Marti’s MS Life

Marti’s MS Life Follow my journey with MS!

The wellness industry has a chronic illness problem. And I need to talk about it.If you have a chronic illness you alrea...
06/15/2026

The wellness industry has a chronic illness problem. And I need to talk about it.

If you have a chronic illness you already know what I am talking about. The supplement that will reduce your inflammation. The protocol that reversed someone else’s MS. The program that will teach your body to heal itself if you just commit to it fully enough.

It is everywhere. And a lot of it is predatory.

That is the word I want to use. Predatory. Because it targets people at their most vulnerable. People who are exhausted and scared and looking for something that feels like hope. And it sells them something expensive, unregulated, and backed by zero credible science, wrapped in the language of empowerment and healing.

And when it does not work, it makes you feel like you failed. Like you did not try hard enough or believe enough or commit enough.

That is not wellness. That is manipulation.

I have been on the receiving end of it. I have done the research so you do not have to do it alone. And I have learned what to look for, what to question, and when to walk away no matter how convincing the promise sounds.

You deserve real information. You deserve to spend your money on things that have a genuine chance of helping you. And you deserve to stop feeling like a failure when something that was never going to work does not work. Because that failure was never yours.

This week on Substack I break down exactly what I look for before I trust anything being sold to this community. Link in bio.

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from sitting in a doctor’s office and realizing, again, that you kno...
06/08/2026

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from sitting in a doctor’s office and realizing, again, that you know more about your own condition than the person across from you.

Not because you went to medical school. But because you live in this body every single day. Because you have spent years researching, tracking symptoms, connecting dots, and paying attention to every shift and change.

Because when you have a disease that medicine still does not fully understand, waiting for someone else to figure it out is not a strategy you can afford.

And still you sit in that chair and try to explain what you are experiencing. And sometimes the doctor really listens. And those appointments feel like oxygen.

And sometimes they do not.

Sometimes you are interrupted. Talked over. Minimized. You watch them glance at the clock. You leave without answers to the questions you came in with.

And you sit in your car afterward feeling angry and lonely and exhausted in a way that is hard to explain to someone who has never had to fight to be believed in the one room that is supposed to be about your health.

For Black women, that fight has an extra layer. And I will not pretend otherwise.

You are not imagining it. You are not being difficult. You are the expert on your own body and that deserves to be taken seriously.

This week on Substack I wrote all of it out. Link in bio to read the full piece.

MSWarrior

Living with a chronic illness has a way of making you think about what matters. What you are building. What will still b...
06/01/2026

Living with a chronic illness has a way of making you think about what matters. What you are building. What will still be standing when you are not in the room anymore.

MS cracked something open in me that I do not think would have opened any other way.

Before my diagnosis I moved through life the way a lot of us do. Forward, fast, not a lot of time spent asking the bigger questions. And then suddenly I had a disease that forced me to slow down and ask what I was actually doing with the time I had.

That question changed everything.

It is why I document this journey. Why All In My Head exists. Why I keep showing up here. Because every time someone reads something I have shared and says that is exactly how I feel but I did not know how to say it, that is legacy. Small and quiet and real.

I want Black women with MS to know they were always at the center of why I do this work. Not as an afterthought. Not as a footnote in someone else’s story. But as the whole point.

Legacy is not something you leave at the end. It is something you build every day in the choices you make about what you give your energy to, what stories you tell, and how honest you are willing to be about your own life.

This is how I am building mine.

This week on Substack I wrote about all of it. Link in bio to read the full piece.

TW: Cancer There’s something surreal about suddenly becoming part of a world you never imagined you’d be in. One day you...
05/27/2026

TW: Cancer

There’s something surreal about suddenly becoming part of a world you never imagined you’d be in. One day you’re living your life, and the next you’re wearing pink gowns to appointments and hearing words that change everything.

I’ve recently been diagnosed with stage 1 breast cancer.

Even typing that still doesn’t fully feel real.

And if I’m being honest, there’s also a part of me that feels frustrated. Frustrated with my body. Frustrated with myself. After already navigating life with chronic illness, there are moments where I catch myself wondering, “What else could my body possibly want from me?”

