Unwillable: A Journey to Reclaim My Brain by Jackie M. Stebbins

 

Unwillable: A Journey to Reclaim My Brain

by Jackie M. Stebbins

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GENRE: Memoir

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BLURB:

“Jackie Stebbins’ UNWILLABLE is an inspiring story of a brilliant woman’s battle with autoimmune encephalitis and the circle of support--from loving family members to dedicated physicians--who helped guide her through a hard-won recovery. Her story is as moving as it is important and is destined to help so many others facing this condition.” 

~ Susannah Cahalan author of NYT #1 Bestseller Brain on Fire".

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Excerpt :

I remember the moment it hit. It was like the physical feeling of lightning striking me and an earthquake ripping through me all at once. It had an instantaneous feeling of terror and destruction. The explosion started in my brain and reverberated through my entire body. It caught and spread like wildfire. It is my memory that I sat upright in bed when it felt like the lightning bolt struck my head. My hands and arms immediately started to fly wildly and uncontrollably all over the place, as if I was trying to brace myself while the earthquake tore through me. For just a second, I wanted to scream out for help, but I couldn’t. I peed my pants. And after that, it all goes black. The memory I have is only an instant long, but I can still feel the desire to scream. I can feel my arms moving so rapidly and uncontrollably that they are almost screaming out too. It is the worst of all the nightmares, all the terrors, and all the episodes I had in that bed for those seven months, in a few split seconds.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Jackie M. Stebbins was living her dream as a nationally recognized family law, criminal defense, and civil litigator. But Stebbins’s career as a lawyer abruptly ended in May, 2018, when she was diagnosed with a rare brain illness, autoimmune encephalitis. Stebbins persevered to make a remarkable recovery and turned herself into an author and motivational speaker. Stebbins is the author of the JM Stebbins blog and host of the Brain Fever podcast. Stebbins’s side hustle includes raising three lovely children with her wonderful husband, Sean, in Bismarck, North Dakota, and in her leisure time she can be found reading, trying to be funny, and aqua jogging.

Buy Links:

Amazon: https://a.co/d/d89kann

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/unwillable-jackie-m-stebbins/1141495526

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/61125194

Social Media:

https://www.facebook.com/JackieMStebbins/

https://twitter.com/jmstebbs

https://www.instagram.com/jmstebbs84/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackie-stebbins-725081173/

https://www.tiktok.com/@jmstebbs

Websites:

jmstebbins.com

jmstebbins.com/blog (Blog Link)

unwillable.com

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER

<a href="http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f4571">Enter to win a custom t-shirt - a Rafflecopter giveaway</a>

Jackie M. Stebbins will be awarding a custom #StebbinsStrong t-shirt (US only) to a randomly

drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW 

Hello and welcome to my blog! Can you tell me a little about yourself, and how you became an author?

I was born a feisty, argumentative, and independent little person. I grew into a feisty, argumentative, and independent trial lawyer. I had wonderful parents and grew up on a farm in a rural town in the small state of North Dakota. Beginning in fifth grade when I read my first John Grisham book, The Client, I wanted nothing more than to become a lawyer. For nearly ten years, I practiced in Bismarck, North Dakota, with the support of my husband, Sean, and my children. Unfortunately for me, I don’t have a beautiful experience where I stopped to smell the roses and the muse hit me to write a memoir. But in 2018, I was living my dream as a successful trial lawyer and senior partner of my own law firm when I suddenly lost control of my mind and body and was diagnosed with autoimmune encephalitis (AE). AE is a rare brain illness wherein the person&#39;s immune system attacks her brain. I was fortunate that intravenous steroids turned my brain back on and I woke up from my nightmare. But waking up wasn’t all sweet, because I immediately realized that my life as I knew it was over and that I was going to lose my beloved career. As I began to process my illness, I learned that Susannah Cahalan had written a memoir about her experience with AE, called Brain on Fire, which was a NYT #1 bestseller. My neurologist had actually referenced Brain on Fire to my family as he diagnosed me, so the book helped save my life. I vowed to write Unwillable about my experience to hopefully help others faced with this disease or another debilitating situation.

What is your book about?

Unwillable is the story of my journey from a thirty-four-year-old, thriving, bright woman, lawyer, and mother, to someone who couldn’t tell the time or date, who was committed to the psychiatric ward, who began having seizures, and who couldn’t be left alone with herself or her children. Unwillable characterizes the torturous onset of AE and what it took for me to recover from its devastation. I like to think that the arc of the story bends towards resilience. Who is your hero/heroine? Is he/she based on someone in real life? I’ve been telling the story of my AE journey for years now through blogs, Unwillable, media appearances, and motivational speeches. Most times I believe I’m telling a horror story and a tale of redemption about a random woman. And then it hits: the story is about me. AE happened to me. I lived the horrific onset and near-death experience. But I also survived, recovered, and rebuilt my life as an author and speaker. So while I’m really proud of Unwillable’s protagonist, the heroes of my story are honestly my husband, parents, doctors, and a lot of friends and other family who worked hard to garner me a diagnosis and help me recover.

What are your favorite times for writing? Morning? Evening?

When I first began writing Unwillable, I wrote constantly for days and months on end. I was breathless and processing trauma. I had a manic desire to get my story onto paper all at once. I usually started really early in the morning and wrote as long as I could. Once the skeleton of the story was written a year after I began, my life changed a lot: I had my third baby at the onset of the pandemic. From there, my husband and I turned to home school and constant full-time parenting. After all that, my morning writing schedule never really recovered. I still prefer to work on my larger writing projects in the early hours in my home office, but with chronic health conditions and a busy family, I end up writing whenever I can, including late afternoons at my office space.

Who are your favorite authors? Did they influence your writing, and if so, how?

Growing up, I loved John Grisham and read everything he published. I read novels in high school and turned to a lot of political, social justice, and current events books in college and law school. And I patiently awaited each Harry Potter book to be released after I began reading the series in the late nineties. I had read a lot throughout life, but when I began penning my memoir, I realized I had never studied what I was reading through the eyes of a writer. Learning the craft took a lot of time and error, and I greatly benefitted from writing classes through The Loft and a local group, the BisMan Writers Guild.

Did you have a favorite book as a child? Did it influence your choice to become an author?

In second and third grade, I remember reading every Hardy Boys mystery book my older brother and the library had. From there, I moved to reading John Grisham. I always loved mysteries and suspense novels, but felt moved by To Kill a Mockingbird and The Grapes of Wrath. Yet I read for fun and spent most of my waking hours plotting how to become a great trial lawyer. It was when my career as a lawyer was taken from me because of my AE diagnosis that I pivoted to writing. Without my rare brain illness and near-death experience, I don’t believe I ever would have desired to become an author. I always wanted to live like the main characters in the Grisham novels, I never wanted to write about them.