← The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
1KHO 490: The Power of Small Things on Repeat | Mary Marantz, Underestimated
01:00:59
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- [00:00]
Mary Morantz
Summer's here, and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days delivered with Uber Eats. What do we mean by almost? Well, you can't get a well groomed lawn delivered, but you can get a chicken parmesan delivered. A cabana, that's a no. But a banana, that's a yes. A nice tan.
- [00:14]
Ginny Yorich
Sorry, Nope.
- [00:15]
Mary Morantz
But a box fan? Happily, yes.
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Ginny Yorich
A day of sunshine?
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Mary Morantz
No.
- [00:19]
Ginny Yorich
A box of fine wines.
- [00:20]
Mary Morantz
Yes. Uber Eats can definitely get you that. Get almost. Almost anything delivered with Uber Eats.
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Ginny Yorich
Order now.
- [00:26]
Mary Morantz
Alcohol in select markets. Product availability may vary by Regency app.
- [00:29]
Ginny Yorich
For details. Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Ginny Yorich. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside, and I have just read two really, really touching books. And in fact, the author who's here, we rescheduled. I had a work trip that popped up, and I had just read one of the books, and because we rescheduled, it gave me an extra week or two, and I added on, I guess. Would you call it a memoir, Mary?
- [00:52]
Mary Morantz
Yeah, I think that's a good, good word for it. You know, spiritual growth kind of memoir. Yeah.
- [00:56]
Ginny Yorich
Yeah. So I read your memoir, too, and I was like, these books, especially together, are really touching. And there's also a book in the middle, so I was thinking maybe I should read that one too. But the author, Mary Morantz, is here, and I don't know, I left feeling really touched by reading these two books. So I'm super glad you're here. First of all, welcome.
- [01:14]
Mary Morantz
Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm super honored to be here. I think it's so incredible that you read the books. I also will read the books for my show, and I think it makes such a huge difference. So thank you for taking the time.
- [01:24]
Ginny Yorich
To do that well. And I just. I was like, these stories. In fact, there's a story in Dirt that is one of the. I'm not even gonna share it. I don't know if I've hardly ever done that. It's one of the best stories I've ever read in a book. It's near the end. It's on page 243. And I was like, this is one of the best stories I've ever read in a book. I don't know. It was very heartwarming and touching. So we have got family roots in West Virginia as well.
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Mary Morantz
You do?
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Ginny Yorich
Oh. Which is in Buchanan. So my grandma Virginia, who I'm named after, was born and raised in Buchanan on a little farm, little farmhouse, with her brother Boyles. That's a name.
- [02:01]
Mary Morantz
Yeah.
- [02:02]
Ginny Yorich
And he passed away not that long ago. He lived there his whole life. He married someone from there, and they never left. And so some of my favorite childhood memories are actually going to visit that farm. My dad used to go visit the farm, and they just really had, like, nothing. I mean, they had a lava lamp. There was no toys. And it was. Some of my best memories from childhood are from there.
- [02:23]
Mary Morantz
Yeah. Do you think that that's part of why you fell in love with this idea of being outside so much?
- [02:27]
Ginny Yorich
No.
- [02:29]
Mary Morantz
No.
- [02:31]
Ginny Yorich
But it does relate. I fell in love with being outside because it keeps my kids occupied, and I was losing my mind as a mother. But, you know, I do have those memories of being somewhere where there's no toys. So I would love to kick it off with your childhood, because actually. So you grew up in this trailer in West Virginia.
- [02:49]
Mary Morantz
Yeah.
- [02:49]
Ginny Yorich
With not much and with some hard. Really hard things. Your mom's in and out. But also, you do have a lot of love, and your. Your grandmother is there, and you have this legacy of people in your family who didn't really have toys either. And they talk about, you know, your mom didn't get her first toy till. Her first toy till she was 6 years old, and it was out of the garbage. It was a little doll. But you talk about your golden days of childhood. You talk about all of your playing outside. I just thought it's such a reminder that kids maybe need less. Not in terms of love and support, but in terms of stuff you say. These are the golden days of my childhood. Everything was warm, everything was slow, everything was light. Every road presented its own opportunity for inventing magic. When we weren't in the woods, we were out on our bikes. We found our way back home before the darkness settled in. You just talk about that freedom and how that felt.
