaningful, important, and just the most moving connections with people. And I

had never experienced that in my entire career. It was something that was so so new, and it was like the thing I was looking for. It was why I wanted to do this in the first place. I never wanted to have a talk show because I just wanted to look cute and outfits all the time. I mean, that's fun, but I really wanted to like talk to the person on the other side of the screen and see if I could help them, right, So that's what I was having in my career was totally on the toilet.

I didn't have that. And then I would do I called them self love celebrations, those events I was mentioning. I would do those. Sometimes I could only do a couple of year to have them make sense, but that would also help with some like financial you know, support and stuff like that. I would make some good money doing those. But yeah, I really felt like, you know, I was hanging on. It's just hanging on.

the queen that you are. Right, And I was walking around and I was just like, oh my gosh, if I, as a psoriasis covered kid, had gone to an event that had said come over here with your flaky skin, I'm going to put the best makeup on you and you were going to glow like the queen you are, or I'm going to give you a peedicure. Even though it's like getting a petticure was always really as something I was really self conscious of as a kid because

of my skin. These small things that people don't think about necessarily unless you've had to experience something like that. And I was like, if I had had a place to go where they celebrated me, oh my god, I would have changed my whole life. It would have changed everything about the way that I felt about myself, the way I interacted with people. So many different things, and I started walking around the event and I was like, oh,

what would that be called. I literally was just like having this spiritual experience while I was walking around the event, and I thought I kept saying different names, and then I was like, chronic con. I have to be honest. I was terrified. For like the first six months that I thought of the idea, I barely told anyone. I told like one person who worked at a company that ended up being like my main partner for the event

that year. The first year, I told one person, and like some close friends I started to kind of talk about it with. But I was really afraid because it kind of like why I was so emotional when I got here, Like it felt like such a big responsibility, and not that I need to take it all on myself or anything like that, or even that I would be so arrogant to think that I am, but even just to try, you know, and to try to unite

this population who's so often just like completely forgotten. And learning that there are one hundred and thirty three million Americans living with a chronic illness that we know of, I was like, what, I'm sorry, how is this population so huge? And how come every time I talk to someone else who's chronically ill, we all feel like we are the only people. So there was just all of this emotion coming up for me around it, and I

was like, I don't know, I bootstrapping everything. I am like doing this one crusty brick at a time.

So it's like, okay, we're all here, Okay, now what And you know, it kind of was this experience of like going to Facebook group or whatever and just having a lot of trauma, dumping a lot of anxiety. People would just talk about like their worst experiences or their biggest fears, and I get it, like I have those fears too, right, So it's not that that's wrong, It's just that I'm already sick. I don't really need you

to remind me of that, right. And so there's this nuance and this kind of fine line that I've been working on, even with what I'm building with chronicon of like how do we talk to this population very specifically because they are the ones that we want to shine a light on without over identifying and over focusing on our conditions and our illnesses all the time. It's like, it's a very very fine line, and it's something I'm working on honestly every day, and I think we do

a pretty good job of it. But yeah, and other communities, I really hadn't ever found another community that I could go to that I felt like resonated with my health.

reached out and offered support. So we're part of this same group that we've been a part of for more than ten years now, which is wild to people in a variety of industries across the board. And I was going through at that time the hardest thing I'd ever been through, and I just felt so alone, and I felt like nobody who knew me really knew me, nobody could help, nobody could support me.

just triage and take care of yourself. So I'm not saying that, right, But there is also this moment I find for myself where I could really wallow and it's fair, it's honestly, it's justified a lot of the time, and people probably would look at me wallowing and be like, yeah, well that was a crabhand. So like, I totally get it right, but I don't feel good when I do it, you know, and my health suffers as a result. My mental health really suffers as a result. So I've made

it a practice to focus on others. I mean, mother Teresa talks about that, you know. I mean, she has like a famous quote. I'm forgetting it in this moment, but like when you feel helpless, help someone, that's what it is. And so I make that a practice because I honestly I see God and people the most I see and that's light, right, like whatever you want to call it. It's not a religious thing.

