Our Stories

My brain was bleeding.  I sat at a friend’s kitchen table, right cheek against the cold wood, images of the most recent space shuttle disaster flickering across the T.V.  I couldn’t feel my left arm.  I was dizzy and weak and the room was getting darker.

My shirt was wet.

I thought “my brain is hemorrhaging and I’m about to die”.

My life didn’t flash before my eyes.  I thought instead of my death at such a young age, forty-three, and what I ...

I CREATE TO HEAL
I’m Lisa Sniderman, and similar to many of us living with chronic illness, for 10 years I’ve been living and dealing with the challenges of managing a rare progressive muscle weakness autoimmune disease, dermatomyositis (DM) that if untreated attacks and weakens my immune system and muscles, trying to find the right combination of treatments, drugs, and therapies. The worst of it was a flare-up in 2010, when I was hospitalized for nearly a month with complete ...

I graduated from Framingham State University and received my Bachelor’s in Fashion Design and Merchandising. After taking a year break after graduating in 2007, I wanted to further my education and to get my Master’s Degree in Business, because I always knew I wanted to be a business owner. While in graduate school receiving my Master’s, degree was when I started to experience symptoms like repeatedly falling, my leg would just give out and I would fall to the floor ...