- [03:51]
Mary Morantz
Yeah, well, I always kind of joke that, you know, so being a child of the 80s, we were basically feral cats. You know, we would come around just to be fed, basically. You know, in the summer, it sun. It was like sunup that all the neighborhood kids were out. You know, you're looking for wherever the bikes are in the yard. And we would go miles. We would ride 18 miles in a day, easily. And if we weren't on our bikes, we were down in the woods. And so I lived on the very, very top of a mountain called Fenwick Mountain, which meant that in every direction from the trailer, it was mountain down, of course, but it was also wooded mountains. And so those woods had been logged My dad's a logger. His dad was a logger. Eight generations deep. We're loggers, in fact. And what in the treacherous West Virginia woods. And so the log roads would kind of cut, like, switchbacks all the way down the mountain, and we would pretend they were the different levels of Mario World. You know, we were slaying dragons and walking across logs that had just fallen over new waterfalls and, you know, stepping in yellowjacket nests and finding rattlesnakes. Like, I really, in some ways, don't know how I'm still alive. Like, I don't know how I survived to be here. And I don't know that we'll ever quite see a generation of kids have a childhood quite that free again because we were truly, truly unsupervised. It was just, you know, come back.
- [05:07]
Ginny Yorich
When it's dark, maybe no GPS watch.
- [05:10]
Mary Morantz
No GPS watch, nobody tracking us down. There was a reason they had those commercials in the 80s that were like, It's 10 o' clock. Do you know where your kids. You know, but it was. It was this. At the very same time, this incredible, incredible childhood. Like, I love that you talked about how my mom grew up, how my dad grew up. Neither of them had very much. My mom didn't have indoor plumbing. They would have either. Christmas dinner would be dropped off from people at the church. You know, a lot of, like, government cheese and rice and things like that. And so in this really interesting way, I think there's something for us here. Jenny, she actually, you know, started working at Ames, which was a department store that moved into town briefly, and it couldn't really make it, and then it closed down. But she was given the opportunity to travel for that job, which was actually just like a really good kind of COVID story for my parents to separate. They got married super young. She, from when I was like, four, was telling me, like, you know, I think the marriage has run its course. Like, we need to go sew our wild oats. And I was 4, and I was like, okay, that sounds good. And so she leaves and she starts traveling and she comes back, like, every couple months, but in this really interesting way, because she was working at this department store, I was actually then able to get a lot of toys for Christmas. It was like toys upon toys upon toys. There's this thing in. In Appalachia where, you know, a nice Christmas, the idea of a nice Christmas really matters. You know, it sort of if. If we can have a nice Christmas, things are going okay. So there was this really interesting sort of switch between her story and my story where she didn't have. But, you know, she got that first toy like you said.
- [06:39]
Ginny Yorich
But.
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Mary Morantz
But I had so many toys, but I didn't have her.
- [06:43]
Ginny Yorich
Yeah, yeah. And she said you asked her about it when you got older. And she said, I can tell you that it's very interesting that you brought that up because you both. Both of you expressed happiness. Both of you expressed happiness with what you had, which wasn't much. You wrote, in a lot of ways, my childhood was a dream. You talk about these really hard pieces, but you say the part about the woods. I wouldn't change that. And she said similar things. She said, well, we made mud pies and we were happy. She says, we were never destitute because we were happy.
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Mary Morantz
We were never destitute. Yes. Yeah. We were never destitute. Yeah.
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Ginny Yorich
Yeah. No plumbing, no toys, but not destitute because we were happy. She tells me that we. This is the part that's really interesting to me, Mary, about life. So she says, we were happy. We didn't have anything, really, but we played stickball and we made mud pies and we went swimming and we played hide and seek. She tells me how much she loved playing in the woods, too. And yet she also felt like that wasn't enough for you. And so she left for a good part of your childhood and would come back. And I could imagine how traumatic that would be.
- [07:52]
Mary Morantz
Right.
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Ginny Yorich
Your mom's leaving, and you're like, don't go, don't go. You're crying. You're a little girl. She goes, you don't know when she's coming back.
- [07:58]
Mary Morantz
Yeah.
- [07:59]
Ginny Yorich
And then she leaves and comes back and leaves and comes back. And you talked about the despair. And she said, I thought I was leaving to help my family, but it turns out I ended up losing my family in the process. It's one of the biggest regrets of my life. It's almost like, why don't we trust that what we had, if what we had was enough, that that's enough to give our kids.
