Voices of MS

If I were so inclined, I could easily spend eight hours, five days a week (basically my entire time at the MSF!) reading about MS. Even if I managed to get through all the books, websites and medical articles that publish daily, there would still be hundreds of blogs and personal websites to catch up on.

I start each morning in the communications department checking medical websites and journals for the latest news about MS. If that is the meat of my day, reading the MS-related blogs and creative postings all around the Internet is the dessert. I save my favorite ones for the very last, enjoying their wit, wisdom and way with words in the hopes that some of it will carry over into my own day’s writing.

Because the biggest part of my job is editing articles for MSFocus, the Foundation’s quarterly magazine, sometimes I’m lucky enough to find the most moving writing about MS right in my inbox. Since I started working at the MSF this spring, I’ve discovered how many artists, writers and particularly poets there are among you.

Where it often takes me hundreds of words to describe how I am feeling, so many talented people are able to get the complex emotions associated with MS across in just a few spare lines of verse. That’s one reason why we created the new Voices forum on the MSF website. We wanted to create a safe space for people to share their work and talk about what inspired them. And, it’s not just for poetry -- other writers, artists and photographers are welcome, too.

Here is one of my favorite recent posts, called “Attitude” by Stephen Knapp. ( Read more... )