For eight years, model-turned-bestselling author Tara Moss lived in a world of relentless agony.
Diagnosed with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) in 2016, she found herself battling one of the most excruciating conditions known to medical science.
Now, at 50, Moss isn't just surviving — she's thriving, having emerged from her ordeal with a renewed identity, purpose, and zest for life.
Watch: Tara Moss on becoming a fearless mum. Article continues after video.
A life of unbearable pain.
"Your body is in fight or flight and you feel like you're being burned alive," Moss told Stellar in an interview published August 25, 2024. "Your body doesn't know you're not being burned alive. You're actually having that experience in a real sense."
What began as a hip injury in 2016 quickly spiralled into a nightmare of chronic pain.
Moss found herself bedridden at her worst, relying on a wheelchair or a cane she affectionately dubbed "Wolfie". The pain, described as a "cold fire", started in her right hip and eventually engulfed the right side of her body.
Conventional treatments offered little relief. Moss underwent multiple hospital visits, pain-management programs, and even 24/7 ketamine infusions. Yet progress remained elusive.
Three years ago, Moss stumbled upon a potential lifeline — a virtual reality (VR) trial at a pain clinic in Victoria, British Columbia.
"I could feel my body start to calm, and my pain was relieved a little bit," she recalled. The experience opened the door to a world of alternative healing methods.
"I started doing VR meditation, then I switched to guided meditation. Now I can just meditate, and it's part of my life," Moss explained. "It's really helpful for my nervous system but also my overall wellbeing and my spiritual connection."
The turning point came in September 2023. After nine weeks of intensive treatment at the renowned Spero Clinic in the U.S., Moss was declared to be in remission.
For the first time in years, she walked out unassisted.
Reclaiming her identity.
As Moss emerged from years of chronic pain, she found herself fundamentally transformed.
The metamorphosis extended to her very identity, prompting her to reclaim her full name — Tara Rae — given to her by her mother, who died in 1990 when Moss was 16.
"I don't feel like 'Tara' in the same way, and I'm embracing it rather than denying it," she explained to Stellar. "It's part of a reclaiming of my whole self."
In an Instagram post posted in January, Moss elaborated on this profound change: "As many of you know, I am no longer quite the person I was. This wasn't a choice per se, and she was great, but I don't feel at all like Tara after the past eight deeply life-changing years of physical pain with CRPS. I am changed."
She continued, "Now in remission and able to walk again, I have embraced my full self, as I am, and this includes my full birth name and the meanings I have found in that name. I have emerged different."
Moss has embraced a host of new roles, each reflecting a facet of her renewed self. She now works as a reiki and shamanic healing practitioner, a seiðkona (a modern-day Norse witch), and a rune reader.
Perhaps most poignantly, she's working as a life celebrant and training to become a death doula.
"Being a life celebrant and training as a death doula has given me a deeper understanding of life and death," she shared. "It’s an honour to help others through some of the most challenging moments of their lives. In many ways, it’s also been healing for me, helping me come to terms with my own journey."
Redefining relationships and motherhood.
Amidst her profound personal changes, Moss has also navigated the end of her 15-year marriage to poet and photographer Berndt Sellheim. Rather than viewing this as a failure, Moss sees it as a natural evolution.
"I reject the idea that a 15-year relationship, with all of that wonder and beauty, is a failure," she said. "Sometimes it's healthiest for certain bonds to be released. I don't think relationships, certainly not of this type, end. They're just changing form."
Moss and Sellheim now share what she describes as a "beautiful co-parenting relationship" with their 13-year-old daughter, Sapphira.
For Moss, this new chapter as a single mother at 50 isn't daunting — it's empowering. "I'm more myself than ever, and I have much to be grateful for," she said.
The power of hope.
Throughout her ordeal with CRPS and the subsequent changes in her life, Moss has clung tenaciously to hope. "It's been a long road, and there were times when I truly thought I wouldn't make it," she reflected.
"But each day, I made the choice to keep going, to keep fighting, even when it felt impossible. The support from my loved ones and the new paths I've discovered in holistic healing have been my lifelines."
As she told Mia Freedman in a 2022 interview on Mamamia's No Filter podcast: "I've had many lives within this lifetime. It sounds strange, but I really have had big changes — some changes I've wanted, sometimes really not. Life throws stuff at us."
Moss now views her experiences as a catalyst for growth and transformation.
"There’s a saying: 'To learn, you must suffer,'" she told Stellar. "When you're going through something really difficult, it's good to look for the light, to keep holding onto the possibility that there's something in this that is going to make me more than what I was before."
"And to keep that narrative of hope. Because without hope, we can't get better."
Feature image: Instagram.
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