Falling Upwards
Living the Dream, One Panic Attack at a Time
-
- $15.99
Publisher Description
“With inspiring openness and vulnerability, Jeremy shares his hard-earned wisdom of how to combat the established rules of masculinity, channel our anxiety into bold, new ideas, and grow as flawed, yet hopeful human beings. Falling Upwards is for any creative ready to heal.”
—Yung Pueblo, poet and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Lighter
Acclaimed entrepreneur Jeremy Fall shares how to turn fresh ideas into an authentic career, challenge the old standards of masculinity, and address mental health without shame
Jeremy Fall grew up blocks away from LA's infamous Skid Row with a single mom who managed a restaurant to make ends meet. At night, he’d go into the kitchen and prepare elaborate and comforting snacks—the only way he knew to calm his anxious, OCD mind. As an adult, Jeremy opened fourteen restaurants around the country, collaborated with Quincy Jones, made the “Forbes 30 Under 30” list in 2020, and became the first restaurateur to be represented by Jay Z’s Roc Nation. Having built a business persona based on wild, borderless creativity, he feared that treating his mental health issues might come at the cost of his drive and creativity—but that didn’t happen.
Determined to destigmatize mental health for men, Falling Upwards blends Jeremy’s personal narrative with practical takeaways, outlining core paradigms like The Studio 54 Effect, Paperclipping, and The Power of Basic to help us harness our craziest, most out-there loose balloon ideas and make them work for us—without giving up on our own mental health.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Restaurateur Fall exposes the underside of the nightlife industry in a captivating debut memoir that traces his own meteoric career and concurrent attempts to come to grips with a debilitating anxiety disorder. Fall found early success with an ethos of personal transformation ("If you can turn an empty space into Studio 54, why not do that to yourself?") that helped propel him from a "hairy, broke, pathological liar from a broken home" into a "gatekeeper, tastemaker, Dionysus in black nail polish" who opened his first Los Angeles watering hole at 23 and more than a dozen bars and restaurants by 29. But while this philosophy led to success, it also spurred dissatisfaction, as the "more successful I became, the more removed I was from my sense of self." A tipping-point panic attack at 29 pushed him to seek help. The author's healing process involved finding a therapist, reframing the mental narrative surrounding his anxiety, and taking antidepressants, though he advises readers that their own recoveries might look different, as "there are no ‘right' ways to be happy and successful other than the ones your intuition is pulling you towards." With unvarnished honesty, Fall renders his attempts to heal amid a pressure-cooker service industry culture, rife with media-reinforced stereotypes of angry, knife-throwing "bad-boy chefs," which can leave little space for emotional vulnerability. It's a raw and riveting account.
