A great way to start the process of people understanding MS
Amy Hinds lives in London and was diagnosed six years ago with relapsing remitting MS. She features in Hope Reborn as an extra.
I spent a lot of time trying to not accept my personal experiences with MS. Then over the last three or four years, as my disability went downhill, I went for it. Most of the time spent learning about my MS has been about training parts of my body to work properly. And understanding who I am and how I cope in everyday situations.
I spend more time thinking about planning ahead. I spend a lot of time, more time than I could ever have expected to, with doctors and in hospitals and with physios. I think the biggest impact is how I’ve started to understand sympathy and empathy for other people.
Taking part in Hope Reborn
Working to understand awareness of any health condition is a really tricky process if you’re trying to do it one-on-one. But if we come together and collaborate then, hopefully, we can start chipping away at people and give them a little bit more of an understanding. I think the Hope Reborn project is a great way to start that process.
The filming
I texted a friend about 20 minutes after I arrived to say “I’m around all these incredible women who are just powerhouses!” Everybody I spoke to works for the MS community, whether it’s talking about their own MS, running awareness-raising events, or helping each other within the MS community.
We’ve all had to go through diagnosis, we’ve all had to go through understanding how we fit into society.
Raising awareness of MS
I think it’s important to raise awareness of MS because, as a society, we’re often closed off to understanding others’ experiences. When you have a disability, you often start to think about other people first.
Sending someone a link to a film and saying “here’s something that I feel, here are the experiences that I have” might just help us move forward.
