Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Slow Growth Equals Strong Roots with Mary Marantz

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

In this episode, author Mary Marantz joins Sharon to talk about Mary’s new book, Slow Growth Equals Strong Roots. Together, Sharon and Mary touch on important topics like perseverance, education, and extending gentleness to each other and our own selves. Our egos want to keep us safe, but when we continuously operate from a place of safety, taking risks can feel too scary. Ultimately, slow growth equals strong roots means that, when a tipping point day comes in our lives, we have worked hard to grow our character and foundation to meet new challenges with strength and success. Growth and hard work doesn’t happen like a movie montage with a good soundtrack, it takes a lifetime. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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when booking through OpenTable. Learn more at OpenTable.ca forward slash Visa Dining. Hello, hello. So excited you're here with me today, as always. And I'm chatting with my sweet friend, Mary Morantz. I've had her as a guest on this show before, and we talked about the super cool state of Iowa. But today I want to hear more about Mary's story. Mary is a person who grew up in a single wide trailer in West Virginia, and then went on to Yale Law School. And her story is just so touching and so meaningful. I think you're really going to love hearing from her. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. Oh, I'm so happy to have my friend, Mary Morantz. So thank you so much for coming.

First of all, I love you. I love you so much. And just to get to hang out with you, like, yes, sign me up anytime, anywhere. I got to tell you, there's some pressure to come up with the raucous caucus, caucus side level of dialogue that we got into last time, but I think we'll get there. I think we will. Yeah. We'll find something. Okay. So one of the things that I think is just like, I'm out cheering on the sidelines for you is that when you signed a book contract, you were like, my publisher wants me to write five books. Most people get a book contract for one, maybe two, but you know, like one book and we'll see how it goes. So your publisher is like, we need five books, Mary. You publish your first book. It's called Dirt. And your second book is now getting ready

to be birthed into the world. And I'm so excited to see it. So tell us all about it. Yeah. I think birthed is such an accurate phrase. And there's, I think there's a reason that the word passion has origins in suffering. You know, your passion is the thing you're willing to suffer a little bit to get out into the world. And so for everybody listening, Dirt is elevator pitch. Oh, I've heard this story before. It's single wide trailer in West Virginia, in Appalachia to Yale law school. Cool. Cool. I've heard that story, but when you actually dig into it, it's much more a story of empathy. Crap. It really is hard to be an adult. And maybe my 17 year old parents,

17 when they got married, 20 when they had me, were trying as hard as they could. And this was a step up for them. This was the spark that I got interested in that other people look at the explosion of upward mobility, single eye trailer to Yale law school. So it's a story of redemption and forgiveness and making peace with your past. And can you write a story like this that ends in the actual family? It involves being drawn closer with healing and forgiveness. And the dirt itself is divided into two parts, the girl in the trailer and the girl after. And when I finished that book, it was like almost as soon as it was done, I was like, oh, there is a whole other book to this story. Because if Dirt is the love letter to the girl in the trailer, this littlest version of us, then Slow Growth becomes a love letter to this woman after. And Slow Growth, one of my favorite parts in the beginning,

like their first real entry of Slow Growth says, I don't know where all the fireflies have gone. When I was little, this gap tooth, messy, wild thing, untamed version of myself on Fenwick Mountain in rural West Virginia, there were no shortage of fireflies, lightning bugs, as we used to call them. It was a million miracles all around us. But I'm 40 now as I write this, and it's hard to see even one, you know, the white kitchen and the island and the J crew clothes and the house in Connecticut and the two golden retrievers have done nothing. Even though I love that life and I'm so grateful for that life, I'm exhausted.

