Beautiful women with MS

...this goes out to you.

(The image shown above is Tracey Kirkman. Tracey also has MS. She is another of the models painted by Melissa and is the inspiration behind this project.)

You've now seen the two portraits that Melissa painted of me. Perhaps that's all you came here to see. Maybe you read about the exhibition in the press. Perhaps you know me, either through my work (Fortune Cookie or RNIB) or through Jooly's Joint, the online community of people with MS.

I've written this blog for women with MS everywhere. The point of almost everything I do is an attempt to promote understanding of what it's like to live with MS.


When the MS Society approached me with the offer of being painted by Melissa we talked about a title for the project. 'Strength Through Beauty' was suggested. I found this title difficult to relate to. I don't want to get into a debate about what makes a person physically beautiful, but I do believe that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. A person can be physically beautiful but behave in an ugly way, and plenty of beautiful people have walked the earth who have been perceived as beautiful through what they did, not how they looked.


I don't consider my body a friend. At 19 it turned against me, it let MS take it over. My body has always been prone to being overweight. My face is not pretty. I've always felt 'attractive enough', but I do not feel strength through beauty.


But turn the words in that phrase around, 'Beauty Through Strength' and I think we get a bit closer to the way that a woman with MS experiences life, her sensuality and herself.


I've met very many women with MS in my life. Some show no outward sign of the condition. Others are - in the most extreme sense of the word - physically crippled by it. But what is moving about these women isn't the sorrow or pity that you feel for them, trapped in bodies they can't control.


Spend some moments talking to any woman with MS and whatever physical disability they might be contending with that day will fade into the background until you forget you're talking to a women with MS and realised you're simply talking to a woman.


When the physical is gone you're face-to-face with a woman who is embracing life, who is not beaten, who has all the sensuality that everyone woman has. Our bodies are just a shell. Our bodies are not who we are. For me, it's our strength as women that makes us beautiful. Beauty Through Strength.