- [08:21]
Mary Morantz
Okay, so I'm going to camp here for a second because there's a lot. There's a lot to unpack there, I think, for everybody listening who hasn't had the chance to read dirt that moment. So the whole conversation with her when she's telling me about the, you know, stickball and the mud pies, and we weren't never destitute, she says that with such, like, emphasis. And, you know, so emphatically. And I say to her, like, man, if that Wasn't destitute. What is, you know, and there is this pushback. So that whole conversation occurs in this really weird parallel of what you, you know, we're saying when you set up the episode. I wrote an entire first draft of Dirt that I thought was going to be what this book was. And it was very much just like, you know, that we're taking the lid off Pandora's box. We're opening up this wound and it's like, all the poison's gonna come out. And I'm going to say for the first time in my life, all that had happened to me and I turned it into my editor. And, like, what happened was she was finishing up another project, and So I had 24 hours before I heard from her. And I call this kind of my Ebenezer Scrooge moment. I woke up and, you know, I'd seen a future I did not like. And I wanted to know if it's still Christmas morning, right? Is there still time to change this future? And so I did a total gut of that book. Not because I wanted to just, like, take back all the hard stuff, but I wanted to go through what Crystal Strayed calls, Sorry, Cheryl, Straight calls true, true or untruest. You know, that there's the true version of what I always knew. There's the truer version where we start to get other people in the room. What was their version of things. And then for me, the truest version of my story is, of course, what God has to say about it. But so in between those two drafts, I sat down and did a three hour call with her. And I had just started podcasting. So I had my mic, we had our whole setups, I had the headphones. Um, what that allowed me to do, Jenny, was really kind of be like an, an independent or an objective observer to kind of almost be like an investigative journalist and ask the questions I'd always wanted to ask, but to do it without judgment and do kind of like follow up questions. And so I say to her, like, if that's not destitute, what was? And it was this pushback on, like, two things can be true at once. You can have loved your childhood, you can be grateful for what your family tried to do and also say there were parts that weren't ideal. And so in Dirt, you know, even though I do say all of that, those were the golden days of childhood. It is sort of the setup to right before she leaves. And so we. It is not like this. It's not like a golden, you know, A silver, A silver lining around everything. We also talk about the really hard. And it is, it is like shades of gray. In a world that loves to have this kind of like black and white. These are the heroes. These are the villains. I never wanted anybody in this story to be all hero myself, first and foremost. And I didn't want anybody to be all villain. So we do kind of just camp out there and like, gosh, at what point can we say this was so hard, but we're afraid to acknowledge it out of like betrayal, right? This transformation. How do you leave a place without saying it was totally broken? How do you reach for more without saying we were always less than? So it's really interesting. Like, you know, she did love her childhood, but I don't know that she's gotten to a place where she can say, and also, these parts were not.
- [11:26]
Ginny Yorich
Ideal and what were the parts about it that were really good and how do I recreate those? It's like you get this messaging. You get this messaging that you. That toys are the thing.
- [11:37]
Mary Morantz
Right?
- [11:37]
Ginny Yorich
You know, and so until you go do that and you have. I guess it's really. I read this quote once, it says, it said something like, there is danger that we will miss live. And I was like, oh, that's pretty deep because you don't really know what you don't know. And so you had these experiences too as a child where you're getting this outside messaging of you go to your friend's house and you're like, oh, this is what other people do. So I'm going to go home and try and make little ties for my curtains and I'm going to try and tidy up and I'm going to try, but you never really know if that's like, is that the right path? You know, you see something different and you think that it is. And so for your mom to say, look, you know, we were making mud pies and we were happy, but I'm going to provide something different for my child. But in doing so, I'm not going to be around. You don't know. You don't know what you don't know and what, what are the main things and what are the minor things? Anyways, really very, very thought provoking. It's thought provoking to read these generations of stories and how their life, life experiences were, how that related to your life experience and then the change. So the book, the newest book is called Under. First of all, these are gorgeous books.
- [12:42]
Mary Morantz
Thanks.
- [12:42]
Ginny Yorich
The Under. And there's a book in between. Underestimated the subtitle is the surprisingly simple shift to quit playing Small, Name the Fear, and move forward. Anyway, I just think it paired so beautifully with Dirt, which is your memoir of growing strong Roots and what Makes the Broken Beautiful. And there's a book in between as well about roots. Talk to us about your dad. So this was an interesting thing to me, too. Okay. So your dad grows up, he's a logger. You just said generations and generations of logging.
- [13:11]
Mary Morantz
Yep.
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Ginny Yorich
He wants to provide something different for you, too. So both your mom and your dad, they have these similar goals. They want to provide a different life for you, and they sacrifice for it. I think, in. In a lot of probably different ways that in some ways sacrifice the relationship.