We're numb and we're not even sure that youngest version of us with her skin, knees and messy hair. If she sat on the couch beside us, looked us in our exhausted eyes that are mirror reflections of her own, would even recognize that she would ask us the question we've been asking ourselves for far too long, which is what happened to you? And so that becomes the starting point of the second book. It's you've gotten maybe everything you ever once prayed for or hoped for. And, and you feel more numb than you ever have. And like, how do we let go of the running and the achieving, believing it's the next gold star that'll finally be enough. What is it that you think exists in people, particularly women? Of course, I'm over generalizing. What is it about women that they always feel like they're not enough? Because my,

again, brought over generalization, but my experience, my view, I don't see as many men feeling this idea that like, oh, nothing I ever do is enough. No matter what they do, no matter what they achieve, no matter how perfect their home is enough, no matter what they do, no matter what they achieve, no matter how perfect their home is, no matter how beautiful they are, how fit or how beautiful their wardrobe or how many children they have or how beautiful their dogs are. It just never feels like enough. Yeah. To me, I honestly think it has something to do with that old analogy of like the fish don't know the water's toxic. The fish don't know the water's poisoning them bit by bit because they're so immersed in it. And I think from birth, women in particular

are raised with all of this messaging about, you know, the, oh, the anti-aging, whatever, and the diet and the clothes. And I do actually think that men have components of that. You know, my husband, Justin is an Enneagram nine, which is the peacemaker, and they are famous for an inner critic. But I think men are rewarded for confidence. And it's sort of like a muscle memory they're trained with from the playground all the way to the boardroom of like, show up and say you'll do the thing and you'll figure out the thing and you just will somehow. And that gets rewarded. And I will be honest that with some really important exceptions, I think women do that to one another too. I think you are a beautiful exception to that rule, by the way, just to make that clear. But I think in

general, we are kind of like that study. Have you ever heard the study of like the monkeys who got sprayed with a fire hose and then eventually, okay, well, let me tell you this story. Pole in a room, bunch of monkeys, but big, ripe, juicy bananas at the top. Every time monkeys in the room go to climb the pole to get the bananas, they get sprayed with fire hose, get knocked down. They keep going and replacing monkey by monkey. They remove the fire hose from the equation. And what starts happening is that as a new monkey is introduced to the scenario and they are like, what's happening? There's a banana at the top of the pole. Let's go for it. The other monkeys, not the fire hose, knock them down.

Cause they're like, no, what are you doing? You don't break the rules. You're going to get knocked down. The fire hose is going to blast you in the face. And they kept doing this until there was not a single original monkey in the room. It was just this handed down. We don't do that. We don't go after those things. So I think it's similar to that. It's like when we see someone being like, yeah, you know, I'm actually not going to buy into this.

I have to achieve for my worth. I'm actually going to stand really solidly and who I was created to be and shine really bright. There's something in us that goes, wait, I don't think you're allowed to do that. That's so true. Women are incredibly unkind to each other in many ways. Yeah. Yeah. I've always wondered what, what is it? Why is that a thing? Why, you know, as much as we like to be like, oh my gosh, I just, I love to clap for women and their success. You know, like as much as mentally we would like to say, where are those people in practice and in feeling and in emotion?

Yeah. Many people are not there. They don't even realize that what they're doing is that they think like, I'm just trying to warn them. I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to make it so that they don't get hurt later. Trying to let them know what I know in reality. That is often not the net effect of other women's actions towards one another. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, it kind of reminds me a lot of two things. It's like a scarcity versus growth mindset. And it's also like the ego versus consciousness, right? So we can get like super in the weeds here, but just this idea of the ego being like, let me keep you safe. Let me avoid embarrassments. Let's stay in the comfort zones. What if, what if they all laugh? And it's like Carrie's mom, they're all going to laugh at you, right? It's this voice in your head that tries to keep you. Anytime you think of doing something

new, I can tell you right now, if you are listening and you have a dream and you're thinking about starting this project and it feels large and it feels scary, whether it's writing a book, launching a podcast, any other thing, your brain has immediately told you somebody else is already doing it. Somebody is doing it better. Like it's, it is eerie, the script, how unoriginal this like ego is when it actually starts trying to keep you safe. We all have that same loop. Some of us are, the ego speaks to us more about scarcity or like, I don't have the energy or the time, but what, however it speaks to you, it wants to keep you where you are because where you are might not be ideal, but at least it's known and it's safe. And then I think about,

you know, scarcity versus growth mindset, fixed versus growth mindset. And if someone else is saying, don't do that because you're going to get hurt or it's not going to work out or I tried that and it didn't work out for me, there is a certain element of if you try that and it works out, then I have to deal with the fact that I didn't keep going when it got hard. I didn't keep going when it got hard, right? I need to go back and try again. You kept pressing in and I didn't, and now I have to deal with that. And that's really hard. And I think probably like women versus women, when we're hard on each other, there is an element of like caveman level scarcity of like fighting for a mate or whatever. But I think in the modern times, it really is like, if I give you this information and you win with it, if you blow up and everything starts happening for you, it feels like it directly took

