[00:00:00] 10 years ago, when I got diagnosed with MS, I was terrified it would take away my dreams and the life I had worked so hard to build. And yeah, over the past 10 years, I've had to watch other people achieve the goals I wanted as I was over here doing everything on MS speed. But as I'm reaching my 10-year anniversary of this diagnosis, something happened this week that reminded me of a lesson every ambitious woman with MS needs to hear.
And before we get started, I wanna invite you to something special. Living with MS can feel overwhelming, but one habit can shift everything. That's what I'll show you inside my free webinar, How to Help Slow MS Progression, Starting with Just One Habit. Think of it as your first step towards more energy, confidence, and hope.
Save your seat at [00:01:00] aleenebrennan.com/webinar. Welcome to my MS podcast, where women with MS learn how to slow progression and live a life they love. I'm Aleene Brennan, your MS sister and a practitioner who knows the science and the reality of living this too. Each week, I share simple science-backed habits to boost your energy, stay consistent, and feel like yourself again.
Because MS may be a part of your story, but it doesn't get to write the ending. Hello, hello, my friends. Welcome back. I am so glad that you decided to hit play today because this is a big celebratory episode that also has a lot of honest, raw truths tucked into it, which is pretty typical for our conversations, right?
So if you've been around for a while, you may know this. If this is your first time tuning in, I'll kind of bring you up to speed. I'm, air quotes, "celebrating" the 10-year [00:02:00] anniversary of my diagnosis. In 2016, I was diagnosed with relapsing remitting MS, and I was 36 years old at the time, and it felt like what was supposed to be the prime of my life.
I was starting my nutrition coaching practice. I was dating and very much ready to be married and have a baby and get a home and, like, do all of the things. I had worked so insanely hard through my 20s and early 30s to finally get to this point. So here I am. I feel like I'm finally at the point in my life where it's all gonna come together.
All of my hard work is finally going to pay off. The business is going to grow as I'm getting married and having a baby and all the things. And instead, I'm getting diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and with it, learning how to live with MS fatigue, limits that I struggle to understand, [00:03:00] let alone the people around me.
Like, they don't get it. They just don't. They try. They have good intentions. But the reality is when somebody feels as bad as we do on our hard fatigue days- The only thing that they can compare it to is like when they have the flu. And when they have the flu, they're in bed and resting and taking time off and taking care of themselves until it passes.
But MS doesn't pass. It's like our constant companion for life. And the kicker is we don't have the appearance of like having the quote-unquote flu. We still look the same on the outside, so we can some days feel like garbage on the inside, but on the outside, we still look like our same pre-MS self. So the world still has those pre-MS expectations of us.
And if I'm being honest, but I think you would say the same thing [00:04:00] too, sometimes it's easy for even us not to have those pre-MS expectations of ourselves. Because for the most part, we liked who we were pre-MS. We were working hard. We got things done. We felt successful. We felt productive. We felt efficient.
That felt really good. Yes, we were running in burnout mode, and yes, we were exhausted and all the different things, but there was that sense of accomplishment, that sense of momentum and progress and achievement in life. That felt really good to our ambitious hearts. So then when we get this diagnosis and it feels like the very thing that we need to maintain that life and our pre-MS selves is taken away from us, our energy.
And having that disconnect of having to deal with that, but likely having nobody in your world that can truly understand what you're going through, one of the things that most of [00:05:00] us do is we try to connect with other women who are in the same struggle with us. And I know many of us may go to some like in-person support groups and some find really good ones.
The majority of us go and feel like we don't fit in and we walk away feeling kind of guilty that we're struggling when we are doing by most measures really good with this diagnosis. We may not have the significant mobility issues, but we're still dealing with the struggles of getting through the day because of MS fatigue or brain fog or whatever it may be.
And we're still carrying a lot of responsibilities in our days. So when the in-person support groups don't work out, we go online and we think, "All right, there's enough like Facebook groups in this world. Let me see if I can find some connections there." So you go to one, two, three, 10. I don't know. [00:06:00] There's so many.
But each one feels heavier than the next. They're doom and gloom too, and that doesn't feel good either. Like, again, you have real and many responsibilities and things that you're trying to get done in a day and in a week, and it's really hard to do them now. But you don't wanna wallow in the sadness.
Like, that's not what you're craving. You wanna feel seen and validated in your struggle, but you also want to lift your chin so that you can keep going, 'cause that's the goal. The goal is not to have this poor me mentality or pity from other people. Like, that is the opposite of what we want. We wanna feel seen, we wanna feel validated, but not pitied.
So that can lead you to only feel, like, more alone in it. 'Cause not only do the people around you not get it, 'cause they don't have MS, but then when you reach out [00:07:00] and try to intentionally connect with other people who are living with MS and feel different from them, like feel like you don't fit in there either, that's really hard.
