Recalibration: How to Reset When Sh*t Hits the Fan

By Jenn Schwager

Have you ever had something happen in your life, something that threw you completely off balance? Have you felt like every move you make is the wrong one? Maybe you're feeling lost on your path, and are constantly dreaming of what your life could be? You need to know you are not alone...and that you can over

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Dec 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9798885040211

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Recalibration

Recalibration

How to Reset When Sh*t Hits the Fan

Jenn Schwager

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2021 Jenn Schwager

All rights reserved.

Recalibration

How to Reset When Sh*t Hits the Fan

ISBN

978-1-63730-695-6 Paperback

978-1-63730-785-4 Kindle Ebook

979-8-88504-021-1 Ebook

For my good friend Cathy,

Thank you for always encouraging me to just reframe it.

Introduction

Sitting in the front seat of my mom’s old black Lexus, I couldn’t breathe. I was trying so hard to gasp for air, but it wasn’t coming. Tears welled up in my eyes, and I couldn’t feel the ground beneath my ten-year-old feet. My parents tried to console me—one on either side of me—but it wasn’t any use. My older brother had just died, and the world as I knew it was gone.

My brother, Evan, died of an accidental drug overdose when he was eighteen years old. If you know me personally, you already know this story. But for those who don’t, this is a story of a teenager who figured he had the world at his feet, that he could conquer anything. Evan was many things and he was not perfect, but he made one stupid decision and it changed the rest of his life, and his family’s, for good. I will admit that when I began my book writing journey, I wanted to share this story but felt as if it was a bit taboo. I did the whole, Your tragedy is bigger than my tragedy, comparison game in my head but realized everyone has their own story to share. This is mine, and this is valid. Yours is, too.

When my parents told me about my brother’s passing, it was like an instant shift had occurred. Both my mom and my dad took turns trying to explain to me what had happened with my brother. As I look back on it, their voices blend into one. In their own way, they each tried to console me and reason with our new reality. My mom crying and rubbing my head, and my dad with tears in his eyes trying to be strong, shielding me from anyone who might be able to see into this moment in my life. I felt like I had been punched in the gut ten times over, and I saw my life flash before my eyes. Not only because I felt like I was dying, but because I knew I would never be the same; no one could ever be the same after suffering such a loss. I didn’t know what I was going to have to go through to get to the place that I’m in now, and hell, I am still quite the work in progress—best believe that.

After the passing of my brother, I began a journey to resilience, and I looked in a lot of places. I didn’t realize the strength I would have coming out on the other side of grief, but I knew I didn’t want to stay in the space of sadness forever; I couldn’t. From ages ten to twenty-three, I constantly evolved (sometimes backward, I admit), and I experienced all different versions of myself. At first, I refused therapy. I couldn’t be bothered with it. I thought it was the stupidest thing ever, and no one puts baby in a corner (yes, that was a Dirty Dancing reference and yes, I am looking at you, Mom). I felt like it wasn’t my decision to try therapy out immediately; I feel like in the grief handbook it says to jump in right away to handling your emotions with a professional, but that’s not how I felt.

My parents did what they could to try and help me, but therapy wasn’t the right answer for me at the time. I took to more creative outlets and doing my own research on the matter. At ten, I really wasn’t sure what the hell I was doing to cope correctly but, like I said, creatively; I plowed through about four journals, all of which I still have, and drew. A lot.

I also was in my pink iPod Nano phase, where I was obsessed with the Jonas Brothers. I felt like I was on a crash course to being an adult with the topics of conversation swirling around me. I remember listening to VH1’s Top 100 Countdown in the morning while hanging out with my older sister, and Mariah Carey’s Bye Bye debuted. Of course, I thought, a song about losing people closest to you, coming out a month after my brother died. I made a connection to grief in every song I listened to and every movie I watched. I’d play Guitar Hero with my siblings and forget for a moment this was the game Evan used to love. In the first year of grief, I was caught between ten years old and twenty-five. I didn’t know how to manage these new thoughts I had or the feelings of anger or regret. I felt like it was all too heavy for someone as small as me. It was then that I realized this one experience was going to bleed into the rest of my life, whether I liked it or not.

