Long Island's Jamie-Lynn Sigler opens up on how her multiple sclerosis has impacted sons

Jericho native Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who has emerged as an advocate for fellow multiple sclerosis sufferers, says her two young sons are each reaching an age where they are beginning to understand that their mother has MS.

“We used to say, ‘Mommy’s slow.’ ‘Mommy can’t run.’ ‘Mommy can play goalie’ when we played hockey, or ‘Mommy can be pitcher,’ but that’s it. There were stages of conversation,” the actor and podcaster, 42, says in the new issue of People magazine of Beau, 10, and Jack, 5, her sons with former baseball player Cutter Dykstra, son of retired Mets outfielder Lenny Dykstra.

When their elder child “was about 5 or 6,” says Sigler, “we said, ‘Mommy lives with something called MS.’ ” Beau, whom she calls “very sensitive,” responded by being “very conscious and caring. He’s concerned about me.” Jack, now almost 6, is “frustrated about it,” she says. “He’s angry, he’s sad. He’ll make a lot of comments about how I’m different than other moms, and he doesn’t like it. And that’s OK; he’s allowed to feel that way. I really want him to be able to express himself.”

The actor, who recently starred in the series “Big Sky” and is best known as daughter Meadow on “The Sopranos,” says of her Manhasset-born husband, “I don’t know if there’s enough ways that I can describe my gratitude for him,” adding, “He’s made himself available to me in every way that I’ve needed support.”

She also has found support from the industry, she says, with production personnel willing “to park my trailer closer” to a set than otherwise, to reduce her walking distance and conserve her energy. “They were able to make accommodations, have discussions prior to me getting to work and really allowed for me then to just focus and do my job and feel like anybody else.”

In 2016, after going public about the treatable but incurable autoimmune disease of the central nervous system, the symptoms of which can include loss of balance, muscle spasms and tremors and excessive fatigue, Sigler was nervous about public reaction. “It was a big moment for me, because it was the beginning of this journey of self-reflection and self-acceptance,” she says, adding, “I grew up with this idea that people are only going to be attracted to you when you’re perfect, and it’s quite the opposite. MS gave me my superpower, which is vulnerability, because the more raw and real and open I am — and this has forced me to be that — the more beautiful connections are.”

Treating her symptoms with a monthly injection of the Novartis pharmaceutical Kesimpta, Sigler says she maintains the hectic routine of any mother of school-age children: Waking the kids at 6:30 a.m. after preparing their lunches and snacks, then making them breakfast before Dykstra takes them to school. “And then next thing you know, you look at your watch and the kids are on the bus and back home. And then it’s baseball or football or whatever it is. It’s a very full life,” she says. “I’m slowly getting into the parenting stage of being a chauffeur.”

And her having MS, she says, has benefited her and Dykstra’s children. “I think I’m raising two little boys who are really aware of other people and their needs. And [showing them] that things can still be accomplished, albeit differently. My husband always tells me, ‘Your boys are seeing you fight this every day and live a really full life.’ And if I can give them anything, I guess it’s that.”