But it was an anchor for me. Every time I wanted to give up, I would remember hearing that message and being like, Okay, I'm not going to give up. This is going to be worth it for some reason to be able to help people Sunday. But I've had to focus on the light and something greater than my own suffering in order to get out of my suffering.

It is actually a solvable problem. So I think that's a lot of where my drive comes from, of like if I can help even one person, or hopefully lots of people, to know that they are not alone in their struggles, that those moments when they're like having an endometriosis flare and they are in severe pain and they feel like they can't even get one email out that they have to do for work, or they're going to a doctor and they're getting another MRI or another biopsy

and they are like, why am I the only one? Even what you were saying, even though it wasn't a physical challenge, Like that feeling of no one really gets what I'm going through, like that compounds so much. It's already hard to go to the doctor and get a biopsy or get an MRI, or get a blood test or whatever right, or have to have a hysterectomy because you have edinemiosis or whatever it might be. That's already really brutal. I'm not going to say that I can

take any of that away, because I can't. I'm not a doctor. But this issue where we then also have to do it in silence alone in our homes, even sometimes with our partner right next to us, who doesn't have the same condition who tries to be there for us but just couldn't possibly get what we're going through because they just don't know that is a fixable problem.

That does not have to be the case. And I do think that if we start to really shine a light again on celebrating how much we are able to do and how much we are just freaking warriors in the things that we do every single day. If people only knew the stuff that chronically old folks have to do on a second to second basis, it is just wild.

I think the more that we can celebrate that and shine a light on it, I really do think that inherently that is healing, and maybe not in the end result way that people typically talk about healing, like I'm going to fix your soriasis or something, but in a deeper, cellular, spiritual emotional way that I think is really importantra I'm the founder of Chronicicon, and what I hope that we do with chronic con is help people feel less alone.

And today is for you. It's just it's a dream come true to be here with.

can have the hours that suit their needs. They get to go out and maybe start a workout routine that makes them feel empowered. Isn't about something oppressive, but actually it's something that they can do while they're still living with MS. You know, whatever it is, it's not about we're going to fix it all. It's about empowering the person to know they have dignity and they are worth so much, even though there's so many systems, countless systems

trying to tell them that they're not. And the thing that I've noticed in my work is that it's a lot of what happens because of the cycle that I just explained, right of real deep loneliness and separation and isolation, we start to really believe that we aren't allowed the things that we really want because we are sort of taken out of the equation in a lot of ways.

And that has been probably the most transformative thing for me to know that even when I was mostly bedridden, I could barely walk for the first half of my twenties because of my seriatic arthritis, and I was told that I would be completely immobile by the time I was thirty if I hadn't started a medication that I needed, And basically I had to fight for my right to dream during that time, right because it would have been so easy for me to lay in bed in pain

and assume that I didn't have any other value, but the pain that I was feeling in that moment, it would have been totally understandable.

talk about not having kids. I honestly went through like a nine year journey of trying to figure out if I was going to have kids or not, if I even wanted to, And to be honest with you, I think I probably knew deep down all along that I didn't want to have kids, but I really questioned, what does that mean about me as a woman, What does that mean about my worth and like, also how do

I fit into society? What do my relationships look like even with other women and friends if I am not a mom, And that's something I'm still like always kind of unraveling and you know, figuring out. But yeah, I decided not to have kids, and I've been really vocal about it because I think it's really important.

a joy. And I also like told my team, like I will not be available because I will be getting zen and like making sure I have had enough protein and like things like that in order to you know, show up as my best self when I go places. And then yeah, I think the biggest thing also was like I started my entrepreneurial journey because I had tried to do things that were in like the typical workforce, and just notice that, like my energy levels really varied

depending on how I feel in a certain day. I work really really hard, but that might mean that I work all day Sunday, but Tuesday I was having a flair and I couldn't. So I think that's kind of something that I've learned to just be okay with and also untrust myself and those rhythms. And then yeah, I'm

a big like here's my calendly link. This is the time that I'm available and I don't really have any other time because I know that I'm probably going to have to be like dealing with health stuff or just like need a lot of introverted me time too.

