Fallosophy: My Trip through Life with MS

A memoir based on columnist, fashion-show TV host, podcaster and MS advocate Ardra Shephard’s award-winning blog, Tripping on Air.

Twenty-three-year-old Ardra Shephard is sleeping with the wrong guy, living in a crappy apartment, and spending money she doesn’t have on designer shoes, boozy brunches and weekends in NYC. She hates her office job, but it pays for the lessons she needs to make it as an opera singer. She isn’t thrilled about her current situation, but she isn’t panicked. She knows she’s got time! Making mistakes while you figure stuff out is what your twenties are all about. But then when a doctor tells Ardra she has MS, those two letters split her life into a Before and After.

While over a million people in Canada and the United States live with Multiple Sclerosis, there is no certainty when it comes to the progression of the disease. By her mid-thirties, Ardra is struggling to walk, and it’s terrifying. When she starts using mobility aids, she faces feelings of otherness and not belonging like never before. As Ardra’s deepest fears keep coming true, she starts to learn the most important lesson: She’s been sold a lie about disability—it isn’t a fate worse than death. Having so far survived all of her worst-case scenarios, she begins to realize that a difficult life doesn’t have to be a joyless life.

Today, twenty years after her diagnosis, Ardra’s journey isn’t over. MS will always be a force to be reckoned with, but the woman Ardra is, day after day, is no longer negotiable.

Fallosophy serves up wisdom like a seasoned bartender who’s seen it all, and doesn’t try to sugarcoat what it’s really like to live with a progressive, disabling illness in a world that would rather not build a ramp.

“In Fallosophy, Ardra Shephard follows the journey of her MS with the energy of a page-turning romcom that isn’t interested in glossing over the ragged edges of life. Instead, she offers us a much richer love story—a picture of joie de vivre blooming right alongside the scariest nightmares. As I read, there were literal belly laughs, wet tears, and pages of notes to keep with me for this long haul journey of living in a body.”

“Ardra Shephard is a bad-ass.”