it from me. Yes. Yes. You didn't listen to my warning and you proved me wrong. That feels bad to me. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, it's not going to feel good, right? It's not going to feel good to go. Dang it. I don't get to say it never works out. Yeah. Yes. I saw a tweet this morning that I reposted on my Instagram that I was like, that is really good. It said the most expensive tasks that brains do are one moving your body and two learning something new. They have a metabolic cost that may feel unpleasant. So feeling bad doesn't always mean that something bad happens. You might just be doing something really hard. Yes. 100%. 100%. And honestly, at this point I have started to train my brain because I think as somebody who is wired to run from my circumstances and get to safety, you know, when there's a self-preservationist switch that gets flipped in you, you can very easily fall

into scarcity. And I've been battling that, especially for like the last five years. If I start to see the resistance show up, what I'm going to tell myself is, oh, this must really be capable of helping a lot of people. Otherwise, whatever force that is would not want me to doubt it so much. I mean, listen, there are times when I'm not talking about like, do I feel peace about the situation or things like that? I'm talking about like, no, I do want to do this. It does feel like what I'm called to do. And man, I just keep hitting wall after wall. I was writing about that journaling about that this morning. Like, why does it feel like I'm walking through molasses right now? Why does everything feel like slow motion version and everybody else is like flying by in their race. And I just, I felt like I got the message because

this work you're doing right now matters and we got to slow it down and we got to make sure it has a really good foundation and we'll get back to building quickly at some point. But right now the roots you're putting down matter more. I love that. I love the idea too, that what you're building sometimes is happening beneath the surface, you know, like that famous, the idea of, of bamboo trees, you know, that can just lie dormant underground for many years. You could just water them and water them and

water them. And meanwhile, they're underground building their little rhizome colony that you can't see. And then one day they're like, you know what? We're going to be about 90 feet tall by the time this summer is over. Yeah. So when I talk about slow growth, equal strong roots, by the way, be really careful what mantra you choose over your life because life will have a really fun time making you live out that mantra i always say to justin i'm like why did we not choose overnight success is super easy and everything we touch turns to gold like that would have been a lot more fun totally but when i say slow growth equal strong roots it do not take that to mean you will spend the rest of your life going really slow.

It means that should the day come when there is this Malcolm Gladwell-esque tipping point and suddenly stuff is happening really quickly, you have the character. You have the foundation. You have the roots to stand on that all of that stuff taking off and happening really quickly is not a burden instead of a blessing. And I'll be honest with you. We talked about this in the very first episode when you were on my show, that is what I see in you. I see that this entire life has been built of creating a character of integrity and generosity and seeing other people and not getting caught up in your own hype. So that suddenly when all of this is thrust upon you, you are the shoulders we would want to carry that. That's such a beautiful example of slow growth equals strong roots. It's slow. It's slow. It's slow. It's slow until it's not, but thank God for the slow because man, what a mess that would be if all the other stuff wasn't

in place. Well, thank you. That is so, that's so kind, but you're right that if you, you build a house quickly on shifting sands, it turns out that collapses when the first hurricane comes along. Yeah. And it takes a lot longer to build foundations sometimes that are meant to stand the test of time. Yeah. And so one of the analogies I talk about in slow growth is I say, there is a reason that Redwood giants are on a different timetable than milkweed, you know, growing up in West Virginia in the trailer, right behind the trailer was this really, really like overgrown kind of like magical, but also terrifying field of weeds that gave way to the darker woods beyond it.

