Grand Resets: The Pivot Points That Built Me

Hey, and welcome back to Standing on the Ledge. We’re doing another post today—one that’s less about “what happened this week” and more about who I am, and how I got built this way.

I started Standing on the Ledge because of a recent collapse: the loss of a contract on December 15, 2025. That shook the foundation of my existence. I didn’t have a support network to guide me through it, so I did what I’ve always done when the floor drops: I reached for a tool. Pen and paper. Keyboard. Internet. AI.

And in the process, I realized something I couldn’t ignore: this wasn’t my first “grand reset.” I’ve had several pivot points—moments where life didn’t just change, it reorganized.

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Reset One: Foster Care (Right Before Fourteen)

A few days before my 14th birthday, I was placed in foster care. That’s not just a “sad chapter.” It’s a full system shift—home, roles, expectations, safety, identity. When a kid gets moved, the world doesn’t just look different… it operates different.

There’s research on out-of-home care that makes a plain point: stability matters. When placements are unstable, outcomes can get harder—behaviorally, educationally, psychologically.¹ I’m not turning my life into a research abstract here, but I’m naming the obvious: being moved isn’t just a change of address. It’s a change of footing.

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Reset Two: My Brother Steve’s Death (January 25, 1985)

The next major reset was my brother Steve’s death on January 25, 1985.

That event didn’t just create grief. It triggered family fractures—stress, conflict, and the kind of emotional pressure that bends a household. It also became a catalyst for my mother’s alcohol issues. That part probably hit my younger siblings harder than it hit me. Where it hit me was identity, direction, and school.

I effectively quit high school for about two years. Not in a clean “I’m dropping out” way. More like: failing classes, losing traction, poor grades, stress stacking, time stretching. Grief does that. It doesn’t always announce itself as tears. Sometimes it shows up as disruption.

Research on bereavement in youth backs the basic idea: major loss can interfere with school functioning and achievement, and bereaved kids may need additional supports.²³

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Reset Three: The School Board Shuffle (Disruption on Top of Disruption)

As if grief wasn’t enough, the school board reorganized. Two local high schools. One year I’m at one, the next year I’m flipped to the other, then back again for my final year. That kind of churn sounds minor to adults, but it’s not minor when you’re already trying to hold yourself together.

School mobility research is blunt: switching schools is associated with lower academic achievement and greater disengagement, even when you account for other factors.⁴ Again: I’m not blaming “the system” for everything. I’m saying the system added weight during a time my hands were already full.

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Reset Four: First Real Freedom… Then the Motorcycle Accident

By 18, I bought a motorcycle and got my first real summer job as a dishwasher/line cook at Wilderness Tours. Money. Independence. Freedom. I didn’t spend much time at home. The household pressure was rising. I was gone as much as I could be.

Then came the crash.

August long weekend—my best guess is August 1988 (which should have been my graduating year). I got into a motorcycle accident. After that, my timeline goes blurry. Years go missing. Dates don’t line up cleanly. I suspect a significant concussion that wasn’t properly documented. I walked away with a crushed disc, nearly lost an eye, and my dream of being a mechanic got cut off at the knees.

I’m not diagnosing myself in a blog post—but I will say this: memory problems are common after brain injury, including gaps around the event and difficulty with recall and organization.⁵⁶ That matches what I’ve lived: the sense that the timeline has holes, and I have to reconstruct the story from fragments.

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The Money Reality: OSAP, “No,” and the Road Not Taken

I had two college acceptances. No finances. My parents refused to fill out OSAP applications. So the track that could have happened… didn’t.

This is one of those places where sociology matters, because it reminds me that lives aren’t only built out of “personal choices.” They’re built out of gatekeeping, resources, family decisions, and constraints that show up at exactly the wrong time.

Life course theory calls this kind of thing the interdependence of lives—what happens to you is often linked to what happens around you, and the choices other people make that you have to live inside.⁷

In the middle of all that, my parents didn’t want me getting another motorcycle. They gave me inheritance money connected to Steve’s death, and I bought a 1978 Monte Carlo. I was now the “cool guy with the muscle car.” I became everyone’s chauffeur. It sounds like a footnote, but it’s also a pattern: when I get a tool, I become useful—sometimes too useful.

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So What Is This Post Actually About?

It’s about this: the contract loss in 2025 isn’t happening in a vacuum. It landed on an already-built nervous system—one that’s been forced to adapt repeatedly to abrupt resets.

In life course language, these are turning points—events that change the direction of the path, not just the scenery along it.⁸ Each reset forced a rewrite of identity: who am I now, what role am I in now, what future is still possible now?

There’s also a concept that fits the “identity loss” feeling: role exit—the process of disengaging from a role central to the self, then rebuilding identity in a new role that still has to account for the old one.⁹ Foster kid. Bereaved brother. Student in limbo. Injured young adult. Contractor turned unemployed. Builder turned rebuilder. Same man, different shells.

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Psychological Lens: Why I’m Writing This Now

Psychologically, this post is me doing something called narrative integration—taking scattered experiences and turning them into a coherent story that I can live inside without drowning in it.

There’s research suggesting that difficult or traumatic experiences can disrupt a person’s life narrative—memories can feel fragmented, disjointed, hard to integrate—and that making meaning of them is part of adaptation.¹⁰

That’s what this is: not nostalgia, not trauma-dumping, not a pity tour. This is me building continuity. This is me saying: “These resets happened, and they shaped the way I respond to the present.”

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Where I’m Leaving This (For Now)

That’s it for me for now. I’ll probably add more later—because there’s more.

But this entry matters because it explains something I keep circling back to:

When the foundation shakes, I don’t just lose income or plans. I lose identity. And then I rebuild it—again.

Godspeed.

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Footnotes

1. Maguire et al. (systematic review) discuss how placement instability in foster care is associated with adverse behavioral and mental health outcomes. Source. ↩︎

2. Liu et al. (2022) found lower school grades among children exposed to parental death before finishing compulsory school (cohort analysis). Source. ↩︎

3. Elsner et al. (2022) review bereavement and educational outcomes, noting bereavement can compromise academic performance and engagement. Source. ↩︎

4. Gasper et al. (2012) examine school switching and report associations with lower academic achievement and higher disengagement among switchers. Source. ↩︎

5. Model Systems Knowledge Translation Center (MSKTC): memory problems are common after traumatic brain injury, including impacts on learning and recall. Source. ↩︎

6. Headway (UK brain injury association) notes that memory gaps (retrograde amnesia) can occur after brain injury, with the “gap” varying in length. Source. ↩︎

7. Elder’s life course perspective emphasizes interdependence/“linked lives” and how trajectories are shaped by social context. Source (PDF). ↩︎

8. Teruya & Hser (2010) summarize life course concepts including trajectories, transitions, and turning points as shifts that can change direction over time. Source. ↩︎

9. Ebaugh’s “role exit” definition (via a University/academic reprint of a review) describes disengaging from a role central to self-identity and rebuilding a new identity that accounts for the ex-role. Source. ↩︎

10. Wiesepape et al. (2025) discuss how trauma can impact personal narratives/narrative identity, including fragmentation and challenges integrating experiences into a coherent life story. Source. ↩︎

Note: This is personal reflection and general information, not medical or psychological diagnosis.