RELATE, RELAX, RELEASE
Hearing the doctors confirm, “You have MS,” is one of the most mind-altering things you can experience. At that moment, it’s almost unfathomable to believe this will be your new reality. Your mind floods with what ifs, trying to decipher the impossible questions about your future, your body, and what comes next. Within seconds you're wondering, “What does this mean for me?” If your experience was anything like mine, the words roll off the doctor’s lips casually. Almost as if they are telling you, “The sky is blue today.” What feels like a normal diagnosis to them feels everything but normal to you and the sky feels more gray than anything.
Navigating this new normal can quickly spiral into isolation. It’s a challenge to put your experience into words and even harder to explain it to those who don’t understand what it means to live with a chronic illness. In my recent blog “Body Awareness: A Looking Glass for Your Support System,” I shared how tuning into your body can help you ask for and receive more aligned support. It can ease resentment and those familiar thoughts of people not showing up for you in the way you hope they would. The more language we have to name our experience, the easier it becomes to communicate that to others.
One of the most invaluable resources I’ve discovered is community. Especially a community that doesn’t need MS to be explained. Body awareness hits differently with the folks who get it. I’ll never forget my first year at Wellness Week(end). On night one after happy hour, I stood alongside a group of women as we exchanged stories of how we were diagnosed and the symptoms that led up to them. For the first time in four years, I had never felt so seen. What once made me feel alone and “othered” soon allowed me to be affirmed in ways I hadn’t imagined.
That same weekend, I participated in a yoga class — not as the teacher, but as a student. While I’ve been in spaces before where people showed up differently on the mat, this was my first time practicing alongside other women who also live with MS. Some practiced from a chair, others adjusted postures to meet their bodies where they were that day. It was a quiet, powerful reminder that yoga and wellness can hold all of us, just as we are. That experience deeply reaffirmed how I teach and why I remain so adamant about accessibility in the practice. Everyone deserves a space where their body is honored without question.
This isn’t to downplay the importance of your broader support system because they matter too. My point is, we need both. We deserve all the soft spaces we can land. Being seen in this way helps ease anxiety and quiet the self-doubt that can build when doctors downplay or question your symptoms. It affirms your experience has been real all along. Being in an MS community like We Are ILL will offer you the opportunity to finally relate, relax and release.
If you’re searching for a space where you can be seen, I invite you to join us for this year’s Wellness Week(end), November 7-9 in Atlanta. There is nothing quite like it. Come find your people. I promise you won’t be disappointed .
