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Welcome

I’m Rosie, I was diagnosed with MS in 2015 after just turning 25. Subsequently losing my love of running and no longer being able to work full-time, I fell back in love with art and writing. To read more about me visit here.

Artwork

My Christmas cards and prints are now on sale here and for those of you who sign up to the newsletter here you can get 10% off your first purchase.

Thanks for visiting my site and I hope you enjoy it.

First time to the site? Here is where it all started

Latest From the blog

• The giftDecember 11, 2023
  The couch has become my refuge. I live from hospital appointment to hospital appointment – traveling hours to access healthcare thanks to our broken system. My paint brushes taunt me but I know there’s no energy to pick them up, to push through and do the thing I love most. It’s been so hard to
• Tread slowlyNovember 17, 2023
  This blog was originally written in early 2022 while I was living in Germany – I just forgot to post it I was so busy exploring! The words won’t stick. They slide off the page as soon as they land. I’m left wondering what it is I want to say – what it is I
• The Art of MS – symptoms under the spotlightMay 29, 2022
  “The paints dance across the page, running into each other in ways you hadn’t planned but looking all the more beautiful for it. It’s like an analogy for life really. No matter what way you plan, life will do its own thing but that doesn’t mean it’ll be any less beautiful and worthwhile My MS
• In it together?December 3, 2021
  Today is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities and this year it focuses on the leadership and participation of persons with disabilities toward an inclusive, accessible, and sustainable post-COVID-19 world. According to the WHO it’s likely that everyone, yes EVERYONE, will at some point experience a disability of some kind, whether permanent or temporary,
• ResourcesOctober 9, 2021
  Everything from a list of neuro rehab services to self-help tips to help you manage your chronic illness
• Welcome to our normalMay 30, 2020
  The theme of this year’s World MS day is connections and could that be any more apt given the current situation? For so many people, Covid-19 has meant a change in the way we live and work. Job losses, reduced hours and working from home. Added financial worries. Loneliness and isolation. A feeling of frustration
• Outshining the painMarch 26, 2020
  You are the first thing I think of in the morning because you are the thing that wakes me in the middle of the night. Pushing through that gap between dusk and dawn. Spotting a weakness in my armour you steal your way in so I always start my day thinking of you, rushing to
• Fashion is my armourFebruary 14, 2020
  In an upcoming MS & Me blog for MS Ireland, I talk about what fashion means to me and my identity. You can read the full blog post here. As any of us with a disability know, the fashion and retail industry are paved with issues, from a total lack of accessible clothing to not
• Finding my fightJanuary 11, 2020
  2019 has been a funny year and as full as challenges as ever. I can’t help but always recap on my MS journey as the curtains close on another year, and each year I look at its difficulties and vow that the new year will be my year, it’ll be the year MS and my
• You’ve got the powerSeptember 12, 2019
  Every muscle in my body was screaming. Every little negative voice had creeped in. “I can’t do this,” I cried to Niall, my fiancée, as we struggled up the last hill of the 2015 Dublin half marathon. “Yes you can,” he shouted, reminding me of all I’d been through in the last few months –
• The gift of timeAugust 18, 2019
  The whirring of machines. The timeless ticking of the clock. The drip-drop of IV lines. The distant buzz of an alarm Waiting for information. Waiting to go home. Always waiting.
• Finding hopeJuly 12, 2019
  I was being acknowledged at last but it was so bittersweet.
• The hauntingJanuary 20, 2019
  There she goes… The tightly-bound threads are loosening, unravelling. I’m unravelling. Little by little I’m making less sense of this disease and more sense of the scale of its destruction. I’m angry, sad and hurt. It hurts to look back and think of just how much it’s robbed from me, to watch my ghost lace
• Why am I not equal?November 22, 2018
  I’ve learnt that my biggest issue with using a wheelchair is not that I see myself as disabled, it’s that the outside world is designed in such an inaccessible way that it highlights my disability and sets up barriers for inclusion at every turn. Simply put, by using a wheelchair, you are not considered or treated as equal by society.
• Kiss Goodbye to MSMay 25, 2018
  To the people with MS who are reading this, I want you to know you are not alone. Together, side by side, we stand united in our battle against this cruel disease
• Diary of a disabled brideFebruary 4, 2018
  As you’ll know, I got married last July. We had an absolutely amazing day but during the months leading up to the wedding I really struggled. There was nothing out there for brides or grooms with disabilities, nowhere to turn to – and at times it became a very lonely road (see article I wrote
• Who am I now?December 8, 2017
  I’m finally sat back here. Staring at the keyboard. Words and feelings storming through my brain. They’re too fast to catch, to hold on to and to challenge It feels like they rip through me. But there’s so many of them. I’m tired. Too tired for all of this. Somedays I can’t cope with the
• I doSeptember 25, 2017
  We finally did it! We got married! Did it go off without any glitches? No. But it was amazing in spite of everything MS tried throwing my way. As I walked down that aisle, I felt like the luckiest person alive and MS wasn’t even in the picture. Thanks to all my amazing friends and
• Love is…June 23, 2017
  “15 days to go until you say I do – I bet you’re so excited!” Wedding to-do lists. Wedding magazines. Wedding forums . And then there’s me. Locked out of the wedding world. With a month to go I found myself on the floor, crying with pain that had constantly intensified over two weeks. Taking
• It’s okay to feel lostMarch 18, 2017
