Manon – Progression

My name is Manon and I have secondary progressive MS. In the photograph, I wanted to show that even though I have MS I can be strong and I can do things and I am still a full person. In the photograph I am holding my cane and badminton racket. I chose my cane because I can go on even though I have trouble walking and I chose the badminton racket because I like to have fun and play badminton when I am able to. I was actually playing with a friend and I got very, very tired quickly and I sat down. Instead of just coming to sit down, he sat a little bit away from me and just started playing sitting down and I was like wow this is so cool and it made me feel really happy and loved and yeah it was really nice. I think the silver lining in having MS is that I have met a lot of people I would have never met before. I get to help people I would have never helped before. I get to do a youtube channel and episodes on my experience and I get to have people tell me I am brave and that I am doing something amazing and it feels good. It’s also showing me how strong I am and yeah, I guess that’s it. Vulnerability, what it means to me is, hmm it’s basically putting myself out there without my walls and showing people who I really am and being okay with who I really am so that maybe it helps others do the same. I am vulnerable in my life when I do episodes for my YouTube channel because I show myself the way I really am and I don’t hide anything at all. I try and be vulnerable with friends. That’s harder. I try to tell them a little bit about how I feel with the MS. If I am having certain symptoms that day I try to explain it to them and I try to be myself daily, just with everyone basically even though I find that really hard because I want to be liked and I don’t know if people will like who I really am. What it means to be who I really am is, I am really silly. I am really I like you know singing and dancing for no reason and telling silly jokes and I like silly puns and cartoons and I don’t know I like having fun and I like boy bands and Hello Kitty and you know and I’m 46 but that should still be okay and I like being that way and having fun.

I always make sure I answer questions and I’m as nice as possible and that I explain what it is like because I want people to think of okay MS is bad but this really nice person has it and she does incredible things and she can still have a really fulfilling life and it’s okay and she has friends and she does a lot and it’s not all bad is what I’m saying and I hate to think that people who don’t have MS would think of MS as a life sentence, or something bad or as a person not being worthy of being friends with because they have MS. I didn’t always feel like I was flourishing. I honestly spent a long time just I guess being a bud but I feel like once I started flourishing it’s so amazing because the more you flourish the more you want to flourish and the more you want to feel that feeling. It’s so amazing to be able to do things that not only you’ve never done but that you would have never done if you weren’t sick.