When the Road Turns: Inspirational Stories by and About People with MS
by Margot Russell

Reviewed by DeanOP
MSWorld Book Reviewer



This is a collection of beautifully written, masterfully presented stories by and about ordinary people who were living ordinary lives until they were diagnosed with MS. As the book's title suggests, at that point the road turned for each of the contributors and each of them has come to terms with that turning in his or her unique fashion which, with Ms. Russell's guidance, makes for extraordinary reading.

I had the privilege of reading for Ms. Russell, who also has MS, as she created this book, so I am very familiar with the stories of the contributors. It was her dream to offer inspiration to other people with MS based the stories of people with MS who lived plain, old everyday lives but whose courage or insight in handling this disease carried them beyond what is ordinarily expected of the disabled and the suffering. While Ms. Russell has included one or two chapters about people who have done things that ordinarily are not done by people with MS, for the most part these are interesting and exciting stories precisely because they are so accessible. They are stories that you or I could have written (in fact, I did write one of them, as did Kathleen Wilson, President of MSWorld, Inc.) And the main feature of these stories is not what people accomplished physically but, rather, is a description of the internal, mental, emotional and spiritual adjustments each writer had to make to accept the road's turning.

We have books on the medical science of MS. We have "how-to" books for coping with the physical and, to a lesser extent, the emotional aspects of life with MS. We have the stories of celebrities who have suffered devastating injury or illness. Celebrities have access to the world which ordinary people generally do not have, but often their lives are so distant from those of the rest of us that it's difficult to use the inspiration they provide. The lives of celebrities can seem not quite real.

Ms. Russell has given us the stories of mothers, fathers, lawyers, pilots, sailors, teachers, military people, business people, artists, students, housewives— people such as visit the chat rooms here at MSWorld where we also seek and find inspiration among ourselves. In writing and editing When the Road Turns: Inspirational Stories by and About People with MS, Ms. Russell has maintained the integrity of her dream. And she offers us an inspirational gift. I know it is her hope that ordinary readers of these stories will find their own lives mirroring the same qualities of courage, insight and creativity evidenced by the contributors and will be uplifted by the extraordinary potential that lies within each of us.

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