In my preteen years, I think that’s where I really started to struggle. Not only was I hormonal and had an attitude problem at home, but I was also trying to fit in at school. Ages eleven through thirteen, I was a menace. Maybe some of you reading this now can relate to that, whether it’s you or someone you know, but those things happened. Those are times in my life I cringe at but still acknowledge their presence. Without them, I don’t know who I’d be now. I will dive more into this later on, but I remember in this stage, I was thinking therapy wasn’t looking so bad. Therapy was going to give me a way to figure out the root of my emotions and learn ways to work through them. Looking in the mirror is scary, especially when your behavior is bad—but I knew during this stage, it was seeming more important than ever.

Next up: fourteen through seventeen. Yikes on this one. If you laughed at that, you know what I am talking about. I would say this is a repeat of ages eleven through thirteen, but times ten and on steroids. Here in this stage, therapy (in full force) enters the show, and we move upward. I was ready to give it a go because I was tired of feeling a certain way. I wanted to reconnect with this mini-adult, who had been through a lot, but had a lot to offer the world, too.

Eighteen. The age Evan had passed. This was the age I felt like I saw a real glimpse at what my future looked like because he didn’t get to live out his. I was ready to go to college, meet new people, and start to find out more of my passions. I was ready to get to know a version of myself who was independent of the place and the people who had been in my life for so long. The thing about eighteen was that I had all of these ideas of what I wanted to be, but had no freaking idea of how to get there. Eighteen is a fun age, but it’s a tough one, too. I will go deeper into what this really looked like for me later on.

Nineteen through twenty-two. These were some of the best years in my life. I was in college really living it up—across the country and all by myself. I felt freed from the trauma I had experienced growing up, and I felt like I could reinvent myself. The caveat with this stage, though, was that I was closer to my past self than ever. I was forced to face a lot of things I had refused to before when I would visit home for school breaks, or when I found myself repeating the same anxious patterns or surrounding myself with people that were direct reflections of my own issues—yeah, yikes. That’s some scary shit. And it took me a second to realize this. Caught up in the rhythm of school, work, and maintaining a social life, I decided to take a look at three little things: wellness, podcasts, and books.

Here I was, twenty-three at last (and I felt like I was going on fifty sometimes), and I decided to make lists. A shit load of lists. Lists of what I like, what I don’t like. The person I want to be, the person I am, and the person I thought I was. Who were my close friends? Who weren’t? What did I want out of a romantic relationship? What did I want for a career? And most importantly, what parts of myself did I want to heal? What are the easy fixes and what aren’t? My twenty-third year was the year of ultimate self-reflection, and I dove head-first into trauma healing and therapy, three different jobs, writing a book (holla!), and so much more.

Through the different seasons in my life, I’ve learned a lot. And trust me, I know I have a lot more to do—which excites me. I want to share my experiences with you in the hopes that you find my stories useful, and find a way to connect, to heal, and to grow. A lot of people I know dislike self-help books and think they talk down to them too much. I want you to know I am not going to be talking down to you; I am going to be talking with you, like two friends over coffee (or margaritas). I want to share my ideas with you, the things that worked for me and what didn’t—and, most of all, I want to instill the notion inside of you that you can get through anything with resilience, strength, vulnerability, and humility, and meet any kind of challenge with grace. When shit goes right, you go left. Together we can learn to recalibrate and move forward.

For me personally, embarking on young womanhood is when I learned to pick up self-development books. I don’t know if I knew then what exactly I was looking for, but in hindsight, I was in search of a shift in perspective. According to NPD’s BookScan™ report, an estimated 4.3 million motivational-inspirational self-help books were sold in 2019, which was an incredible jump from 1.4 million units in 2013. That shows me there’s a shift in the collective, and people as a whole are interested in tackling what the hell is going on in their hearts and heads. Why do people read these books? Well, some need a major kick in the pants. Others are curious. Some of these readers are just buyers; they bought the book and it’s currently collecting dust on their top shelf. Taking the first step to dive into a deeper part of yourself is tough. But necessary.

