Unexpected Wholeness
The wholeness that illness cannot touch.
For more than twenty years, Tessi Lynn Ross was a nurse and healthcare leader. Then Long COVID made her the patient and everything certain fell away. This is the story of what she found when medicine didn’t have all of the answers: faith, curiosity, and a wholeness she never had to earn back. A companion for anyone living with an illness the world doesn't fully see, and for the people who love them.
If Your Illness Is One the World Can’t See, You Are Not Forgotten.
Maybe you've been told your labs look fine while your body tells a different story. Maybe you've grieved the life you lived before, or felt yourself quietly disappear from rooms that used to know you. Unexpected Wholeness meets you there — in the grief, the medical gaslighting, the slow work of learning to listen to a body that no longer cooperates. It offers something the wellness world rarely will: permission to stop chasing a fix, and to remember the wholeness that was yours all along.
You Don’t Have To Recover To Be Whole.
For more than twenty years, Tessi Lynn Ross was the nurse: a master’s-educated healthcare leader, fluent in the language of clinical care. Then, in the fall of 2022, Long COVID made her the patient, and she discovered that clinical fluency offers almost no protection when certainty disappears with your health.
This is not a recovery story. Tessi has not fully recovered. It is the story of what became possible when she brought two unexpected companions into the hardest season of her life: faith that healing is possible even when medicine has limited answers, and curiosity, a posture toward suffering that opens doors where certainty has closed them. Through grief, medical gaslighting, and the slow work of learning to listen to a body that no longer cooperates, she found her way to something she never expected: a wholeness that illness cannot touch.
For anyone living with an illness the world doesn’t fully see, like Long COVID, ME/CFS, POTS, fibromyalgia, or Lyme, and for the people who love them, this book is a companion, a validation, and an invitation: even here, even now, you are whole.
Foreword by Dr. Ruby Tam, DO, Founder & Lead Physician, ME/CFS Clinic of Minnesota.
Tessi Lynn Ross, RN, BSN, MPA, spent twenty years in nursing and healthcare leadership before Long COVID made her the patient. Now a holistic nurse coach and founder of Nourish and Flow Coaching, she writes the Substack A Life That Loves You Back.
In Their Own Words
"Unexpected Wholeness is a deeply moving and courageous account of chronic illness, faith, resilience, and the rediscovery of self-worth when life changes in ways we never expected. Tessi's perspective as both a healthcare leader and a patient makes this book especially powerful. It brings understanding, validation, and hope to patients, families, caregivers, and healthcare professionals alike."
- Maria Lima-Leite
Healthcare Executive
"I am living with Long COVID, and this book spoke directly to me. Living with a condition that is difficult to explain, and even more difficult for others to understand, changes how you look at healthcare, your own health, and your life. Tessi's story is thoroughly documented and researched, and it is understandable, compassionate, and real. The resources she shares are so valuable. I came away with information I will keep using, and I only wish I had found it earlier in my own search for healing and help.
Most people do not understand what we are experiencing, because so much of it is still unknown. But chances are you know, love, work with, or care for someone who does. I want the world to read this book, and I want it in the hands of healthcare providers, medical schools, and nursing programs."
- Dr. Deborah Smith
Author, Consultant, Healthcare Executive
"Tessi’s book is compelling, witty, and heartfelt. A vulnerably authentic look into what it takes to redefine thriving in the face of chronic illness."
- Mandy B. Anderson
Best-selling author of Dangerous Hope: Planting Something Meaningful in the Soil of Disappointment
"As a healthcare provider and someone who also had to navigate her own health challenges, I appreciate how this book makes space for both the reality of the struggle and the hope of finding a way forward. Readers will feel the care and understanding behind it in every page.
Unexpected Wholeness offers a compassionate, validating voice for people living with chronic illness. From the exhaustion, isolation, and frustration that can come with an illness others may not see, while reminding readers that they are not alone or broken."
- Dr. Tara Harding
Women's Health Nurse Practitioner, Female Founder, Author & Advocate
"I had the privilege of reading Unexpected Wholeness: Becoming Whole through Chronic Illness, Faith, and Curiosity by Tessi Ross, and I can't recommend this book enough!
Tessi strikes the perfect balance between sharing her own personal journey and offering helpful, meaningful information about chronic illness. Her story is deeply personal, yet the wisdom she shares makes this book incredibly relatable and practical."
- Melinda Jennings
Nurse Leader & Educator
Nurse. Patient. Coach Author.
Still On The Journey.
Tessi Lynn Ross, RN, BSN, MPA, NC-BC is a registered nurse, holistic living coach and consultant, chronic illness survivor, writer, speaker and advocate with more than two decades of experience in nursing and healthcare leadership. In the fall of 2022, a Long COVID diagnosis brought her career to an unexpected halt and set her on a path toward healing, wholeness, and a new kind of calling.
A graduate of Jamestown College (BSN) and the University of North Dakota (MPA, Healthcare Administration), Tessi has presented at national healthcare and quality improvement conferences, like the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and others on a more regional level, like the Georgia Hospital Association.
She completed the Transformative Nurse Coach Collective in 2026 and is a board certified nurse coach. She is the founder and CEO of Nourish and Flow Coaching LLC, a holistic living coaching and consulting practice dedicated to advancing population health, holistic care, and empowering people of all abilities to thrive by helping clients remember their inherent wholeness and c0-creating a life that loves them back.
Tessi lives in the Minneapolis, Minnesota area with her family.
More From Tessi
Tessi shares further reflections on illness, health, and whole person living through her writing on Substack.