    The words stick in my throat. I can’t find them. I don’t know how to let them escape. And yet if I don’t, they’ll drown me. Just because we don’t speak something, just because we lock it away and keep hoping, it doesn’t make the fear any less real, particularly when that fear is
• A welcome endDecember 31, 2016
  Lights twinkling, Christmas songs echoing in the background, people running past in a flurry – rushing, racing. Life goes on and on. Our tree stands proud in the corner. Its lights silently twinkling, casting a warming glow over an otherwise dull December. It’s such a welcome sight. It means I can finally spend time with
• A bump in the roadSeptember 30, 2016
  The silence wraps itself around me a hundred times over. It’s suffocating. I lie still. So so still – not wanting to awaken the monster. My patience is wearing thin. I’m so tired of this. Tired of fighting it. Tired of living with it. Tired of always having to think about it.
• The waitAugust 24, 2016
  The clock whirs slowly – so so slowly. Tick … tock …. tick! Silence. That long, drawn, aching silence. My mind rushes to fill that space. “You can’t escape me forever,” it whispers. My stomach flips. I’ve struggled to eat all day – the fear pulses through my body – ripping across it in what
• Ignite your inner warriorJuly 28, 2016
    I’m staring out, watching the world go by. Rushing, racing, living, breathing – life. But I’m struggling. I’m really struggling – struggling to make sense of all this. How this disease can just stomp in and rob you of so much in what seems like a split second. It’s so unfair. Long gone is
• AcceptanceJuly 4, 2016
  Ah, there you are. I wondered when you’d show your face again. Clearly we didn’t have enough fun last time. You crept up on me this time though. Not like your last sudden assault 18 months ago. This time you lingered in the shadows, teasing me with strange symptoms that left me doubting myself. But
• Learning to love yourselfJune 21, 2016
  I spent most of my life hating my body – hating the way it looked, the way it moved, the way it felt. Then I started running and I thought I’d started a journey to learning to love my body. But I still abused it. I pushed it harder and harder. I could always be
• YOLOJune 8, 2016
  Ah, finally – holiday time! Sun, sea, sand – oh, and numb and tingling hands and feet, dizziness, tremors, blurred vision, crippling fatigue. And this is just Ireland. Glad we’ve booked our honeymoon to Alaska now. This is actually my first time sitting on the beach in sunshine since my diagnosis – I’d suspected that
• Facing the lightMay 5, 2016
  I wrote this post back in December but it’s taken me a while to pluck up the courage to share this. May marks a year since my MS diagnosis and the month of the Pieta House Darkness into Light Walk. I don’t have the words to thank Pieta House for the help they gave me
• Bring it onApril 28, 2016
  “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to
• Today’s rest is tomorrow’s fuelMarch 29, 2016
  My running gear is nicely laid out, trainers at the foot of the bed, Garmin watch all charged up. My head is pounding, my legs are full of lead. I stubbornly change, lace up my runners and decide that I don’t care, that I’ve planned this run all week and I will NOT miss it.
• A different kind of marathonJanuary 9, 2016
  One, two, three, four. Step by step the path flew by underneath my feet. In truth it was probably far more sluggish than that, but I hadn’t been out running in two full months so this felt pretty spectacular. Sure, my muscles and my lungs screamed a bit, but not enough to dampen my euphoria.
• Sweet dreamsNovember 23, 2015
  As the plane descended, I could hardly believe my eyes – the landscape and the scenery was something I thought only existed in picture books. I finally stopped holding my breath. After almost two years of planning, having had to cancel last year’s trip thanks to MS, we’d finally made it to Iceland – and
• I don’t want …October 8, 2015
  I lay on the bathroom floor shaking and crying in pain. How was I back here again? Was this ever going to end? I just want things to be back to how they used to be.This can’t be my life. Can it?
• One more hillSeptember 29, 2015
  One last hill. Only a few more kilometres the spectators roared. Every muscle in my body had started screaming at me – “what are you doing this for?” A headache was creeping in and I knew my blood sugar was dropping. I’d come this far – but this hill? One last hurdle. Every little negative
• Immune to nothingAugust 30, 2015
  Where to begin? It’s been one of those weeks. Fatigue floored me on Monday and seems to have held on all week. By Thursday I was terrified there was a relapse on the horizon and I have no idea how I managed to make it through the week. All those feelings and emotions about MS
• Running in the fogAugust 9, 2015
  Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock… I lie and listen to the sound of time passing. Children laughing outside. Cars passing. Niall humming as he washes the dishes. My mind is racing, ready for action. But my body won’t listen. My eyes won’t stay open. I can no longer remember what life was like before this. The
• Proposing the next chapterJuly 11, 2015
  What marks the start of one chapter and the end of another? A year ago if someone had predicted the last six months of my life I’d never have believed them. And what a few months they have been – the highest of highs and the scariest lows – the perfect snapshot of life in
• BraveryJune 24, 2015
  I’m overwhelmed by how amazing everyone has been since I made the decision to be open about having MS. I spent so long wondering if I should tell people about my illness. I’m not quite sure what I was scared of, maybe I was afraid it would make it more real, that people would treat and look at me differently.
• Where it all beganJune 21, 2015
  It took one weekend to change everything. It took me another six months to realise just how much had changed. People say you don’t realise how lucky you are until something goes wrong. I did. Sure, we all lose our way from time to time, but I’d spent the last few years thinking how lucky

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