- [13:31]
Mary Morantz
Yeah. So my dad starts working in the woods when he's 12 years old. And I think this is an example of, like, that. True, true or truest. So the story I had always told myself was that he was forced to start working in the woods when he was 12 years old, that he had always dreamed of going to college. He's. He's incredibly intelligent, even though he had this experience of the, like, first week in kindergarten where, you know, a teacher called on him and he didn't know the answer, and the kids laughed. And so that was all it took for him to wear the label of, well, I'm stupid. I'm not good at school. And so he starts working in the woods when he's 12. And I knew he's, like, obsessed with history, and, like, he can recite every, you know, historical date and significance that you ask him. And so I always had the story of he was forced to go to work in the woods when he was 12, even though he really wanted to go to college to study history. And that's another example of this, both. And, like, it is true that he probably would have dreamed of going to go to college, of going to college, but, like, there was also a very much, like, the biggest person keeping him from doing that was himself. Because when I wrote this book and I did those, you know, true, truer, truest conversations, he said that his dad and his granddad and his uncle finally relented and let him come work in the woods because he had bugged them so much. And to him, it was like, you know, playing with giant Tonka toys. And there's this really beautiful story in there about how the uncle I mentioned, Cleon, actually gets trapped in a mine. He was logging and coal mining, and he gets trapped in this mine. It's called the Harmony Falls Miracle at Harmony Falls eventually. But disaster at Harmony Falls to begin with, um, and they are trapped underground for, you know, 10 plus days without food, without. I mean they eventually did get food down to them, but you know, they weren't sure they were going to get them out. And so my dad is there helping to make sandwiches and they're sending, they reverse the conveyor belts. They're sending fuel into the coal mine, right in the form of sandwiches. And when Cleon finally is rescued and he comes out, he's covered in coal dust and he taps my, you know, hugs my little dad. 11 going on 12 version of my dad on taps him on the back and it leaves a handprint. This. He was sort of marked by osmosis of what it would look like to be a coal miner. And so being outside looking up at the blue sky, logging felt like freedom to him. But it's a bigger metaphor for like what we think is freedom when we tell ourselves there are only these two choices.
- [15:48]
Ginny Yorich
Right.
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Mary Morantz
So there's complications there. So for him, you know, seeing that like he wanted something different for me. He saw me growing up in the same yard he was growing up in. My parents when they got married at 17, buy this single eye trailer because they want their independence. But they bring it home and park it on the back, you know, backyard of my grandparents house. So they moved out of, you know, the grandparents house, but only to the backyard. And so I'm growing up in the same yard. I'm going to the same Sunday school, I'm about to start the same elementary school. And he saw this path laying out this trajectory, laying out that unless something intervened, it was going to be pretty much the same. Not that I would be a logger, but that I would have very limited choices.
- [16:29]
Ginny Yorich
Yeah, he had two.
- [16:32]
Mary Morantz
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- [16:46]
Ginny Yorich
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Mary Morantz
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Ginny Yorich
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Mary Morantz
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- [17:03]
Ginny Yorich
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- [17:09]
Mary Morantz
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- [17:28]
Ginny Yorich
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- [17:50]
Mary Morantz
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- [18:25]
Ginny Yorich
Ask your doctor about epglis and visit epgliss lily.com or call 1-800-lilyrx or 1-800-545-5979. So you talk about that he was just such a hard worker. Like there was a time when he broke both his ankles and still went to work. He wrote in the rain, in the snow, in a full on blizzard and he went out to cut the trees to build my future. But what was really interesting was that so you talk about this book under the underestimated book is like how do you come from a hard story? How do you come from the trailer on the top of the hill with a mom that's in and out and your dad that's a logger? How do you go from that to Yale, you know, and go to Yale Law School and sit around with all of these people who are wearing J. Crew sweaters? How do you sit around with all those people? And then they ask the question tell us something interesting about you, which I hate those situations.
- [19:19]
Mary Morantz
Oh my gosh, me too.
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Ginny Yorich
How do you sort of fit in and how do you be okay with all of the nuances of that. But what was interesting to me, so underestimated, and I think a lot of people underestimate themselves. But what was interesting was that your dad, who really poured into changing your life, like, he was doing these workbooks with you. You're like 4, and he's like, okay, the same thing's not going to happen to me. And we're going to do all these workbooks, and you enter kindergarten and you're already in, like, the sixth grade reading.
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Mary Morantz
Yeah.
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Ginny Yorich
And he's gonna change it for you. He changes your education trajectory, but then he doesn't come to your Yale graduation.
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Mary Morantz
Yeah.
- [20:00]
Ginny Yorich
Because he underestimated himself.