Like, where do you turn then? I experienced this firsthand, but the more I was living with MS, and as I got to meet many of you, like one by one, either through a social media conversation or working with me in my nutrition coaching practice, many of you were saying the same exact thing. You wanted support.
You wanted that sense of community, but you didn't feel like you fit in anywhere. So this vision kind of started for me. What if I could build a community of ambitious women with MS? The ones who yes, had hard days, but still believed in their dreams. The ones who weren't willing to let MS take away the life they had worked so hard [00:08:00] for.
Who were still fighting to keep their careers on track even when their bodies were exhausted and they wanted to quit. The women who were still pouring their hearts into their family and their friendships and their hobbies and their community and all the things. And the women who were learning how to live life in a way that didn't wreck their health or shrink their goals.
I couldn't find that community, and I heard so many of you desperately wanting it. So I decided to start my Instagram page, and I had this goal of like, what if I could hit 10,000 followers on this page? I don't know why it was. Maybe it was because it gave you the swipe up feature back in the day, or that just looked like an impressive number.
Because as much as I hate to say it, like Instagram kind of gives that allure to these vanity metrics. Like what does 10,000 mean? I don't know, but that was a number that I [00:09:00] had in mind, and that was my goal. So I started my page with that goal of reaching 10,000 ambitious women living with MS. And on the page I would share my journey living with MS.
And if I'm being honest, part of me struggled with even how to share my journey at first because I obviously I wanted to share the good. We were done with the doom and gloom, right? We didn't need more of that. I wanted to share the good, the changes that I was making in my diet, the hacks that I was finding to feel better, the things that I was learning as a nutritionist specializing in MS.
The things that I knew as a previous yoga instructor and personal trainer, and the things that I was finding on my journey as I navigated this through my 30s and 40s and getting married and motherhood and all of the things. Sharing all of that felt natural, that felt easy. But then I would have a hard day.
Fatigue would hit, or once again, I had too [00:10:00] high expectations of myself. Fantasy me was making plans that real me couldn't follow through on. And I hesitated to share that because I wanted to be the inspiration. I mean, I cannot tell you the goals and the vision that I have for the work that I do in supporting the MS community I've had, yes, the opportunity to coach so many of you in my private nutrition coaching practice and build this podcast.
I didn't have anybody helping me out. I didn't know any background about building a podcast. I had to figure that out, and all that takes time and energy. And I still want to share more on YouTube. There's so much that I wanna do, and I just wish that I had my pre-MS energy to be able to do it because my goodness, my goodness, I have so many good things that I am so excited to build and share in our community, and I'm having to go at a speed limit that I don't like going at.
And yes, there [00:11:00] are many times where I try to push way beyond my limit, and fatigue hits, and then I have to go through the recovery, and how long will it take this time? I don't know. Sometimes it's an afternoon, sometimes it's a weekend, sometimes it's weeks. We don't know. Like, that's always the big question mark, right?
But I hesitated to share that side because I want to be the inspiration. I wanna be the person that always shares the positive, that lifts the chin, that brings hope. I wanna be part of your daily routine, so each day you're visiting my Instagram page to get hope, to get inspiration, to feel seen, to feel validated because I like being that person that can help to lift others up.
And isn't that true for all of us? That's who we were before our diagnosis. We showed up well for everyone. We were the person everyone could depend upon, and we did everything with a smile, right? Like, we would run circles around other people. [00:12:00] And yes, often we were running in burnout mode, but we did it in heels, and we made it look easy So what happens when you have days now that you can't show up the way that you used to or the way that you want to?
What happens on days when the tears come easier than the smile? I wanted to hide that, but that's the very thing that unites us. We can have strong mornings and hard afternoons. We can have stretches of really good days or weeks or months that are followed by really hard days, weeks, and months. Both are true.
We can be strong and we can struggle. It's incredibly frustrating. It's really confusing. And yet it's our reality. So why do we hide the hard and only share the good? That's what I wanted to do. I wanted to hide the hard and only share the [00:13:00] good. I didn't want to admit the pressure I was putting on myself to maintain my pre-MS life.
I didn't want MS to win. I didn't want to fail. But I realized if I wanted this page to mean anything and be a page that 10,000 women wanted to follow, I needed to share the whole story. I needed to share the wins. I needed to share the setbacks, the stable MRIs, and yes, the tears behind closed doors in the bathroom or the closet or the car, wherever your release is.