And I can remember being a little girl and we would run through. And as we were going, it was like, like we're pulling out these five and six foot tall milkweed or wheatgrass or whatever the case is. And it's huge. Every summer it would just grow dizzyingly high and you pull it out and it's half an inch of roots. They just come right out of the ground. And in the meantime, it would be so easy for a redwood giant to say nothing is happening. It's so easy to wish for a different story when you're zoomed in on just one little tiny chapter of it. But what happens to the weeds every year? They get mowed down. Nobody values that. And spread out over the course of this timeline, we see that

when you're growing for generations and you're reaching out your branches, you're creating shade and shelter for others. You're doing something that exists beyond yourself. That takes time. And it's worth it. It's worth it to build. I love that. A&W is now serving Pret Organic Coffee, and you can get a $1 small coffee, a $2 small latte, or like me, a $1 small coffee and a $2 small latte. Available now until November 24th in Ontario only. Woo-hoo! Amazon's Black Friday week starts November 21st with new deals added every day. Save on home goods to deck their halls, toys to stuff their so. And fashion, like slippers to mistle their toes.

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But do you identify, do you feel like I grew up in poverty? Oh, that's a great question. And what I've learned about poverty is that there are a lot of different kinds of poverty. So for example, I think I grew up in poverty of housing. I don't think the trailer was ideal. You know, it was 1978 when they bought it trailer single wide, basically a giant tin can. It's, they were not built to last. They were not Redwood giants. Um, they were the weeds. And so very quickly it started to leak. And then the ceiling gives way. I always say like my people are the people who know what ceiling drywall looks

like. Cause it was the single wide trailer. And then the big thing to do, at least in the eighties where I grew up was to build a little lean to like shack. That was like your bonus room. That was like because it was the single-wide trailer and the big thing to do at least in the 80s where i grew up was to build a little lean-to like shack that was like your bonus room that was like the extension you're building onto the house and my people know what drywall ceiling looks like in that swelling swelling swelling pregnant pause right before it gives way and that gush of water comes through muddy dirty water then it would pour through the floor and in the trailer part of the floor that was not close to the ground. It was actually up on cinder blocks. So as the particle board underneath is given way, you have to learn how to hopscotch on the brown

chag carpeting to where it is still solid, or you're talking about falling a few feet to the ground below. So it was, it was poverty of housing, but never poverty of love, or we never had food scarcity situations. There was always food on the table. I have a friend who grew up in a very nice double wide, but was always worried about the next meal. So I think there are different kinds of poverty. That's something to remember.

So when you read Dirt, there are parallel timelines of my story and my dad's story. My dad went to work in the woods as a logger when he was 12 years old. His uncle was in a mining disaster when he was 11. His two choices at the time in rural West Virginia were coal mining or logging. So in a weird way, being outside and seeing blue sky felt like getting out to him. And he, we grew up in the same yard, went to the same elementary school. And so when he started as a five-year-old kindergartner and realized he had been very unprepared and somebody, the teacher asked him a question and he didn't know the answer. And the class laughed at him.

It burned into his brain that he was just dumb, that he wasn't going to be nothing more than a quote, dumb old logger. And he was convinced like right there at five years old, that's it. I'll just be a logger. My life is determined. So for me, when I was starting kindergarten, he was determined that that wouldn't happen to me. So in the eighties, there were these workbooks that were like on the racks where you got the like bubble gum at checkout in the grocery store. And the idea is that you would get whatever grade your kid was

about to go into. So obviously kindergarten would be where we started, but my dad did not stop there. And so the year before I started kindergarten, when I finished a book, he just kept bumping me up so that when I started kindergarten in Mrs. Oliver's kindergarten, I was in fifth grade math and sixth grade reading. So what happened is that the teachers obviously saw like, whoa, you're ahead of the class. And these labels like smart, ahead of the curve, gifted, whatever, started getting thrown around and these labels became a lifeline. So having these teachers and my dad invested me at an early age, education, in my opinion, changed everything because no longer was it like five years old, my fate is determined. It was five years old. Anything is possible. So I'm very thankful for It was five years old. Anything is possible. So I'm very

thankful for teachers. Five years old and anything is possible. Like, isn't that the gift we want to give our children? Isn't that the gift we want to give people in our community? That school education is important, not just for our own offspring, but for the community as a whole, the entire community is benefited when five-year-olds are able to say I'm five and anything is possible. Yeah. How differently they might view their choices in life, if that is their fundamental belief. And I think we should, every single one of us listening should remember we can be that person. There are studies that show if a kid who grew up in not great circumstances will have just one adults, whether it's a parent, a grandparent, a neighbor, or a teacher invest in them, speak