I'm like ten times worse for my kids. I'm really struggling with this and fit and trying to figure out, like I know, the only way that I can create opportunities is to like throw myself at things, So I'm hesitant to say no to opportunities. So that's all of the background of where this question is coming from, Like, if these are the only times you have, if this is the only bandwidth that you have, do you feel like you're missing opportunities?

to myself. It is hard for especially for women. We're trying to do so many things, and like we we want so much and you know, and it's all really beautiful and it's like for good reason and all of that. But I think we have to kind of be our own our own keeper in that way.

I was like the body hair was like next level, you know, and like my parents, I mean my mom, you know, she went to like an all girls school in like the middle of India. She was like, you can't shave and like all these things that like American kids do you know, when I was like ten and so, yeah, there was just a lot of things that I had to really understand and go through. You know, as a kid,

I didn't understand them. Actually, it taught me so much during that time because after I got better, I also was judged for how I looked, but in a very different way. Right people found me to be quote unquote acceptable. And that was one of the greatest spiritual lessons I have ever learned in my life, seeing the difference of how people treated me and knowing that I was the

exact same person on the inside the entire time. And I think what that has done for me today is I think in shaping the way that I want my career to go to. I think it's just made me less and less and less interested about things that have to do with like the visual aspect of who I am as a person. Being able to be in front of people and talk to people is great, but I don't really want to have a career that's focused on you have to look a certain way in order to

actually make a difference. And honestly, like, that's why I love chronicons so much, because even when I was going through like really really hard stuff with my diagnosed this last year, and I didn't know what was going on and all these different things. I could show up being exactly who I am in one of the worst situations of you know, my life. And yeah, I don't know.

So I don't know if that answers your question, but that's what came up for me, is like just this shedding and like remembering that it's just not it can't be about that. I literally look different every single day. Yeah, and I think as women we do, especially like when women are pregnant or I've been on a lot of medication, So now I look different than I did last year, and it just can't be about that totally.

on the things that you can and I can. I can show up. I can like create this content or this conference or whatever it might be. I can put my heart into things, right, but yeah, I can't change if like I lose my hair or like I you know, like gain weight or gets the rise of scales or whatever. And I just think it's like really been a toxic kind of pattern that a lot of people have been kind of thrust into in our society. I'm just like

very tired of it. So what do people need to know about chronicon in person?

stream tickets available, so that's really great. If you, you know, can't get out of bed, if you like can't travel because of you know, your immune system or even whatever it might be, we have live streaming available. We also have scholarships available, which is like one of the things I'm super super passionate about just making sure that it's as accessible as possible. And I give a scholarship to

anyone basically who fills out the scholarship form. So it's really really really important to me that if you want to be a part of what we're doing, that you find a place with us. And then yeah, we also have our community app so it kind of all goes together. And yeah, I just I can't I can't wait, and

I'm so honored. And we have some amazing speakers that are coming for the in person concon like doctor Darien Sutton who started a TikTok med school who was amazing, and also Mira Mariah who like is a disability advocate, and also Ariana Grande's tattoo artist. You know, like Stacy London, our dear friend. She's been one of my biggest supporters since I started Chronicon since before I even started it.

She was actually the last person I told because her opinion meant so much to me, and I was so afraid that she was going to be like, this is a horrible idea. So I waited until the end and she has been so supportive. And yeah, the whole list is on our website. It's going to be really great.

dot com. You can also find Nittka on Instagram at Nitika Chopra and find all things Chronicon at Chronicon Official she Pivots is an amazing community of women who understand that personal is the professional.