And the days that, yeah, I felt strong like my pre-MS self, followed by the days I couldn't get off the couch. That's what we need. It's not doom and gloom. It's our reality. And I realized that by only sharing half the story wasn't going to help you. It was only going to make you feel more alone. Because if you only see the wins, if you only see the stable MRIs, if you only see the happy moments that lead [00:14:00] you to believe that the other side doesn't exist, and therefore it makes you feel like you're doing something wrong.
You're the only one with the hard days. You don't need the highlight reels of MS. You need the full picture. That's what unites us. That's what makes us feel less alone. So what if we could tell our full stories of how, yeah, our lives got exponentially harder after getting diagnosed with MS? And we had to walk the hard road of having to readjust our lives in ways we never expected.
And we did nothing to cause this disease, nothing to cause this diagnosis or these symptoms, but yet we have to live with it. But telling the full story is so important because it helps us to support each other on the hard days, but also remind us to have hope and our [00:15:00] ability to protect the lives that we worked so hard to build.
Just because you have a hard day doesn't mean the life that you worked so hard to build is slipping through your fingers. It's not. You're having a hard day in that moment, and you don't need to add guilt or pressure or shame to that. You need to have grace with yourself in that moment. So what if on this page I could help other women stop feeling like they had to choose between being honest about how hard MS is and being hopeful about what their future still could be.
We need both. We need truth and we need hope. So as I'm seeing all of this, my determination to build this village of ambitious women who can walk alongside one another and support one another on this wild rollercoaster of MS [00:16:00] became even stronger. And the irony of it is, the journey to get there was so reflective of the struggle that I am talking about.
So I remember, like I started it years ago, obviously, during an MS Awareness Month. I was like, "This is gonna be my launch. This is gonna be amazing. I'm gonna share a new reel like every day." And because I know I'm with my fellow ambitious women here, I will, I will share the backside of it, too. I was like, "Oh, wait a minute.
Like if I'm creating a daily reel, I should probably also create a daily video on YouTube. So maybe I create the YouTube video and then I just take a portion of that and that becomes a reel." Right? Like am I with my people here? Do we know how our brains work? So I created a video every single day during MS Awareness Month.
I got it up on YouTube and I got it up on Instagram and I was feeling really good because they were getting [00:17:00] great traction. Women were coming to my Instagram page and hitting follow and liking the videos and commenting on them. And then because of that, the lovely Instagram algorithm was working in my favor 'cause it was like, oh, this is something that people like and she's consistent, so let's start showing more of her content in other people's feeds.
And I was cruising. I was like, "This is it. This is amazing. Here it is, Alane. Let's go." And then to no surprise, I completely burned myself out. So all of this momentum that I had worked so hard to build halted because I was no longer able to record, edit, and post and all the different things a video every day.
I was struggling to get one up a week. And then Instagram, of course, is like, "Oh, she's not being consistent. We're no longer showing her posts to anybody anymore." So then I'm having to work [00:18:00] twice as hard because now the algorithm is not in my favor, so I have half the energy and having to work twice as hard.
Sound familiar? I'm describing my journey to 10,000 followers on my Instagram account, but I'm willing to bet that you're hearing this and that you can relate all too well, that you often have to work with half the energy than all of your peers or friends or neighbors or family members or community members or church members, whoever it is.
The people in your world, you are working with half the energy that they have and having to work twice as hard. That's the very reason why we need this page, because you hear that and you're like, "Yes!" Thank you for putting to words what, what I experience every day but struggle to articulate. So the other people growing Instagram accounts are gaining 1,000 followers, like, every month, every week.
Some of them are getting 1,000 [00:19:00] followers per day. Your girl over here was getting 1,000 a year. That was MS's timeline for me. Do you hate MS's timeline as much as I do? Because I know what I'm capable of. I know how hard I can work. I knew if I just had the energy, I could move faster. I could get it done, right?
Like, you've felt that, too, looking around, watching everyone else sprint while you are struggling to get through the day sometimes. That's one of the hardest parts of MS. And can we talk about how frustrating it is when people say, "Just pace yourself." Like, really? Thanks, 'cause that, that concept, like, just didn't occur to me.
Thank you, Captain Obvious. That is so much easier said than done when you're ambitious. If I didn't have a lot of goals or dreams, or I was [00:20:00] just lollygagging my way through the day, sure, pace myself sounds lovely. That's not who I am. Ambition feels like it was weaved into the fabric of who I am. It is part of my identity.
So when you've spent your entire life, again, being that productive one, dependable, efficient, effective, you don't want things to take longer. You don't want to pace yourself. You don't wanna drag things out. You just wanna get them done. You don't want to need more recovery time. You wanna put your foot on the gas and go.
That is why ambitious women with MS struggle. It's not because we don't know we should pace ourselves. It's because we are grieving the speed that we used to go at. We know what we are capable of, and MS took part of that away from us. That sucks. I don't want a reduced speed limit. I want the race car on an open road, [00:21:00] not the unreliable car on the back road.