life into them. That can be enough to change everything. So I think we forget like how much power we have to call out other people and what they're capable of. Yeah, I totally agree. And that is one of the things I love about this theme of slow growth equals strong roots is that sometimes those things become evident decades in the future. And you're like, dang plot twist, did not see that coming. That's right. They're like little, I mean, they're those little seeds

that like you're talking about with the bamboo they might take long might take years to get ready to come forward but when they do man it happens I that is what I experienced my life has been one big series of like long extended dry desolate times we're in the desert and we will never ever come out and it's time and And there's just massive growth. I'm oversimplifying. There've obviously been times of like steady growth. That's the irony of this is I'm writing a book about the praises of slow growth equals strong roots. Meanwhile, I am wired to be like five minutes ago yesterday.

It would be perfect. Yeah, completely, completely. Yeah. When we're talking about with these issues, it's not because they have always come easily. It doesn't mean that you wake up every morning being like, yeah, I feel good about it. Actually, I need to slow everything down. That would be really great. I really love not seeing any results. That is what I hope for. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I talk about that right off the bat. One of the first things I say is

like, listen, this is not written from some mountaintop moments of like, look at me. I'm on the other side and I will never again achieve for my worth or hope for a gold star highlight reel. Like this book is written from the trenches and it's written from this flummoxed, like desperate, like exasperated question of me asking myself from the beginning when I was like, am I really going to write a book about giving up achieving for your worth? Do I even believe at this point, this is possible? I'm in my forties and I'm still struggling with this. Like, can we change at this point? And the answer that I have day by day stumbled upon is that we give up achieving for our worth. Like we give up anything we've become addicted to anything that those those dopamine hits in our brain say we need more and more and more of.

And that is not all at once and then you're done forever. It's one day at a time. And so if you are somebody and you're like, I actually don't really know, Mary. I don't know if I could ever imagine my life not wanting to go do all the things to feel better. Know that this is like, let's hold hands. Let's hold hands right where I am. And let's walk through this together because I think the things you most struggle with and the deepest, my coach and friend, Kim Butler says our deepest parts, points of empathy come from our deepest parts of pain. So I have felt the pain of trying to overachieve and

achieve my way into worth and, and matter to people and matter to the world. Because I believed that a story about a girl starting in a trailer didn't matter unless it ended somewhere shiny. And so now I have to say, can a story about a girl in a trailer just matter, period? We're so conditioned to have that Cinderella story of like, and look at what they accomplished. Yeah. Yeah. George Washington had no formal education. You know what I mean? Like we, we love that. I love it. I totally get why people love it. There's something really kind of feel good, uplifting about that kind of story. But I love the idea that if it matters, not because of the Cinderella outcome, but it matters because it matters. Yeah, that's right. I mean, there's a reason in the movies that becomes

a montage, right? We speed up 10 years of struggle. Yeah. That's right. Yes. Yeah. I'm going to go attack this side of beef and now I can win the championship. That's how it goes. That's right. It's always a montage with a moving song always. And then it makes you feel the things, but it speeds up like a year's worth of work in a two minute thing. Yeah. That's the thing. Yes. That's one of those like fish in the water moments. We have to remind, we have been conditioned to remind ourselves that we think it happens in the space of a song and it does not, it does not. It happens over years. I mean, we just, I just watched American underdog, uh, the Kurt Warner story. And it's like, you have to remind yourself that they're fitting this whole story of like being told no and being told no and getting cut after a day and whatever in the space

of two hours, like, like five years old, throwing the football through a tire to winning the Super Bowl MVP. It takes longer than two hours. You know, it takes, it's a whole lifetime. And what we cannot do, and this is what terrifies me about my own life, is we cannot spend so much of our life waiting only for these confetti moments that we miss the 200 days, the 2000 days that came before. Because let's say I clap my hands and tomorrow you woke up and you're on your deathbed and you got to do all the things you wanted to do. And you're like, amazing. It all worked out. And I'm like, but guess what? You're about to die. The end. You've missed it. You've missed your whole life trying to make sure it was going to work out in the end. And, you know, I think there is something that happens to you in

your forties where you just start to reel. There's like an unraveling and there's a real understanding of how quickly 29 went to 42, like how quickly time is passing. And I just need to like operate under the assumption, assume it works out, assume that every dream you have is going to happen. If you just let it have the time, if you do the work and you show up and you let it have the time, most of those dreams are going to happen short of like Olympic gold. If you can just wrap your head around that and embrace it, then you get to enjoy every single day. You get to enjoy every single day waking up and being the person who will eventually see that goal come true. That's like the difference between setting intentions versus setting goals.

