Growing up, MS to Success founder Karen Dwyer dreamed of someday being successful. Her childhood vision? Hitting the hair salon for a weekly professional blowout. Today, the Dublin-based entrepreneur and chronic illness advocate gets her hair blown out twice a week.
And while Dwyer looks forward to her regular hair appointment, it’s nothing compared to the joy and fulfillment she’s experienced as a health coach on a mission to help people with multiple sclerosis take charge of their health—and change their lives in the process. MS is an unpredictable autoimmune disease that causes the breakdown of nerves’ protective covering; it impacts nearly 3 million people worldwide.
While Dwyer doesn’t have an MD, RN or a PT after her name, she offers something many health care professionals don’t: lived experience with multiple sclerosis and its physical, mental and emotional toll. Though her diagnosis in 2011 hardly felt like a gift, navigating lifestyle changes, mindset shifts and daily challenges has become her greatest asset as a coach and founder.
When Dwyer learned that MS was responsible for the right-sided numbness she’d been experiencing, she had a 7-year-old, a brand-new baby and an inexplicable sense that everything was going to be OK. While she acknowledges it sounds strange, she was struck by an inner knowing that said, “You’re beating this.”
Though her instincts were right, there was no shortage of hurdles along the way. From optic neuritis to crushing fatigue, an episode of acute swelling in her brain and weekly injections of an immunosuppressant that forced her into bed for entire weekends, Dwyer struggled to handle her new diagnosis along with motherhood, a full-time marketing manager position and what she describes as a toxic relationship.
Within a few years, she’d withdrawn from most social activities, but when her illness forced her to step away from work, “I felt like I buried myself and my confidence 6 feet under,” she recalls. Things got worse when her partner left at Christmas about a decade ago.
Two weeks later, she attended a conference that would change her life. There, she was asked to reflect on what she was grateful for. Initially, she drew a blank. Until she realized she had not been responsible for herself and her own actions. Waking up to that reality, she describes, “was like a wet fish across the face.”
One year later, Dwyer’s energy had returned, she was off the immunosuppressants that gave her flu-like symptoms, and her doctor said her MS lesions had shrunk. Most importantly, she was finding joy and peace again. She remembers leaving the clinic that day and pausing to smell the flowers. Her doctor told her, “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.”
While she made many lifestyle changes that year, including experimenting with diet and movement, she also shifted her attitude. Instead of “white-knuckling the whole thing” and feeling desperate for each new supplement or lifestyle change to work, she took a more relaxed approach, viewing each treatment as an experiment.
Over time, she learned that, along with subtle changes to her routines including eating, moving and even breathing differently, gratitude played a significant role in her health. “It does prime and rewire your brain,” she explains. Inspired, she published a gratitude journal in hopes of giving others the chance to benefit from a gratitude practice.
But that was just the beginning. Dwyer started spending hours on the phone with strangers seeking MS support and advice. While she’s adamant that “I don’t have a cure for MS,” Dwyer was always happy to share her story in hopes that others could learn from it. “Then, I would start waking up at 4 a.m. being like, ‘I forgot to tell her this!’”
Eventually, Dwyer quit her corporate job to coach full time. “It was a really exciting time, but I had no idea how to run a health business program online,” Dwyer admits. So while she was busy helping people find holistic, personalized ways to improve their health and quality of life, building relationships and garnering testimonials without a sustainable business plan, her bank account rapidly shrank.
Dywer wasn’t about to let finances stop her, though. “We exist to bridge the gap between the medical model and everyday life,” she says, and given the breadth of that gap, walking away was not an option. Instead, she did something completely novel—she asked for help. First, she got a loan from her mom. Next, she engaged a business mentor.
With support, Dwyer has grown her business exponentially. Today, she says her team includes more than a dozen practitioners, including a neurologist, a naturopath and a habit coach, just to name a few, as well as administrative staff. Her clients, who hail from 27 countries, are offered as many as a dozen virtual group coaching sessions each week, where they can access the strategies, community and hope they need to envision a brighter future.
Though it’s evolved over the years, Dwyer’s business has always been true to its mission: Changing lives by giving individuals like her the tools to take charge of their health, one person at a time.
What sets Dwyer apart is her multifaceted, holistic approach. “We meet people where they are at,” Dwyer says. “It’s not a cookie-cutter program. It’s not like you have to go vegan or do these crazy workouts or meditate for three hours a day,” she explains. “It’s like your neighbor next door putting their arms around you and saying, ‘I’ve got you, and we’re gonna work with what you’re doing right now,’” Dwyer says.
Instead of attempting to make sweeping changes overnight, the focus is on small, sustainable adjustments. Dwyer’s approach empowers clients to make the right daily “micro decisions” in order to change the mindset and habits that may be holding them back.
After all, it was a series of micro decisions, beginning with adopting an attitude of gratitude, that started Dwyer on the healing journey that evolved into a coaching business that’s changing lives worldwide.
This article originally appeared in the September/October 2025 issue of SUCCESS magazine.
EDITOR’S NOTE: CONSIDER CONSULTING WITH YOUR HEALTH CARE PROVIDER BEFORE MAKING ANY MAJOR CHANGES TO YOUR CARE PLAN.
Photo of Karen Dwyer from ©Fiona Madden Photography
