Introduction
Here’s the thing about writing a memoir: the person you are when you start and the person you are when you finish are practically strangers. It’s like those before and after pictures on makeover shows, except all the transformation happens on the inside. Well, my hair got longer too, but you know what I mean.
Writing this book has changed me. There has been so much learning involved, especially about myself, and it has required a depth of introspection and emotional excavation that I sure as hell didn’t anticipate when I signed on for the job. In writing chapters about my childhood and my family and my marriage and my ego, I was forced to ask myself some tough questions—Why did I feel that way? What was I really yearning for in that moment/relationship/job? What went wrong? How much of the blame did I need to own? The answers weren’t always pretty, and accepting responsibility in failed relationships can be hard, although important. At points throughout the last year, the difficulty of this endeavor pushed me to some low places, full of frustration and self-doubt, and left me feeling defeated. But now that I’ve landed on the other side, I feel stronger than I have in years. I’m more self-aware, hopeful, and content… and frankly a hell of a lot less anxious than I ever could have envisioned. It’s been a fitting journey for a book called The Upside of Being Down, a manifestation of the fact that our struggles can lead to our greatest successes, and I am so excited to share what I’ve learned with you in the process of this book and of my life.
I have wanted to write a book since I was a tiny sun-kissed six-year-old in Boca Raton, Florida, propped up on phone books so I could reach the typewriter (yes, a typewriter, it was the seventies, that’s what we typed on). Little Jen, with her blond pigtails and tan skin and incredibly hairy arms, almost always wearing a sundress—blue with swiss dots, maybe, or white with lace trim—banging away at the keyboard in her father’s office, drafting the story of a princess who lived among polka-dot mushrooms in a faraway land filled with glitter, unicorns, and rainbows. It was destined to be a bestseller. The final product of all this typing was less intelligible and more like a series of random letters jammed up against each other, but the story I was trying to convey was definitely the one I just mentioned. But I didn’t know how to type—or spell—yet. I put the book on hold for a while (and by a while I mean forty years), but somewhere in the midst of growing up and moving away and changing careers and changing again and going to therapy and managing my mental health and starting a company and then selling a company, I found my voice. It was my voice and vision that helped launch and grow ban.do, the bright, optimistic multimillion-dollar lifestyle company where I am now chief creative officer. It was my voice on my podcast, Jen Gotch is OK… Sometimes, which is where I first really dug into my struggles with mental health (though my Instagram followers know I’ve been sharing that part of me for years) and let listeners in on my spirited yet very one-sided conversations with my dog, Phil, and my cat, Gertie. And it’s my voice that will drive this story—now with fewer unicorns and rainbows but much improved spelling—as I take you through my own winding journey in an effort to help you navigate yours.
In the course of my life, I have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety, and ADD. I feel like there’s also some lactose intolerance in there, but who’s to say? My success has come in tandem with these diagnoses—sometimes despite them, other times because of them. You’re probably used to seeing creative types depicted as successful or suffering, one or the other. My story is both.
I’ve considered my mental health struggles a gift ever since someone first put a name to them in my early twenties. Before that they were truly a pain in the ass, but once I understood and had a vocabulary for what I was dealing with, I found strength and empathy and patience. Calling on these traits isn’t always easy, and I am not in limitless supply (because, who is?) but I have enough on reserve and know how to access them when I need to, thanks to a lot of hard work and self-reflection. Developing an appreciation for the importance of being mentally healthy has helped me run a company that encourages emotions in the workplace (wild concept, right?) and that operates as a group of humans rather than a corporate conglomerate. Ban.do’s tagline is “We exist to help you be your best” and that’s the mission that drives the company. Learning about mental health has taught me that living your life with hope, optimism, lightheartedness, and humor (lots and lots of humor) is a tremendous gift you can give yourself. I know now that you can suffer from mental illness and still maintain good mental health, and that the reverse is also true. You can have zero diagnosed mental illnesses, but if you ignore your emotional well-being, you will never be mentally strong and you’ll also miss out on a lot of the joy that comes with being human.
* * *
Fifteen(ish) years ago, I was sitting on the couch during a therapy appointment, and my long-standing psychologist predicted I would become a mental health advocate.
“How would I do that?” I asked. “No one knows who I am—how would they even find me?” This was well before Instagram, and probably even before Myspace.
“I could see you speaking at conferences, sharing your struggles and successes,” she said.
The thought of speaking in front of more than three people instantly made me want to turn to dust, yet her prediction wedged itself into the back of my mind. It sounded scary and embarrassing, but then over a decade later, I started expressing myself. First, at small conferences, just like she said, and then eventually on larger platforms. I was talking about mental illness on my Instagram Stories and my podcast and creating jewelry at ban.do to raise awareness about mental health. And while plenty of times over the years I was so turned off by my own voice that I wanted to murder it via multiple maiming stabs of the tongue, or maybe removal of the throat organs altogether (that’s possible, right?), the response was overwhelming. As it turns out, I am not the only person who deals with these issues on a daily basis. That was strangely surprising for me, but if you struggle with any of this you know how isolating and singular your experience can feel.
Since this book will address issues of mental health head-on, we should probably get something out of the way: I am not a doctor. I am the founder and creative lead at a lifestyle company that sells disco balls you can drink out of and bath mats with boobs on them. Oh, and when I refer to my “research,” please know that in most cases I’m talking about a quick Google search and anywhere from five to seventeen minutes of reading articles on Psychology Today. What I’m saying is, as much as I wish I could, I’m not here to diagnose you or suggest a treatment plan. I’m instead going to share my experiences as a layperson—without getting too clinical—and hope that in doing so, I can help you tune into your own experiences and feel less alone. I hope this goes without saying, but just in case: If you suspect you are suffering from a mental health issue, please seek out the help of an actual professional.
* * *
I was in a sorority in college. That often comes as a surprise to people, so imagine how they react when I tell them I was actually the president. Regardless, during rush week, we put on a talent show. There was singing and dancing, sure, and there might have even been a magic show, but for reasons I will never understand, we also showed off our talent for reading philosophy. I have no idea how that qualifies as a talent, but it’s not really the point of the story so let’s just go with it. In this portion of the show, one of my sorority sisters stood on the stage wearing a pair of giant glasses that seemed to turn her regular eyes into the cartoon googly version. She held a giant leather-bound gold-embossed book and pretended to read from it. In total monotone, she declared: “ ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’ ” Then she definitively slammed the book shut. Just to dial up the drama, we put baby powder inside the book so that when it closed a cloud of “dust” came out, a reminder that this was an old, wise book.