Miracle Mindset: A Mother, Her Son, and Life's Hardest Lessons - Hardcover

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Celebrity nutrition expert and fitness expert JJ Virgin teaches clients how to lose weight and master their mindset so they can lead bigger, better lives. She is author of four New York Times bestsellers: The Virgin Diet, The Virgin Diet Cookbook, JJ Virgin’s Sugar Impact Diet, and JJ Virgin’s Sugar Impact Diet Cookbook. Her memoir Miracle Mindset: Show Up, Step Up, You Are Stronger Than You Think explores the powerful lessons in strength and positivity that she learned after her son Grant was the victim of a brutal hit-and-run accident. JJ hosts the popular JJ Virgin Lifestyle Show podcast and regularly writes for Huffington Post, Rodale Wellness, and other major blogs and magazines. She’s also a frequent guest on TV and radio and speaks at major events. She is also a business coach and founded the premier health entrepreneur event and community, the Mindshare Summit. Find articles, recipes, helpful online programs, and more at JJVirgin.com.

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Warrior Mom

1

I’m Not as Strong as You Think I Am

Grant was never an easy kid. From the time he was a six-month-old refusing to sleep in his crib, I knew I had my work cut out for me. The pediatrician told me to just leave him alone in his room and let him cry, and eventually he would fall asleep. That may have worked with other babies, but Grant always found a way to escalate the situation, crying louder and louder for up to six hours at a time until I couldn’t take it anymore.

The one thing Grant always loved was being a big brother. Bryce was born when Grant was just one year old. When Grant came to the hospital to meet his new brother for the first time, he suddenly looked so big. Really, he was still just a baby himself. But Grant took one look at Bryce sleeping in his little bassinet and handed him his beloved pacifier as a welcome gift. My heart just about melted.

Once we brought Bryce home, Grant’s challenges became more apparent. Bryce had a calm, easygoing disposition. Instead of escalating things, Bryce always found a way to make life easier for everyone around him. The differences between the two of them were the first sign that Grant needed extra help.

This dynamic continued throughout their childhoods. When they went to preschool, Bryce had no trouble adjusting. He made friends right away, and seemed to enjoy the daily structure and routine. Grant, on the other hand, always reacted badly to authority. He had trouble playing with the other kids and following rules, and it was no surprise to me when my first conference with his kindergarten teacher started with the words “I’m very concerned about Grant.”

The years that followed were tumultuous in every possible way. As I shuttled Grant from one expert to the next, receiving multiple conflicting diagnoses, my husband, John, and I decided to divorce. He is a wonderful father and a good, kind man, but he and I were simply not a good match for each other. Though we were determined to keep our split amicable for the boys’ sake, this unfortunately didn’t always seem possible. We fought over everything from custody of the boys to the house to the proper diagnosis and treatment for Grant.

I tried my hardest to shield the boys from these arguments, but I constantly worried that the conflict was having an impact on them. Maybe I was making the wrong decision by getting a divorce. Perhaps I should have just stayed with their dad for their sakes. When I wasn’t worrying about Grant, who was really putting me through the wringer with his bad behavior, these doubts often kept me up at night.

Of course, there were plenty of good times, too. Grant remained a loyal and proud big brother. He and Bryce were very different, but they connected over their mutual love of nature. We spent many of our weekends at Joshua Tree National Park, and I loved watching Grant teach Bryce about plants and animals as they dug in the ground and explored.

We eventually settled on a diagnosis of bipolar disorder for Grant and stabilized him through a combination of medication, supplements, and nutrition, but we still couldn’t seem to find the right school for him. His outbursts and issues with authority kept getting him expelled. Even worse, he had no friends and took all of his anger and frustration out on Bryce, who responded by locking himself in his room and shutting the rest of us out.

I felt constantly torn in two. When I was at work, I was worrying about the boys and feeling guilty for being away from them. When I was with the boys, I was stressing out about money and feeling guilty for not pushing harder in my career. At the end of the day, I was just feeling guilty, period.

After spending many years working as a trainer and nutritionist, I began developing nutrition protocols with doctors. These protocols not only helped countless patients but also helped Grant. Through food intolerance testing that I conducted in the doctors’ offices, I found that seven foods were often the culprits behind a wide variety of symptoms, including weight gain and mood swings.

Removing these reactive foods from Grant’s diet helped improve his condition even more. Specific foods had a more obvious impact on Grant’s brain than on those of other kids. Whenever he ate one of the wrong foods, especially sugar, an outburst would soon follow. I saw it as a gift that his body was talking to me through his mood swings, and I knew that this information could be life-changing for many people.

Our divorce was at last final, and the lawyers’ fees had left me nearly bankrupt when I met a literary agent who had the idea to sell my book about food intolerance. She shared my vision, and when a publisher bought that book, The Virgin Diet, I knew this was my one chance to get the word out in a big way. I spent my entire advance and then some to create a public television special and hire an amazing business coach who I knew could help me turn the book into a bestseller, ultimately going into an enormous amount of debt to plan a huge launch for the book. No matter what, I wasn’t going to lose this chance.

Even better, Grant was in the best state he’d been in his life. His early teen years were so rocky that we ended up sending him to a residential treatment center in Utah for a year, where he worked on his social skills and learned how to manage his explosive behavior. He came back right before his junior year of high school calmer and more self-sufficient than I’d ever seen him.

For the first time, Grant had his own friends to spend time with instead of just hanging around with Bryce and his group of friends. Grant even had his first girlfriend, a sweet girl named Mackenzie, whom he clearly adored.

To everyone’s surprise (especially my own), John and I were getting along better than we had in many years and were slowly becoming friends. Since I was traveling so much for work, John moved back into the house to help out with the boys, and I was happy to finally be able to provide them with some stability.

Of course, things weren’t perfect. Grant was still hypersensitive and had outbursts from time to time. John and I still argued. But the one area where I really felt I was failing was in my ability to be fully present for the boys. Every day I wrote in my journal, “I need to be more present for my kids.” It was the one goal I hadn’t made any progress toward. When I was working, I couldn’t focus because I was thinking about the boys. When I was with the boys, I was consumed by thoughts of work.

While I made sure to show up for my kids physically, I wasn’t always there mentally. I’d spend their entire soccer games and martial arts classes sending emails from my phone. When Bryce came up to me at the end of a game, I had to quickly read the expression on his face to figure out who’d won.

After Grant started dating Mackenzie, he came into my home office to excitedly tell me all about her. As he was talking, I was distracted by something on my computer. One of my staff members had shipped a case of the wrong supplement to a customer. It wasn’t until after I had rerouted the shipment and sent out a replacement that I realized I had completely tuned Grant out. He stormed off in anger. The sound of his door slamming shut made me wince.

And there it was in my journal each morning: “Be more present for my kids.” For the first time in my life, I did nothing to move forward toward a goal. I knew I needed to do something about it, but I let it...