But yet, here we are. Here we are, living with MS, and we have a choice. Do we get stuck in the doom and gloom and surround ourselves with people who are in the doom and gloom? Which reminds me of, isn't there, like, a stat or a saying of something like you are the summary of the top five people you surround yourself with?
That's important when you are living with MS, and when you don't have the ability to go out into your social circles the way that you used to, who you surround yourself with, even if that person is somebody online, makes a difference in your mindset and your beliefs and how you show up in this world. So again, the need for this page started become so much more deeper.
I couldn't let go of the dream because our community needed it. Well, fast-forward, I am now at the 10-year anniversary of my [00:22:00] diagnosis, and you know what I actually hit? 10,000 followers at the same time. Never thought it would take me 10 years to get here, and that's exciting, and that's something I am super proud of.
Like, I wanna get those gigantic Mylar balloons and do the boomerang video, like at the one, the zero, and the K, there's my 10,000, and do the boomerang like all of my peers did when they hit their milestones back when boomerangs were still cool, right? It took me so long that boomerangs aren't even a thing anymore, so I can't even celebrate that way.
But the biggest surprise of it all, when I first dream of having 10,000 women in this community, I admittedly thought the number was the goal. Again, Instagram makes you feel like it's these vanity metrics that's, that will make you look or feel a certain way, and I [00:23:00] thought that 10,000 would feel like success But I'm standing here today knowing that the number was never the point.
The point was every woman behind it. This isn't a story about ten thousand followers. It's a story about ten thousand women who got a diagnosis they never wanted. Ten thousand women who taught me that MS may change your timeline, it may change your pace, it may change your speed, but it, it doesn't get to decide or take away your dream.
Because in this journey, with every new follower, one by one, I met women navigating careers with brain fog, raising families while managing MS fatigue. Women who were going back to school, changing their careers, or some starting over after divorce. [00:24:00] Finding love, finding purpose, finding themselves again because they refused to give up and let MS take away their dreams or dim their light in this world.
That is what this community is all about. It's not pretending MS isn't hard. It is. MS is hard, frustrating, and it is incredibly unfair. But also, we've done hard things before. It was just a different kind of hard. Previously, it was a hard that meant digging deeper and white-knuckling your way through, pushing through.
Now, the hard is having to have more grace and compassion with ourselves of, yes, going at a slower pace, adjusting things along the way in ways that we didn't want to or ever expect to have to do. But accepting those adjustments so that we can keep going, so that [00:25:00] we can still live out our dreams, so that we can still build that life that we have been working so hard to build, so that we can still shine our light in this world, because each of us has it and it matters.
And before I wrap this up, I absolutely want to thank you, each and every one of you. who listens to this podcast while folding laundry or sitting in a carpool or lying on the couch recovering from a hard day. Thank you for every podcast download. Thank you to every woman who follows my Instagram page.
Thank you for every comment or every DM where you trusted me with your story. I know how personal each one is. Thank you for every time you share one of my reels with your community, because it helps us [00:26:00] to reach another woman who needs community too. Because every time you do that, we're helping another woman realize she's not alone.
You're helping us build something so much bigger than an Instagram page. This is a sisterhood. It is a village. We know that it takes a village to raise a child. It also takes a village to be an ambitious woman whose energy did not survive her diagnosis, but her dreams did. You are the reason this page and this community exists.
Not me, you. And whether you have been here for ten years, ten months, or ten minutes, I want you to know that you are part of something bigger, a community of ambitious women learning how to dream bigger than their diagnosis without sacrificing their health in the [00:27:00] process. So if you are feeling discouraged right now, if you're watching other people move faster, build faster, recover faster, achieve faster, remember this: slow doesn't mean you're not getting there.
It doesn't mean that you're failing or falling behind, and it definitely doesn't mean that your dream is over Sometimes it simply means that you're just having to build it at MS speed, and that may not have been our first choice. We may not like that aspect of it, but we're still getting to build our dreams.
We're still in the game. Because 10 years ago, I was terrified MS would take away my dreams. Today, I'm looking at 10,000 women who proved it didn't. My [00:28:00] friend, keep dreaming bigger than your diagnosis. Keep dreaming, adjusting, and showing up because your dreams deserve a chance too. And that's it for today's episode of my MS podcast.
I hope you're walking away with one small step you can put into practice today because that is how real change happens. And remember, MS has its own biological clock, which means the sooner you start, the more power you have to influence your future. The best time to begin is now. That's why I created my free webinar, How to Help Slow MS Progression, starting with just one habit today.
Grab your spot at alinebrennan.com/webinar. See you [00:29:00] there.