- [20:03]
Mary Morantz
Yeah. Yeah. He. He said it would be like taking a poor old work mule to the Kentucky Derby. And he was convinced he was just going to embarrass me. And there's, you know, more nuance there. My parents in this. They. She. My mom left when I was nine, but they stayed technically married. They did not get actually divorced until the same year that I got married to my husband Justin. So. Right. So our wedding was the first time they were seeing each other after making the divorce official. So I. I've always assumed that there was probably also some negotiation there of who was going to come to the graduation. I'm not. I don't know that neither of them have ever said that to me, but that's just my assumption. But, yeah, I do think that a big, big streak of that. My dad got very, you know, sort of withdrawn, I guess. Like, he. He had his places that he was very comfortable. He had his people that he knew, and he assumed that a world outside that would always reject him. And I 100% absorbed every bit of that. You know, there is this idea of there's more caught than taught. And so he would say to me, you can do anything you want. You are, by God, going to college. You know, if I have to drag you there myself, you're gonna do anything that you want. He wanted me to get out. But by get out, he meant, like, to Morgantown, West Virginia. Not across the border, outside the state of West Virginia.
- [21:20]
Ginny Yorich
England.
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Mary Morantz
Not that far. Yeah. You know, I think, like, when I get to Yale, I did this thing that I catch myself doing a lot, which is, I'm going to hold you at arm's length. I'm going to reject you in my mind before you have a chance to reject me. I don't need you. So here's a fun thing. In law school, 1Ls are known as being incredibly intense. And we're just going to do all the things, and we're gunners and we're asking all the questions. And by 3L year, you already have your job or your clerkship lined up, and Yale is actually pass fail. A lot of people don't know that it's really hard to get in. But then they keep it mellow among these very intense people by making it. You can get honors, but mostly pass fail. So by 3L year, most people just don't even show up. It's very lax. And so I was so like, I don't want you to know how bad I want to be here. That a lot of my classmates who were just meeting me assumed I was a 3L, assumed I was a 3L because I was just so, like, this is fine, you know, so it was almost like an unwillingness to get excited because to be excited or to want to meet people was a chance to get hurt and man, and underestimated. I go deep in this Jenny, where I talk about, we think if we're perfect enough, if we, you know, shiny is a stiff arm, it's a Heisman pose. If we hold people far enough, then let's just, you know, say we'll be finally accepted, chosen, belonging, loved. Let's just call it what it is. If we're perfect enough, no one will ever leave us again. So I have. I have really unraveled that in my life. To not feel like when I am finally the most polished, most put together woman in the room. That's from book two. This idea of, like, we would never call ourselves that. We would never want to do it to make anybody else feel small. We think it's like the bare minimum penance, pittance of a penance we have to pay in order to be invited to most rooms, to be accepted at most tables. And the result is we end up making other people feel intimidated or, like, pushed away or stiff armed. And so we think if we're perfect enough, we'll find belonging. But ironically, we actually end up pushing people away. So I think that's the end result is I went there saying, I'm gonna act like I don't care. And then I'll wonder, you know, why I don't have a lot of people here.
- [23:30]
Ginny Yorich
I was thinking about, you know, and talking about belonging and relationship, and that's really sort of the core thing, right? It's like, I want people and I want to be a part of it. And with your parents and your dad especially, that's sort of what I got in the full circle moment when he doesn't come to the graduation. And you keep thinking, like, he's going to show up.
- [23:47]
Mary Morantz
He's going to come.
- [23:48]
Ginny Yorich
And he says. He said it was because of the dirt under his fingernails, his muddy blue jeans, and an old gray suit that had long since faded. He said it was because of the truck he drove and the boots he wore, the accent when he spoke, and a logger's lack of social graces. And you had talked about that, too, that, like, there's almost this unwritten code or unwritten book of rules that you learned from your friend when you went over there. And you're like, oh, they have curtain ties. You know, these are the things I didn't know.
- [24:14]
Mary Morantz
Right.
- [24:14]
Ginny Yorich
I think a lot of people feel that, like, oh, I don't quite know what are the social cues? And you say, I told him I didn't care about any of that. It just meant he knew what a hard day's work looked like. And so it almost was like a double sacrifice. Like he talks about, you know, the logging was a sacrifice, but it also is a sacrifice to let your kid soar beyond where you soared and land in a place where you don't feel comfortable being.
