Fallosophy: My Trip through Life with MS

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. Making mistakes while you figure stuff out is what your twenties are all about. But when a doctor tells Ardra she has MS, those two letters split her life into a Before and After.

While more than a million people in Canada and the US 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 like never before. As Ardra’s deepest fears keep coming true, she starts to learn the most important lesson: Having so far survived all her worst-case scenarios she begins to realize that a difficult life doesn’t have to be a joyless life.

Now, more than wenty 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’s it’s really like to live with a progressive, disabling illness in a world that would rather not build a ramp.

Author Bio

“You have nothing if you don’t have your health,” is a popular if misguided maxim. And misguided maxim is a polite way of saying ableist bullshit.

My name is Ardra Shephard and I am one of a billion people on this planet who is disabled. While disability has a profound impact on my life, it’s absurd to assert that health is the dividing line between happiness and a hollow life. As Larry David says in Curb Your Enthusiasm, “Some people are nothing even with their health.”

At 23, I didn’t know “you have nothing if you don’t have your health,” was a lie (and at 23, I thought I knew everything). When I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), I assumed my life was over. Like many, I assumed disability was a fate worse than death.

I wasn’t wrong to freak out about my diagnosis, but MS hasn’t destroyed my life, even if it periodically sidelines it. I’ve learned that it’s not only ignorant, but arrogant to presume that all of my best days are behind me.

Drawn from twenty years of personal diaries, a successful blog, and plenty of hard-won experience, Fallosophy isn’t about fighting an unwinnable battle with my own body. It’s not about overcoming impossible odds. My story is about Plan Bs and pivots. It’s about celebrating the highs and lows of a life you weren’t prepared for. Fallosophy is about making room for the possibility that there are dreams you haven’t even dreamed yet that just might come true.