I took a poll a couple months ago on my Instagram story, which surveyed about twenty-three hundred people. I asked how many of them started something new or attempted something they’ve always wanted to in 2020. Out of those twenty-three hundred and some odd people, 76 percent said yes, and 24 percent said no. So, in my close-ish online circle, people are making moves to do things they actually like doing, or at least they think they like, and that’s badass. If you’re reading this book now, and you’ve made it this far, first, I’d like to thank you. Second, I’d make the assumption that you’re ready to do something you’ve always wanted to; you’re ready to take a closer look at you.

Many people think self-help books can make others feel inadequate, or the author just boasts about their accomplishments and other accolades that put them higher than their peers. The majority believe the self-help category presents unattainable goals and unrealistic standards of day-to-day life and the long-term.

In my experience, however, self-help and the motivational category of books were some of the biggest resources I had to help me move forward. I was able to read several different ones, from all different perspectives, and they each fit into a piece of my life during different times. The problem with thinking self-help books are self-deprecating is that they’re truly there to help you be a better version of you. They’re not there to make you someone else. I want to make you believe in yourself again, and make sure you walk away from this reading experience feeling like you found a friend, or at the very least, relatable material. This book is relatable because I’ve also been a shit show (we all have our moments). I am a young woman with some crazy ambition, with real drive and commitment to help myself and help others.

I believe that as you seek out this book and you read through these words, you’re going to pluck the things you need from it. Maybe it doesn’t resonate right away with shared experience, but you have found a really great tool to put in your tool belt for goal setting, or boundary setting; that’s all amazing, too. I am determined to change the narrative of self-help from, Oh, look at me, to Oh, look at ME! Look at how far I’ve come.

I’m no professional researcher or therapist, and by no means am I pretending to be anything other than me. Just Jenn. But what I am a professional at is living life: trying to break outside of my comfort zone, try new things, meet new people, and challenge myself in new ways each day. I am committed to writing this in the hopes of helping other people on their journeys. I never knew what my calling was, and sometimes I still don’t know; I feel like I will have a few in this lifetime. For now, this is one that I am seeking to fulfill. I want to be there for other people to make their lives a little bit better.

I took to the self-help category over the last year because I began a transformational journey as well. I took tiny steps with each part of myself I learned to heal. Metamorphosis doesn’t just happen overnight.

In addition to helping others, I really love writing. I fucking love it! I felt like in college, my joy for writing was diminished because I was constantly writing academic pieces with shit loads of research and citations, etc. You know the drill. As I began this project or just over the years writing in journals, I’ve felt relieved and happy; I’ve felt content and peaceful. I’ve spent countless years writing academically and professionally in some aspects for different jobs I’ve had, but my true passion lies in helping others. Through interviews, research, passion, and curiosity, I am presenting everything I’ve learned and am learning.

Ultimately, this is what I want for you: Know that you can face the things you’ve been avoiding. You are capable of doing anything you put your mind to, whether that’s getting a dream job, grieving the loss of a loved one, moving forward after a breakup, or even taking the first steps to getting in better shape—both mentally and physically. You’re the master of your own reality, however small or however big. We can only control the controllables. When you’re not sure what the hell happened to the comfortable life you’d been living, I want you to use this book as a tool to figure out which steps to take next.

I want you to go through the world setting healthy boundaries that work best for you.

Because I’m a young woman in my twenties, it may seem this will only apply to women in similar situations. I may have more relatable stories and recent experiences with that demographic, but I want anyone to be able to pick this book up and get something from it. Whether you learn how to boost your self-esteem, find the best kind of friends, move forward with that big dream or idea you have, or accept and heal traumatic experiences.

After all, we’re all humans. We all have feelings, thoughts, worries, dreams, loves, hates,