Stacy Barton starts her day tuned in — tuned into how her family is doing and what’s going on in the news. That’s because in addition to being a proud wife and mother, she is a congressional chief of staff on Capitol Hill.Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2005, Stacy uses her experience to advocate for the MS community. When MS advocates come to Washington, D.C., to speak to their representatives, she knows firsthand the importance of sharing stories and raising awareness for the disease.“I think individually, there are likely people with MS whose families don’t really know the fullness of how difficult this disease is. If the people you live with have a very cursory understanding and don’t even know the fullness of it, why would you assume that your elected leaders understand? The only way that people are going to know what we need is if we tell them and keep telling them,” she says.For Stacy, a cure would mean she can continue to be there for the causes and people she cares for the most.“I’m a wife, a mother, a daughter and a friend. I need a cure for MS because I love being all of those things.”
