We chat with Jana Firestone about her book Plot Twist.
A&U: Hey Jana! Thanks so much for chatting with us! What first inspired you to write Plot Twist?
JF: Through my work as a therapist for nearly 20 years, and in all the interviews that I've been doing for both The Curious Life and The Days That Follow, it just became abundantly clear to me that every single person in life experiences unexpected, unwanted, unplanned plot twists. From the little everyday griefs that we experience that maybe throw us off course, to the life altering big plot twists. Seeing that it's a universal experience, I thought there must be some learning that can come out of this, that can help all of us in this incredibly human experience of going through the highs and the lows in life. So, it intentionally started off being a personal development book, and then more and more of my own story started to unravel and it became a combination of anecdotes from my own life and the people that have been generous enough to share their stories with me.
A&U: What was your writing process like?
JF: It started off very much in the personal development space. Then my beautiful publisher, Tessa Feggans (who is just magic to work with) kept highlighting that I was touching on experiences in my own life. There are some big stories in there from the loss of my mum suddenly when I was 21, to this five-year relationship just dissolving into thin air. Tessa encouraged me to really go deep with that stuff, and not just give a summary of what happened, but really to walk through what were the days and the minutes and the hours where like, for example, after losing mum.
So, it became a deeply reflective process that I wasn't expecting, and really a cathartic one, because I was able to unravel things and unpack parts of my life and my story that I think I had buried for the last 20 plus years. Though I thought I had processed a lot of this stuff, it became clear that I hadn't, and there were questions that I was talking to my family about, and recognizing things that were going on for me. Like the fact that I was dressing for work every day going to sit in intensive care with my mum, who was in hospital and completely unconscious. It never occurred to me in all this time how strange that was, and how automatic the brain is in these kinds of expected awful experiences. So, the process was really incredible for me in terms of processing and integrating a lot of those kind of big feelings that I'd been through.
A&U: Why do you think we can struggle with recognizing and processing our own feelings?
JF: I think we live so much of our life in denial when it comes to these big emotional experiences. When things are really hard to confront, the easiest thing to do is just to keep going and pretend they don't exist or talk about things on a surface level. You know, “Oh, yeah, this was an awful thing. And I'm really sad. And it's really hard. But anyway, I'm continuing to move forward.” So, I think our brain does a lot to protect us. It's not necessarily a choice that we're making to avoid these things. But when things are hard, it's much easier to avoid them.
A&U: What would you say are the biggest signs that we ignore when we're not coping?
JF: I think for most of us, it's things like brain fog and fatigue, and feeling really reactive to things and not necessarily knowing why. They are little tells for me for sure — I'm sure my family notices when I'm not coping much more quickly than I notice that in myself. When we find that we're avoiding things people tend to go to ground, and start saying no to things, and not want to do the fun things in life. If you notice that there are any shifts in how you're relating to people and how you're responding to situations, that might be a big red flag.
A&U: We love the “Things to Consider” reflective lessons at the end of each chapter, how did you come up with these exercises?
JF: I wanted them just to be reflective prompts, rather than prescriptive. I didn't want it to feel like Plot Twist is in any way a psychology textbook, or that you must live by these rules, because it is so personal, and things will work differently for different people. I used things that had worked in my own life, or ideas from clients and podcast guests, marrying together the things that have worked for them and for me, as suggestions to reflect on in the readers’ own life. So, if they were experiencing something that had come up as a theme in that chapter, then they could think, “Ah, maybe I need to consider doing XY and Z, maybe I could shift this or make this change in the way that I'm doing things,” and that might just help move things forward. We just want people to feel like they're constantly taking little steps forward, even when we feel like we're treading water.
A&U: What is the biggest takeaway you hope readers have from Plot Twist?
I just really want people to feel seen and heard and to know they're not alone. Because when we're going through life changes and distressing situations, we process so much of it internally that it can feel completely isolating. I want people to know that everything you're feeling is valid and happens to millions of people around the world. In fact, every single human being on this planet is going to experience grief in some shape or form throughout their lives. Some of us just get to it earlier than others, but nobody gets out of this life without experiencing it. There is hope, and things will always get better, eventually.
Plot Twist
by Jana Firestone
A candid field guide to growing through grief and navigating change when life takes an unexpected turn, from an expert therapist and the host of The Curious Life podcast.