PLAYING BOTH SIDES

PLAYING BOTH SIDES
Living with MS as Both a Caregiver & a Patient
Exclusive Interview with Nicole Williams
Featured in 'Innerviews'
Hosted by Allié McGuire

​Nicole Williams lives at the place where care and courage meet. As a registered nurse, wellness advocate, mother of three, and woman living with multiple sclerosis, she brings both clinical insight and lived truth to every conversation. In this interview, Nicole shares what it means to educate, empower, and show up fully for others while learning, every day, how to do the same for herself.

ALLIÉ: Let's go back to the beginning before the titles of nurse, mom of three, wellness advocate, or even a woman living with MS entered the picture, who was Nicole Williams at her core? Like what did an ordinary good day look like? What was your life like back then?

NICOLE: Well, before nurse, before mom, before all of the things, I was actually a bartender. My friends and I would get dressed up and go out. I did fashion shows because at one point, I was into modeling. We wore stiletto heels and were just living life. 

​ALLIÉ: And then life happened and things changed a bit. So, where you're at now, you live at this intersection of science and lived experience. As a registered nurse who also has MS, how did your diagnosis change the way you understand the body, the way you trust medicine and advocate for yourself inside a system that you once only served from the outside?

NICOLE: That is an amazing question. It was hard becoming the provider and never really being sick, I don't have any other diagnosis to being diagnosed with MS and becoming the patient. So now I get to see it from both perspectives. I get to see it as the patient who may be a little bit afraid, don't know what's going on, worried a little bit about the future as well as the provider. And not that I wasn't compassionate, but I became a whole lot more compassionate in understanding those patients who are in that seat, who's being told about these diagnoses that they have. It made me a better nurse, to be honest with you. It made me a better nurse overall, especially, and I know this is a little bit off the point, but I'm going for my MS RN, so I'm going to be a multiple sclerosis certified registered nurse and I have a mentor I'm working closely with right now. But I just want to hold space with others who do have MS because now I feel like I've been through this. I can lead, I can guide, and I can help others a little bit better now than I when I was a registered nurse without MS.

​ALLIÉ: There's something that's so huge about that lived experience and that layer of understanding that doesn't come from a textbook. So much of your work online is about educating without overwhelming. Your posts, they're empowering without sugarcoating. When you sit down to share something about MS, what do you most want someone newly diagnosed or silently struggling to feel when they're scrolling and stop to read your post?

NICOLE: A lot of the times when I post, it's based on how I'm feeling. So if I'm posting about MS fatigue, I was probably having a rough fatigue day. And I think to myself, if I'm having these symptoms and there's many others with this same diagnosis, I'm sure someone else may be experiencing the same thing and I just wanted to share, like, again, you're not alone. There's others who're going through this, and these are some of the things that I do to help get me through this. So it's not that I'm having these symptoms and I'm going to accept defeat. There's nothing else we can do about it. I'm big on mindset. Let's change our mindset because our words have powers. Our body listens to what our mind says. And I just want others to understand that there are other ways that we can help cope with multiple sclerosis.

ALLIÉ: Yeah, that's for sure and that's powerful… the body listens to what the mind says. Well, then they say that, right? The mind and the body, they work as one. So let's pay attention to that.

NICOLE: Yes.

ALLIÉ: I want to switch gears a bit to motherhood. You're a mom, I'm a mom. Motherhood has a way of sharpening both, I would say our fears and our strength. Question here is, how has raising three children while living with MS, how has that reshaped the way you define resilience, not as perfection, but as presence?

NICOLE: Oh, man. So it has made a huge difference in the way that I define resilience, because before I was the mom who can do it all, you know, everything. And now I'm grateful to be able to do some of the things that I can do and the things that I can't do, it's not the end of the world. I talk a lot about self-love and listening to your body, not overexerting yourself and things like that. Being a mother with multiple sclerosis, it has taught me to teach my children compassion. You never know what another person's going through. I have a 14-year-old son, and he wouldn't want me to say this, but he's such a sweetheart, because he's this tough basketball player guy. But, he's like, mom, are you okay? Or he'll walk behind me if I'm going up the steps and like little things like that. But I honestly feel like, and oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm saying this, MS has made me become a better person because I turned my pain into purpose and it allowed me to use my voice to improve so many different things in life from being a mother to using my voice to educate online or whatever the case may be. 

​ALLIÉ: I hear you so much and I feel the same. You bring up a good point when you talk about how your journey with MS has affected your children and I think that's something for people to be mindful of. When someone is diagnosed with MS, it's not just their world that changes, it's the worlds around them, their brothers, sisters, certainly their children, their spouses, their everyone. So I do have one more question for you today, and that is, if someone is sharing this and standing like we all were at some point at the beginning of the MS journey and feels scared, unseen, unsure of who they are becoming, what one truth, do you wish someone would have looked at you right in your eye and told you sooner?

NICOLE: I wish someone would've said to me, it's not over. You're just going to be different. After this diagnosis, you're going to have to redefine who you are, but you're still that same person reinvented, that's the word I like to use. And on some of my posts, I might put Nicole RN Reinvented because I'm not the same exact person I was before multiple sclerosis, but I feel I'm as bigger, better version of myself because of the things - the compassion, the so many different things, and again, turning that pain into purpose and mindset. ∎

Follow Nicole on Instagram:
​@nurse_.nic