EmmaLeigh knows every flower needs something a little different. Some need more water, some are more delicate and others seem to last forever. Tending to each one takes patience, but when carefully assembled, individual stems become something beautiful.
EmmaLeigh found her love for flowers almost by accident. During her junior year of high school, she needed an internship credit and began working at a family friend’s floral shop, washing vases in the back. As she found herself loving it more, she began learning the craft and eventually became the shop’s manager.
Flowers became a creative outlet. When the shop later closed, EmmaLeigh decided to keep going and eventually started Vow & Vine Floral, where she now specializes in weddings. One of her favorite parts is the moment she gets to hand a bride her bouquet and watch her face light up.
But flowers weren’t the only thing EmmaLeigh learned to care for at a young age.
When she was 11, her hands and feet suddenly went numb. It lasted for nearly two weeks before eventually going away, and at the time, it seemed like it might have been a strange, one-time occurrence.
Then one morning, EmmaLeigh woke up with blurry vision in her right eye. When corrective lenses failed to improve it, she was referred to a specialist in Oklahoma City who recognized optic neuritis. That led to more appointments, testing and eventually a spinal tap at the children’s hospital.
The results gave her family an answer they knew very little about at the time: multiple sclerosis.
EmmaLeigh was diagnosed one day before her 12th birthday.
Multiple sclerosis is a disease of the central nervous system, which includes the brain and spinal cord. With MS, the immune system attacks myelin, the protective covering around nerve fibers, disrupting communication between the brain and the rest of the body. This is part of why MS can look so different from person to person. Symptoms can include numbness, vision problems, weakness, fatigue and difficulty with balance or movement.
EmmaLeigh lives with relapsing-remitting MS, meaning symptoms can appear during periods of relapse and then partially or fully improve. Her experience is just that—hers. For someone else living with MS, the disease may look completely different.
For EmmaLeigh, understanding the diagnosis was only the beginning. Suddenly, being a kid also meant medications, doctors and frequent MRIs. Her first medication required injections three times a week, especially difficult for a girl terrified of needles. A family friend who was a nurse would come over to administer the medicine and talk her through it.
At first, MRIs happened every two months. Then every four, then six. Today, she has one each year.
“It takes an army,” EmmaLeigh says.
Thankfully, she had one.
Her family drove her to appointments and helped search for the right doctors and treatments. Friends and people from her church surrounded her. And while EmmaLeigh and her family were trying to understand a disease they previously knew almost nothing about, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society became an important resource.
The National MS Society provides resources and support to people affected by MS while funding research aimed at advancing treatment and ultimately finding a cure. EmmaLeigh remembers her family leaning heavily on those resources when she was first diagnosed.
Getting involved also gave them a way to take something scary and do something positive with it.
For the Tulsa MS Walk, EmmaLeigh’s family formed a team. Around 30 people—family, friends, church members and even some of her dad’s coworkers—showed up. There were matching T-shirts and bandanas, fundraising and a community determined to stand beside her.
Her parents wanted to make the experience something positive, something she could actually look forward to because of her diagnosis. EmmaLeigh embraced it, too. As a young teenager, she designed and sold bracelets to raise money.
What began as a community rallying around EmmaLeigh eventually gave her an opportunity to do the same for someone else.
As EmmaLeigh got older, her children’s hospital connected her with several younger girls who had recently been diagnosed with MS. They were scared and unsure of what the diagnosis meant for their futures. EmmaLeigh understood because she had been there herself.
“If you would have asked me to do that right after I was diagnosed, I would have had no idea what to say,” she says.
Years later, she could tell them something she couldn't have known at 12: their lives were not over.
EmmaLeigh has continued sharing her story, including speaking at an MS walk. Those experiences even played a role in her decision to study psychology in college. Talking with those younger girls made her realize how much she valued helping people through difficult seasons.
Now 21, EmmaLeigh is doing well, although MS remains part of everyday life. Fatigue is one of the symptoms she notices most. Some days, she says, her brain is ready to go while her body simply is not.
“I have to realize, just take a rest day,” she says. “We can do it tomorrow.”
It has made her more aware of the things she might have once taken for granted, especially the people around her. There are still frustrating days and things she wishes were easier, but nearly 10 years after her diagnosis, she can also see the people, opportunities and purpose that have grown alongside it.
“It’s not a curse,” she says. “It was definitely a blessing.”
And somewhere in the middle of it all, there have always been flowers.
Wedding season can be stressful. EmmaLeigh plans arrangements weeks in advance, down to the number of stems she will need. But once she starts creating, something changes. The thing that requires so much planning also gives her a place to slow down.
Sometimes she finds herself thinking, “I just need to go make an arrangement.”
Maybe that is part of what she loves so much about flowers. Each one needs to be cared for differently. Some are delicate; others are sturdy. One stem by itself might not seem like much, but EmmaLeigh has learned to see its potential anyway.
Nearly 10 years after a diagnosis that changed her childhood, she can see what has come together in her own life: a family that showed up, a community that rallied around her, people she has encouraged, a business she loves and so many reasons to be thankful.
There is a lot of beauty in bringing the pieces together.
“I’m so blessed to have this family, this church, this community, these friends. I mean, some people don’t have any of this.”
“I see potential. You see a flower by itself, but then I pair it with other things, and then it’s beautiful.”