- [24:41]
Mary Morantz
Yeah, you know what that's bringing up for me? It is kind of coming back to that idea. Well, there's something I write about, actually, an underestimated that I think is really pertinent here. It says, some of us have a really complicated relationship with more. We have been simultaneously told to exceed and excel all the limitations, Be the first in our family trees, you know, to go out and achieve and accomplish and Gold star. But never to go so far that they no longer recognize us. To make our hometowns and our families proud. But never so far that they can't see themselves in us anymore. It is a delicate tightrope to walk indeed, an underdog story threaded through the eye of a needle. They love the spotlight we're standing in so long as the shine reflects well on them. But watch out for that first perceived misstep. It's a real doozy on the way down. And you know what you're talking about there. This, like, going over to the house. So this is my friend's house that I had in junior high and high school. They call them the Baptists in dirt. They had, you know, the really nice house. She got a car at 16. They would always go buy the good jeans for school shopping. And, you know, it just really kind of sets up this picture in your head where, like, the good genes somehow equal the good life. And you feel like you're, as a grown up, you're just constantly being like, oh, I'm supposed to do that as well. I'm supposed to do that as well, like you mentioned. And so chapter four and Underestimated is second guessing is a missing handbook that there's not a hard story person I know who doesn't feel like they somehow missed out on being given this handbook. Every other kid in America seemed to have dropped in their lap when they were 8 years old. Like, Chad, pass the mashed potatoes. And oh, by the way, make sure you understand compound interest, you know? And so because we feel like we are always lacking information, we feel like we cannot trust ourselves. There's this quote I use in that chapter from Riza Bermio Gonzalez where she says, we believe that there is a right and a wrong answer and that we will always choose wrong no matter what we choose because it is us. And I go into like, great detail describing, you know, in a sort of comic way, comedic way, what that book looks like. And then I say, it's like we're walking around the world without all the pertinent parts, like Edward Scissorhands drop down right in the middle of some pastel color coded suburban hell when we break the rules because we did not know the rules, somehow we are the one who dies. Death by a thousand cuts. And so I think that that's one of the biggest reasons that people will blink at the last minute when they're pushing that boulder up to their breakthrough moment and let it roll all the way back down. They lose their grip, they lose their way and the boulder rolls all the way back down is because they do not trust that they are the person for the job. Because they believe that they are always missing rules and information. And I super felt that way. Yeah.
- [27:14]
Ginny Yorich
And there is this big drive to avoid criticism. And that's one of the main thing that you talk about and underestimated as well. And when you're reading the story about your dad not coming, it's such a big story because it was his push. This is what he wanted. He's the one who bought you the workbooks. He is the one who's reading you encyclopedias. He's the one who's having you go stand and do these speeches and you're little.
- [27:37]
Mary Morantz
Like, he's the one.
- [27:39]
Ginny Yorich
He's the one that's praying for for you and praying that you have a better. And then he doesn't show up to the graduation at Yale and it's because he Feels like he's not going to fit in. And so this. And you're reading the story and you're like, I hope he goes, go, you know, go to the graduation. No one will care that you have dirt under your fingernails. And you say, he, he doesn't come. And you feel that so deeply because you're like, gosh, we all don't. We all have things where we don't show up. It's such a. Just show up, go. You know, you don't show up because you don't want to be criticized for all of these different myriad of things. And you stay small. So you talk about how people will judge either way. Basically. What is your advice for people who like, are really struggling to they in their soul? They're like, I should go do that thing, but I might be criticized. And so they don't. What's your advice to a person who's in a spot like that?
- [28:38]
Mary Morantz
Yeah, I mean, the first thing that I would say is something that I say in underestimated is you cannot bubble wrap purpose that there's no amount of shrink wraps that will ever keep you safe. I have experienced this in my own life. I bet you have as well. That like, you know, there's a Taylor Swift speech where she talks about this, you know, where it's like they say I'm dating too much, so I decide to only hang out with my girls. And then they say that I'm, you know, only partying and I'm a mean girl now because I'm hanging out with these girls. So I decided to go away for a while. And then they say I'm unaccessible. And then they say they don't like that I crossed over to this kind of music. So I make this other kind of music. And so you can spend your entire life, Jenny, whittling away all the parts of you that made you interesting in the first place, surgically removing the edges and extremities of everything that actually made you remarkable, that actually made you the thing that you. The people who love you with, who will love you without fail, that's what they fell in love with. But we think that we have to race to the middle carrying our own buckets to water ourselves down in order to be palatable. You know, there's this great quote from the poet laureate Niles Crane from Frazier where he says the hallmark of popularity is mediocrity, that if we want to be accepted by the masses, then we think we have to completely remove anything that made us interesting in the first place. And we can do that. We can spend our whole lives changing our writing voice, thinking this isn't enough, thinking that's what's popular, that work, that's what works on social media. This is what people want in podcasts. This is how I should do a book. If I'm in this genre. And it has already been done, it already exists. We don't need another copy and paste of that. What we need is this crosshair intersection where you, your gifts meet your story and you bring to something you know of. A vision of the world we've never quite seen before. One of the things I talk about and underestimated is excellence is actually the precursor to unshakable confidence. Like we think it's perfection, we actually believe. It sounds so silly when you say it out loud, which is part of the power of naming fear, but we actually believe that there's a perfect version of ourselves. Our book, our podcast, the speech we want to give, like the course we want to create whatever it is that's perfect enough that nobody could find fault with it. But in the year of our Lord 2025, if you think there's something that can exist that everybody's going to agree, agree on, then you're not paying attention. Excellence, on the other hand, is sort of the counter energy to perfectionism. If perfectionism is rooted in fear and it's out of a disease desire to stay safe, excellence is rooted in love. And it's based on how you do anything, is how you do everything. And if you know in your bones this thing that you've created has integrity, originality, it makes good on the promise, transformation, and it's actually going to help people, then the faces of the people it will help. This, you know, replacing what might go wrong with. Yeah, but who might it help? It's not that the critics go away, I promise you that, but it's just that they don't really like get the same seat at the table they once did because you have work to do, you have work that matters. And so there's a great Andy Warhol quote that says make art while people argue over whether it's good enough or not. Go make more art. So that's, that's my answer. They're going to criticize. I promise you they will. We, we can stop worrying about if they will or not. They will, but it just doesn't bear any kind of weight against the purpose. You were put here for the work you have to go do.
