Selma Blair Shared A Profound Message After Saying She Uses "A Wheelchair" Now

If there's anything that's clear about Selma Blair, it is that she's not going to allow a prognosis to define her, or her life. In a recent series of posts on Instagram, Blair shared she's "in a wheelchair" now, along with a profound message about living well and happy in spite of her multiple sclerosis (MS) diagnosis.

Earlier this week, Blair first shared a photo of herself and longtime BFF Sarah Michelle Gellar at Disneyland together. The original photo — which has since been removed due to a potential issue with copyright and ownership — showed Gellar pushing Blair around the theme park in a wheelchair. Shortly afterwards, Blair posted a selfie of herself, Gellar, and her son, to clear up why she took the photo down, and to help alleviate some of the negative stigma surrounding what it means to require mobility assistance.

"So, I posted a picture with Sarah cruising my butt around Disney. It resonated with people and was kind of sad about taking down but it was kindly brought to my attention that I don’t own the photo and could be sued. And I can’t take that hassle. So I took down," she explained. "Not because I was ashamed or embarrassed, but because it isn’t my picture."

Blair went on to write that she's not giving up on attaining some degree of recovery, and certainly not becoming stabilized. "I am oddly grateful for the new insight I have into a chronically unpredictable body," she wrote on Instagram. "And I found my friends to be more generous and kinder than I could have imagined."

Blair added that she is grateful to Gellar, and her other friends, who made sure her son could have a great spring break memory with his family. She also expressed her appreciation of mobility aids being available to her in the first place, and reminded us all that though she is indeed in a wheelchair now — or, at least, requires its use at times — she is still herself. She is still working toward recovery. It's a message that's poignant, especially in a world that tends to reduce people with disabilities to simply being the sum of their parts. She wrote:

This friend made sure my kid had the best spring break memory with all of us. And so I am grateful to mobility aids to make it possible. And the best friends to push. And to teach a kid, there is a person In the chair. I am a bit too weak to use my super awesome @the_alinker_world all around with a kid and bad tailbone... and none of this needed an explanation. But I’m a talker! And I am in a ....#wheelchair. Still me though.

It's not the first time that Blair has been candid and transparent about her diagnosis, what her reality is now, and what her future might look like for her and her family.

In October 2018, Blair first opened up about the diagnosis, The Guardian reported. "I have a job. A wonderful job. I am disabled. I fall sometimes. I drop things. My memory is foggy," she wrote in a post. "And my left side is asking for directions from a broken GPS. But we are doing it. And I laugh and I don’t know exactly what I will do precisely but I will do my best."

Later, in an another post, she shared concerns she has about her life and her future. "I worry for us. For our way of life. The isolation we live in. How will I earn enough money to live into my years and support my son, and how we can all get the right foods to sustain us," she wrote. "How can I ever pay for meds my insurance denies, how can I help enough people so we can be stronger to help ourselves?"

However, it's clear that Blair is still determined to live as well as possible, and to be a vocal advocate for those who are dealing with MS, or other neurodegenerative disorders.