Setting goals says I get to celebrate on one day, the day it happens. Setting an intention says I have a goal that's probably going to take me five or ten years to get there. And who do I need to be today to get one step closer? Which means I get to celebrate today and tomorrow and the next day. And that's, I would say that's the biggest change that's happened for me is like, I just don't want to have any more lost days in the process of, yay, confetti. We're so focused on what we need to do. We're so focused on what we need to do. Many of us, most of us, probably all of us would be wise to focus on who we need to become and who we need to become to be the person will allow us to reach that goal that will allow us to enjoy the journey. And that will allow us to be the person on those shoulders that important things can rest on. Who do we need to become? 100%. All of that co-sign.

I have a fun, I have a fun question for you. That's not related to your book. Okay. Are you ready? I want to talk about West Virginia. Yes. I just recorded a podcast episode about West Virginia. And first of all, I love West Virginia. I think West Virginia is like way underrated. It is a spectacularly beautiful state. So beautiful. It certainly has had economic challenges, you know, et cetera, but people do not realize that the entire state is mountains and forest and rivers. And if you love the outdoors, West Virginia is for you. Yes. What are your favorite things about West Virginia? Oh, well, first of all, I just have to say how much I appreciate you saying that. And I love that. I got the huge honor of being in my West Virginia university alumni magazine. And I

said in that article, I feel like West Virginia is an Island in its own country where people think they know what they know, what they know, what they know about West Virginia is an island in its own country where people think they know what they know, what they know, what they know about West Virginia. And I highly recommend everybody listening, check out the documentary Hillbilly, which is from Ashley York. She was, I actually had her on my show and we talked about it and she's from Kentucky and she's breaking down the actual like strategic process of media and government and powers that created a narrative that was this otherizing of Appalachia, because it made it a lot easier to come in and take the land and whatever.

It's very fascinating. And I think she was actually the first one who maybe even said, now that I'm thinking about it, maybe said the thing about the island. That might've been hers. I can't remember, but it basically is an island in its own country where people just don't know much about it. And so for me, I believe West Virginia is going to go through a huge Renaissance and it's going to be the things you said. I think there's going to be a food revolution. I think there's going to be a recreation revolution where there's whitewater rafting, motorcycles are going and doing like

the scenic highway, the Highland scenic highway. And let me tell you, if you have not seen leaves in the fall from the perspective of the Highland scenic highway in rural West Virginia, you have not seen fall. And I'm saying that as a new Englander. So I love West Virginia so much. And I love you for seeing it. It's a beautiful state. And West Virginia is so close to the huge population centers of the Eastern seaboard. You know, like if you're living in Boston, New York, DC, Philadelphia, et cetera, it's not that far away. And it's, it's very transportive. That's one of the things that I really think is cool about it is that it doesn't just feel like this is no shade to anybody, but can you tell the difference between Indiana and Ohio?

Do you know what I mean? Like, no, from a geography standpoint, whereas West Virginia is so distinctive and that distinctive geography has absolutely influenced the culture. That distinctive geography was the formation of the state. Yes. What made the state what it was, why it was no longer part of regular Virginia. But I love, I mean, of course I love geography. And so I love the human geography element of West Virginia's geography made it what it is. A hundred percent. Cause all of the governance at the time was passing regulations that highly favored large farms of your Virginia side. Tidewater, Virginia. Yeah. So we needed, we needed our own people looking out for us. That's right. That's right. Had to break off. Yeah. And Abraham Lincoln was like, I approve this. You guys are approved. That's right. That's right. I mean, this is another conversation sometime, but like getting into the heart of it, it

wasn't just like we broke off to have that governance and somebody looking out for like, it's, I mean, it's rocky soil. We're not making farms over here. That's right. Or, you know, but also like the fact that because it was quote unquote, less desirable in that sense, you see a lot of the Scotch Irish immigrants, certainly not only Scotch Irish, but you see the people who ended up there, the land called to them. They were sent there because they didn't have the money for the large farms. And that becomes a huge part of who they are. Yes. Even today, hundreds of years later,

