Carrie’s journey from attending to volunteering with MS-UK – Volunteers week 2024

Carrie Gray found invaluable friendship and support when she began volunteering for MS-UK

As I live in South London I cannot physically volunteer for MS-UK as Colchester is 60 miles away. So, my volunteering takes place via Zoom, that wonderful resource for keeping in touch and connecting with others that many of us discovered for the first time in lockdown four years ago.

I came across MS-UK for the first time in 2020 when confined to home due to Covid restrictions. I was searching for some online information and activities, as well as a way to connect with others like myself struggling with isolation and coping with multiple sclerosis (MS) very much alone.

I firstly discovered the online exercise classes run twice weekly and started to attend these, as well as weekly yoga. Then I heard about a new Zoom group that was starting for people to talk about what media we were watching and listening to and joined this. A lively group formed, and we not only found a place to share our TV and film discoveries, but also a place to talk about our individual experience of living with MS. This was a first for me as although I had been diagnosed in 1991, I had avoided talking to anyone else affected by MS.

I had found my tribe and began to form real friendships, albeit via the medium of zoom.  Hearing that MS-UK wanted to expand these online groups I volunteered to host one or more. This was partly to connect with more people but also to help out a charity that had given me a valued outlet at a crucial time.

I experimented with running a weekly craft group, but this did not take off so as there was a growing demand for women-only groups I offered to run a Friday morning Women’s Pod to run parallel with a Thursday evening peer pod. Both these groups have been thriving and growing ever since and many of us have become friends and met in person. We meet to chat about MS and everything else from plants and pets, to hairstyles and food.

I now also host an online Women’s group book club, where we select a book and get together every five weeks to talk about it. We unite due to our love of books and the fact we all have MS is irrelevant.

With our associated WhatsApp groups, we have become a group of people with one thing in common, MS. We share our ups and downs of coping day-to-day, our frustrations and our triumphs. We have also become a valuable source of information for each other on medications, mobility equipment, accessible places, benefits, diets and many other topics. But most of all we share how we feel, as there are really down days and when it all feels too much. We provide each other with support as being MSers, we get it.

By volunteering for MS-UK I have gained knowledge, support, information and friendship. So, if anyone is considering it I would say give it a try. It may become addictive.