But what I do know is this: I am hopeful. I am being cared for. And I am focused on healing.

This experience has reminded me how deeply precious life, community, and our bodies are, even when they feel like they’ve betrayed us. I’m taking things one appointment, one treatment, one breath at a time.

I wanted to share this with honesty because so much of my work and my life has been rooted in creating spaces where people feel seen in the hard moments too, not just the beautiful ones.

So if you pray, pray for me.
If you’ve walked this road, send your wisdom.
And if you’re carrying something heavy silently, I hope you know you’re not alone either. I will try my best to respond when I can.

I fully believe I will recover and be on the side of the mountain . And I plan to meet this season with softness, faith, courage, and a whole lot of hope. 🧡🎀

I have always been a reader. Not performatively. Because books are one of the places I go when the noise gets too loud a...
05/25/2026

I have always been a reader. Not performatively. Because books are one of the places I go when the noise gets too loud and my body needs rest but my mind needs somewhere to go.

Right now I have three books I keep coming back to and each one is giving me something different.

Cher: Part One. A woman who never waited for permission, never shrunk herself, and has the stories to prove it. I laughed out loud and dog-eared more pages than I care to admit.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. A story about all the lives you could have lived if you had made different choices. What I love about where it lands is not in regret or fantasy but in the hard-won idea that the life you are actually living is worth being present for. I needed that reminder.

The Power of Systems. Practical and grounding. Especially when chronic illness makes structure feel impossible, this one is about building a life that actually works for your values, your rhythms, and your reality.

Three very different books. Three very different things they are giving me.

If you have been looking for a sign to slow down and pick up a book, this is it. Your mind deserves somewhere good to go.

Full thoughts on all three are on Substack this week. Link in bio.

What you see is the dress, the glam, the show up.What you don’t see is the negotiation that happened before this mirror....
05/21/2026

What you see is the dress, the glam, the show up.

What you don’t see is the negotiation that happened before this mirror. The pain check. The energy calculation. The decision to put on heels knowing my body would have opinions about it later. The quiet courage it takes to get dressed for a world that does not always make space for what you are carrying.

Living with MS requires courage most people will never see. And most days I am okay with that. But sometimes I want to name it. For me. For every woman getting dressed on a hard body day and choosing to show up anyway.

We are not just surviving. We are showing up in black gowns and handling it.

That counts as courage too.

I use a cane. I use a walker. I use a scooter. And every single one of them has given me back a piece of my life that MS...
05/18/2026

I use a cane. I use a walker. I use a scooter. And every single one of them has given me back a piece of my life that MS was trying to take.

That is not weakness. That is strategy. That is choosing your life over your pride.

For a long time I pushed through. Tried to will my way past the bad balance days. Tried to look like I had it together even when I did not. Because somewhere along the way I absorbed the message that needing assistance means losing something.

It does not.

My cane is the difference between staying home and walking into a room with my head up. My walker is not decline. It is adaptation. My scooter is what lets me say yes when MS would otherwise force me to say no. Disney. Airports. Long days with people I love. Places I would have missed entirely if I had let pride make the decision.

People stare sometimes. I have made peace with that. Because while they are staring, I am living.

If you are holding something for the first time and having all the feelings about it, I want you to ask yourself one question. What does this make possible?

For me the answer is everything.

Click the link in my bio or in my stories to read the full piece.

05/13/2026

Thank you for spotlighting our beautiful film so thrilled that is starting to make its way through the world.

There are days when MS feels like the loudest thing about me.Not because I made it that way. But because chronic illness...
05/11/2026

There are days when MS feels like the loudest thing about me.

Not because I made it that way. But because chronic illness has a way of filling up the room whether you invite it in or not. And after a while you start to wonder. Underneath all of this, who am I actually?

I am a filmmaker. A friend. Someone who cries at Disney parades and gets on planes and loves deeply and laughs loudly. That person existed before MS and she still exists now.

But chronic illness makes you fight for her in a way you should not have to.

I wrote about what it looks like to hold both things at the same time. The person who is sick and the person who is so much more than that. Link in bio to read the full piece.

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