you can see the impact of the Europeans who originally settled the land that who they were is still the foundation of who West Virginians are today. In many ways. Yeah. Isn't that so interesting that like, well, who, who lived here hundreds of years ago has a direct impact on who you will become. But I mean, man, is that not full circle to what we were talking about earlier, monkeys and bananas and like women to women and like what we have, the water is around us and it's so ingrained in who we are. We really have to say, I believe this, but why do I believe this and really get a root, really get an understanding of that. That's so fascinating. Well, Mary, your book is just, I know it's going to impact so many people.

It's called slow growth equals strong roots. It's also a beautiful book. You and your husband have been professional photographers for a very long time, very respected professional photographers who did a lot in that photography education space. And so this book has a lot of your beautiful photographs. It has a lot of beautiful design work. It's just a delight to look at and a delight to read. Yeah. Thank you so much for that, for saying that I was telling you right before we hopped on that the craziest thing about this book is there are all of these photographs in the book that have never been published anywhere. Like I've shared a few sneak peeks on Instagram, but that's it. We took them 2015, 2016 for ourselves because we were just getting really burned out and we needed something like creative outlet. And we like, for some of them even flew

to Venice and had a whole team there and we did a whole shoot. And then we came home and we were like, cool, that happened. I don't know what that was for, but it happened. And when it all started snapping into place, it's like that moment when you're putting a puzzle together and the momentum turns. You go from, this is never, ever going to happen. And why am I giving hours of my life to this inane activity to like, oh my gosh, look, it's all coming together. And so, yeah, there are these five characters in the book and we actually realized they start to represent this different, yet all the same versions of the woman who's always performing that were driven by different things. And we actually just put together a quiz for it that I'm really excited about. It just went

live where you can go and you can find out which of the five characters you are. So I am the performer. I'd be very interested based on this description to hear what you think you are sharing. The performer not only has big goals, but it's important for other people to see how far they've come to kind of prove somebody wrong or like, look, this wasn't a mistake. Whereas the tightrope walker lives for the big goals they have for themselves. They could care less who's clapping. The contortionist is not really driven by goals, but they want to make other people happy.

The masquerader tends to get stuck and frozen out of a fear of failure. They're not sure they can handle disappointing themselves or other people. And the illusionist in the distance also gets stuck, but not from that fear of failure. It's more of like living in the future of, I can't get started until I'm this perfect version of myself that exists in the distance. So which one do you think you are? Oh, definitely the performer for sure. I'm very action oriented person. I'm not somebody who tends to just like get stuck and bogged down too much in, Oh, but what if it's not perfect? I'm much more of like an imperfect action taker. I mean, I, I, that, that resonates for me. I I'll be curious though,

to take the quiz. Where is the quiz? Where can we find the quiz? Yeah. If you go to marymorantz.com slash quiz. So that's M-A-R-Y-M-A-R-A-N-T-Z.com slash quiz. You can take it there. It takes like a minute. And my favorite thing about the result is we don't just tell you what your type is. We tell you what the strengths are because every type has them. The things that are going to be most likely to get you tripped up and keep you stuck towards moving towards the work you were created to do, the purpose you're here for, and some next action steps to lean into purpose versus achieving for your worth. So I'm, I mean, it was a massive project, so I'm really proud of it. And yeah, go, go check it out and then come, you know, tag me on Instagram at Mary Marantz and let me know which type you are. I love that. And I'm excited for everybody to check out

Slow Growth Equals Strong Roots. Thank you so much, Mary. Thank you for having me. I love you so much. SlowGrowthEqualsStrongRoots.com is where you can find the book. And I can't wait to hear from you guys. Let us know what you thought of the episode and the quiz and all the things. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. This podcast

was written and researched by Sharon McMahon and Heather Jackson. It was produced by Heather Jackson, edited and mixed by our audio producer, Jenny Snyder, and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. I'll see you next time. recycling program ensures the majority of the right items are recovered and transformed into new products. Recycling right is important and impactful. Let's work together and make a difference because small actions lead to big change. For more tips on recycling, visit toronto.ca slash recycle right.