Synopsis
A memoir based on podcaster, blogger, fashion host and MS advocate Ardra Shephard’s award-winning blog, Tripping on Air.
Twenty-three-year-old Ardra 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 losing the ability 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. MS is a railroading, mind-eff of a disease that comes with a handful of useless pamphlets when what you really need is a PhD in neurology and a Masters in resilience.
Fallosophy serves as a compass: as a wisdom-wielding bartender who has been there; as a friend who walks the slow, unsteady walk and won’t sugarcoat what it’s like to live with a progressive, disabling illness in a world that would rather not build a ramp.