- [31:51]
Ginny Yorich
And you talk about that. I mean, actually this would Be a great book for graduation, a graduation gift, high school or college. It's called Underestimated. And you talk about, like, people. I actually have seen these things where they make these posters about people who don't like the national parks. They're, like, too dry, one star, too.
- [32:10]
Mary Morantz
Many bugs, terrible Wi fi.
- [32:15]
Ginny Yorich
And so you say, I'm telling you right now, that if some of the grandest, most sweeping, majestic places on the planet have their hate, that you and I don't stand a chance. People are going to be cruel, crueler than we ever thought possible. And when they're not being cruel, they'll just ignore us altogether. So know that it's coming. But then you really talk about the power of doing, the power of showing up, the power of consistency in the small things that add up over time. And I think this is. This is a fear that I have.
- [32:43]
Mary Morantz
You.
- [32:43]
Ginny Yorich
You kind of see for other people that. Especially, like, if we try and read biographies and things, and you see that people do this, right? They show up, they fail, but they keep showing up and they don't quit. That's sort of hallmark of anybody who has a biography written about them, is that they haven't quit. But at some point, like, the dominoes seem to fall, right? That you talk about. Even, like a puzzle, you're putting together puzzles hours and hours and hours, and then at some point, the dominoes fall, and it really kind of quickly comes together. Yeah, but I have a fear that what if the dominoes never fall? And you say, like, what if it's all a waste of time? That's the question that you. And I definitely think that. How do you know? How do you know that at some point the puzzle pieces are going to actually come together? And people have a fear that the work that they're putting in is all for nothing. But then I thought this was really.
- [33:32]
Mary Morantz
I don't know.
- [33:32]
Ginny Yorich
I guess I've never thought about that way because I have this fear that maybe it's all for nothing. Or what would be a specific example would be, okay, so we're podcasting, and I've got a couple guests that, you know, I would love to have on, but the podcast isn't big enough yet. So you kind of think, well, if I keep working at it, at some point I'll have, like, 20 million downloads, and then that person will be like, yes, I'll come on.
- [33:54]
Mary Morantz
Right?
- [33:54]
Ginny Yorich
And maybe that matters, and maybe it doesn't matter, but you kind of have this sense, like, at some point the dominoes are going to fall, but Then you're also like, but they might not ever. But you related to reaping and sowing, which is really a spiritual law and a natural law. Yeah, you talk about, like, you can't reap what you haven't sown.
- [34:11]
Mary Morantz
Yeah, that one hurts, doesn't it? It's like, stop getting mad for results you didn't get for work you didn't do. That's a zig Ziglar quote. You know, it's referencing this law of the harvest. And that is out of the chapter called Distraction is a clock that's ticking. It's chapter 13. But that's really. That chapter is really a consistency chapter. And it is talking about, I have spent most of my life, most of my life being completely frustrated that excellence doesn't always win the way I think it should. You know, it feels like it should be the best book, the best, you know, speech that was given at the conference. The best course, the best teacher, the best leader should always win the one, you know, who. Who brings excellence to the table, who actually really cares about that. So this is why it's an immediate follow up to that criticism chapter where I say excellence is a precursor to unshakable confidence. But let us be clear, it is not. It's a necessary but not sufficient condition. So that gives. Gets us into this idea of consistency. So like I was saying, I've always just felt like, you know, I. I talk, I tell this story about an econ class I had in college where the attendance was optional, so I would always just cram the night before each of the four exams. Show up up, fill in the Scantron sheets, and then I got a hundred on every one of the exam. One of those exams, you know, hashtag humble brag to the point that the professor even tried to get me to switch to be an econ major. And I say that class taught me that it was how good you are, not how much you show up that wins. But unfortunately, that's not how it works in the world. And it goes into talking about there are people with no excellence who are winning, who are doing better, who are getting more downloads, who are getting the guests, whatever the case may be. They're getting the very things we wanted simply because they didn't get in their own head about, is it good enough? Is it there yet? Is it perfect enough? Do I need to go through it one more time? They just show up and they show up and they show up. And in this world, another, you know, kind of like universal law is that it turns Out. Consistency wins. Consistency compounds over time. You know, you could put in a hundred thousand dollars into your retirement at age 65 and you're not going to have what you would have if you were putting it in all along, right? So this is the power of compound interest and it applies to our daily actions as well. So that's the hard part. My mission, I feel like in life right now is to get the people of excellence to get the consistency to show up. And really it's to get the. Get the courage to show up that will give them the consistency. I say consistency wins. Unfortunately, for most of us, our impatience kicks in long before consistency has a chance to. And so one of the biggest fears I address in the book that people have is what if all of this will have just been a waste of time?
