This week on Finding Your Bliss, Celebrity Interviewer and Bliss Coach Judy Librach is joined by Ardra Shephard, award-winning blogger and podcast host, the creator and host of AMI-TV’s Fashion Dis and now author of her own memoir, Fallosophy: My Trip through Life with MS.
Ardra Shephard is a Toronto-based trailblazing voice in the Multiple Sclerosis and disability communities, celebrated for her sharp wit and candid storytelling. As just mentioned, She’s the creator of the award-winning blog and podcast Tripping On Air, which is excellent by the way and she has built an impressive social media following. Yahoo Lifestyle reported that “@ms_trippingonair is the number-one chronic illness account to follow on Instagram”. Named one of The Kit’s 2023 Changemakers, Ardra's work has been featured in FASHION, InStyle, WebMD, BezzyMS Healthline, and other magazine and online publications. As the host of AMI-tv’s Fashion Dis and a consultant on various TV projects, Ardra is reshaping the narrative around disability. Her highly anticipated memoir, Fallosophy, (published by Douglas & McIntyre in the spring of 2025), continues to explore these themes with her trademark blend of insight and humor.
Her memoir: Fallosophy: My Trip through Life with MS is based on Ardra Shephard’s own advocacy, and life, after doctors told her that she had MS. Those two letters split her life into a Before and After. Ardra confronts the inevitable. There is no cure for her disease. By her mid-thirties, she’s 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 of her life. 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. Ardra says "Fallosophy: My Trip through Life with MS is a screw-you to MS and a refusal to be defined by whatever the world thinks disability is supposed to be”. It isn’t about fighting unwinnable battles with one’s own body or about overcoming impossible odds. There is no known cure for Multiple Sclerosis, but the hope is that, for those who live with MS, this book might take some of the edge off. Fallosophy: My Trip through Life with MS was also nominated for the Ontario Library Association’s Forest of Reading® 2026 Evergreen Award.
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