May 27, 2015 was World MS Day. All around the world, people take action in order to raise awareness for Multiple Sclerosis. Every year on World MS Day I stand in solidarity with my fellow warriors, still waiting for a cure but grateful for existing treatment options.
Using social media #strongerthanms has spread like wildfire, and I do believe that people are very aware of MS even if they don’t understand how brutal it can be despite the invisible nature of it’s symptoms. When thinking about this day and the social media campaign, I started thinking about my MS family and how every single one of us is stronger than MS.
All of us, as a whole, epitomize what the true meaning of “stronger than MS” is. I enlisted the help of my MS family, and we talked about what makes us stronger than MS. I can’t take credit alone for this blog entry because the voice is all of ours. There is no doubt that you’ll see why I surround myself with these people in particular.
Considering that this discussion occurred right after our Thursday spin class, the first item that came up was exercise. We are all whole-heartedly committed to our MS exercise classes. We exercise for different reasons than other people, perhaps. But we are stronger than MS because we do more than anyone ever expected we could. They said we couldn’t ride bikes and lift weights at the same time. We do. The said we couldn’t do TRX. We do. We don’t let people dismiss us until we get a chance to show what we are capable of, and we’d rather fall down trying than to sit around and never challenge ourselves.
We are stronger than MS because we set goals for ourselves, both big and small, and we do whatever it takes to achieve them. We don’t necessarily care how long it takes, as long as we succeed. We may not be able to do things the same way as everyone else, and we often have to be creative in our methodology, but we always manage in the end. We are the most determined group of people that you’ll ever meet.
Every single person who walks the face of this earth is dealing with his or her own issues, which may or may not be visible. We are stronger than MS because we understand that nobody else’s problems are smaller or less important than our own. Everything is relative to the person. Certainly none of us would ever say that we have things worse than anyone else, and we are quick to comfort others in any way possible.
We all agree that we have limitations. Unfortunately, that’s a part of life with MS. Even though we have limitations, we do not let the affect those around us. We are a generally a happy bunch. In fact, we are stronger than MS because we do not place our limitations ahead of our happiness. No one should.
But most importantly, we are stronger than MS because we feed off of each other’s positive energy. Being around positivity naturally influences all areas of our lives. That’s not to say that we don’t have our moments of weakness, but luckily in this group it’s hard to not smile and laugh until our faces hurt.
I can’t talk about laughing without talking about Mary. She has a boisterous, hearty laugh that can make anything funny. When Mary laughs, you can hear her practically from the next time zone. It is so contagious that sometimes I don’t even hear what she says because she is laughing so hard, but I can’t help but laugh anyway. According to Mary, we are stronger than MS because we have the ability to make everything funny. After all, laughter is the best medicine, right? And everyone can afford a good laugh.