By Rachel Maier, MS

I don't follow celebrity gossip, but headlines splash across my screen all the time so I'm somewhat in-the-know, and I've noticed an uptick in reports of celebrities being diagnosed with chronic diseases. Have you noticed it too?

I don't pay much attention to the reports, mostly because nearly half of the American population has some sort of chronic disease, and 25 to 30 million have a rare one. In other words, lots of people struggle with some sort of disease. Why should I pay attention when celebrities have one?

I usually just keep scrolling because, perhaps unfairly, I usually assume celebrities are out to snag another piece of the limelight with their news. But last December when Celine Dion revealed she has stiff-person syndrome, I surprised myself when I audibly gasped and tears stung my eyes when I read the report about her diagnosis.

I'm open about my disease, but I've never gone viral talking about it. I haven't inspired millions by admitting I need to take time off from my career to focus on treatment (and I never will). I'm not hailed as a brave, resilient hero like Celine Dion, whose poise and manner seemed to whisper hope to her fans, saying "This is heavy, but I'm strong," and I'm OK with that.

Celebrities have that indefinable, elusive quality that makes even the most mundane details about their lives almost universally interesting — even (especially?) when they get sick. According to this study, Google Trends recorded an increased number of people searched the terms "stiff-person syndrome" and "Celine Dion" in the hours just after she made her announcement.

I don't have that je ne sais quoi. Do you? Did Google Trends record an uptick in searches for your name or disease in the hours after you told people about your diagnosis? (Your mom probably Googled your condition, but an adoring public probably didn't.)

Most chronically ill people — especially those living with rare, invisible illnesses — live in obscurity. For the most part, they don't make announcements online when they're diagnosed, and if they do, they aren't applauded as brave and beautiful examples of resilience the way celebrities are.

But believe it or not, while the very public announcement of Celine Dion's diagnosis did move me to tears, it didn't stick with me the same way a viral video of an otherwise obscure woman named Kathy Poirier who suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) did.

Ironically, I only heard about Kathy Poirier because someone on the Internet mistook her for Celine Dion in the days shortly after the musical legend's announcement.

Private Moments Made Public

An emotional video of Kathy Poirier that had gone viral a few months prior went viral again because someone, somewhere thought Kathy Poirier was Celine Dion and reshared the video lamenting her recent diagnosis.

The video shows a glamorous, dressed-up Kathy being lifted out of her wheelchair and supported by two of her sons so she could dance with a third son, Zak, the groom. She was radiant and wrecked, smile-crying and clinging to her grown-up little boy as best she could as they swayed to the music, and the intensely emotional moment with her son was splashed across the Internet for all to see.

I ugly cried when I saw it.

I wondered what was going through Kathy's mind as she danced: Was she embarrassed about being seen dancing that way? Was she nervous about what people might think? Or was she remembering the way it felt to hold her son when he was a baby? Was she moved to tears because she was proud of the man he'd become? Was she relieved she lived long enough to see him get married? Was she thinking about grandchildren she might never see and grieving the loss of a future she wouldn't get to live?

What did it feel like for that emotional moment to go viral, for thousands of eyes to see her experience love and loss in the same short clip?

Capturing Life's Messiest Moments

The image of Kathy swaying with her son stuck with me. I saw joy, pain, fear, love. I recognized them all because I've lived them all too.

No, I haven't danced with my son at his wedding (yet), but I know what it's like to cling to my kids with joy and pain at the same time.

I clutched my babies tight and sang them to sleep while crying painful, scared tears in the hard days before I got a handle on my disease. As I rocked them, I pray-pleaded for God to heal me. To grant me more time with them. To not let that moment be my last. I imagined missing them grow up and it broke me in two.

Hidden, messy moments like those show the real experience of chronic disease, and they penetrate deeper than polished words prepared for an audience, no matter how genuine or vulnerable those words are. They're the raw footage that fully expose the reality of what it's like in the darkest, scariest days of a difficult diagnosis, and they show what it's like to grieve the life you lost even while holding on to what you still have.

Seeing someone else's grief makes us feel less alone in our own.

The Camera Catches Everything

Kathy Poirier wasn't looking for attention or applause but found both anyway.

I can't imagine my intensely personal, private moments recorded and retweeted for the world to see. Suddenly, I felt a little more compassion for celebrities battling invisible illnesses that eventually turn very visible for them. Privacy is harder to come by for them because the camera catches everything.

In my most charitable moments, I imagine they don't really want their struggles splashed all over the Internet. Public scrutiny is hard enough when they're healthy.

I wonder if they do it because they know their private life will eventually find its way into the public eye anyway, or if they genuinely do it to raise awareness and shed stigma and make a difference in people's lives using what they have: their platform. They certainly make invisible illnesses more visible.

I can't remember the specifics of what Celine Dion said in her video announcement, but I'll never forget the look on Kathy Poirier's face as she graciously accepted help to dance with her son. I think of it every time I get bogged down by life and bothered by my kids, and it helps me adjust my attitude and recalibrate my priorities.

Life's too precious to let hardship steal my joy.

Celine Dion's news made me sad, but it didn't shift anything in my heart. Kathy Poirier's viral video did. It didn't tell me how to live with grit and grace: It showed me. Kathy Poirier showed me, and she has no idea.

People See You Too

Your life makes invisible illness visible too, even if it's "only" to the people in your immediate circle. They see you, and chances are countless others do too as you go about your life doing regular things.

You don't have to be a celebrity for your life to matter or for you to make a difference. Kathy Poirier's viral video proves that.

Ordinary people doing ordinary things under extraordinary circumstances have incredibly powerful testimonies, so keep showing up. You just don't know — can't know — whose life you'll touch in the process.