Victoria woman transforms from international model to inspiring advocate after developing rare syndrome

Victoria -

Although she shows me a picture of herself as child posing in a dress, Tara Moss says she was actually a tomboy who took pride in wearing jeans with scuffed knees.

“The other girls in my classes would say they wanted to be princesses or ballerinas,” Tara remembers with a smile. “I would say, ‘I want to be Stephen King.’”

While Tara dreamed of delighting readers with dark stories, others kept telling the six-foot tall 14-year-old to become a model.

“That gave me a very strong, albeit skewed, idea of what my worth was and what I should be focusing on,” Tara says.

So Tara became a professional and posed for international publications. But the success was bittersweet. Her pictures were also gracing the walls of the hospital room where her proud mom Janni was being treated for cancer.

“I remember waking up the next day and I couldn’t believe the sun came up and my mom wasn’t there,” Tara says.

She calls the death of her 43-year-old mom a turning point in her life.

“I felt like I needed to make something of myself,” Tara explains. “And be worth that belief she had in me.”

So Tara moved to Europe and modelled for more than a decade before — at the age of 25 — her first novel became a bestseller.

“Writing was a life-long dream,” Tara smiles. “And finally it was happening.”

Tara ended up writing 13 books (published in 19 countries in a dozen languages) and using her fame to support international human rights (becoming a UNICEF Ambassador and advocate for women and children’s rights).

She also started a family, before her dream life turned into a nightmare.

“If you’re in pain all the time, and I am, it’s really hard,” she says. “This has taken me to the edge.”

For the past six years, Tara’s been suffering from the rare, debilitating, and often excruciating condition known as CRPS (complex regional pain syndrome).

“The first three years, I did retreat into myself. I needed to identify what was happening and accept it. That’s a process,” Tara says. “And then I had to start finding my strength again, know that it was going to be different.”

Armed with a cane she named Wolfie, and later a wheelchair she dubbed Hera (after the Queen of the Greek gods), Tara became a disability advocate.

“There’s still so much I can offer,” Tara says, before detailing the work she’s done to advocate for people with disability and accessibility concerns that recently earned her the honourary citizen award from her hometown of Victoria.

“There’s still so much I can do.”

Along with fighting to right what’s wrong for others, Tara is striving to re-focus herself from grieving what’s been lost to being grateful for what remains.

“I am so grateful,” Tara says, before showing me pictures of her smiling and embracing her husband, daughter and dog.

“And maybe grateful in a way I just couldn’t see the way to before I became disabled.”

Maybe grateful in the way Tara’s mom felt when she started teaching her girl how precious this life is — a perspective Tara will now never stop offering her own daughter.

“You have to keep going. You never know where life’s going to take you,” Tara says. “It could be so beautiful tomorrow.”