- [36:40]
Ginny Yorich
Well, what's the answer?
- [36:42]
Mary Morantz
So the answer is right, like we see in the consistency chapter. One of the things that I say is we think that we have to be motivated in order to be consistent. Like, I gotta feel motivated and then every day I'll get up and I'll do the thing. But it's actually the opposite. What actually happens is like that puzzle, picking up speed as you go is you're consistent when you do not feel like it, when you are not seeing results. And I'm gonna give you really fun exclusive here, Jenny. What we're talking about here is actually going to be my next book. How do you keep going when you have nothing to show for it? So we keep putting it in. We keep putting it in and we start to see those puzzle pieces going in faster. That's something we call momentum, right? It is this. Bodies in motion create momentum and the momentum is why we become motivated. It is a result. It is a side effect of consistency. Not the precursor, not the cause. And so we have to do it even when we don't feel like it. I quote Perles Buck, who was from West Virginia. She's the reason I wanted to become a writer since I was 5. She wrote 87 books in her life. 87. And she says, you know, basically, we will not always be motivated, so we must learn to be disciplined. And I think that goes back to excellence because it's falling in love with the work. What would you do for the love of it, even if it was not getting seen by the masses the way that you want? And that's hard. But unfortunately, consistency wins.
- [38:04]
Ginny Yorich
This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Knowing you could be saving money for the things you really want is a great feeling. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with the personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.
- [38:29]
Mary Morantz
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- [38:42]
Ginny Yorich
So you can spot changes in your.
- [38:43]
Mary Morantz
Health before you feel them. The Vitals app ON Apple Watch iPhone XS are later required. The Vitals app is for wellness purposes only and not for medical use.
- [38:58]
Ginny Yorich
This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. From streaming to shopping, prime helps you get more out of your passions. So whether you're a fan of true crime or prefer a nail biting novel from time to time, with services like Prime Video, Amazon Music and fast free delivery, Prime Minister makes it easy to get more out of whatever you're into or getting into. Visit Amazon.comprime to learn more. Consistency Compounds over time do you eventually just believe it because it's happened in your life?
- [39:33]
Mary Morantz
Yeah, it does. It really, really does. I mean anybody who's investing and you see that grow, or anybody who goes to the gym, I'm not one of them. But anybody who's like started seeing to make better choices for your health, I've seen that. You know, it's not. You don't. You don't see it in the beginning, you don't see it in the beginning and then you just kind of get into this routine of it. That's why I really truly the whole backbone of this book, you know, in the shift very early and underestimated. So this subtitle is the surprisingly Simple Shift. Simple, not always easy. Surprisingly simple shift to quit playing small, Name the fear and move forward. Anyway, the shift is. I read an article once that said the best ideas are a switch, not a dial. They're not turning the volume up on what we already think. They're finding a way to flip that thinking on its head. And the conventional wisdom is in order to quit playing small, you have to girl boss it. You have to go big. No hate to the girl bosses. But you know it is this just kind of like Nike approach to coaching. Just do it. Swing for the fences, leap in the net will appear. Which is terrible aeronautics advice. But paradoxically, you know, because I've had many go big moments in my life, they felt great for a day and then the very next day I go back to playing small and questioning myself and doubting myself they felt like things that happened to me, not something I had become. And so you will change your life, John Maxwell says, by what you do every day. And so when we are doing these things every single day, we are becoming the grownup in the room. We are becoming the person who can stand inside these goals. The last thing I'll say is, you know, kind of the difference between setting goals where you get to celebrate on one day when the goal finally happens, and intentions where every day you're saying, who do I have to be today in order to become the person who one day stands in that goal where you get to celebrate every day that you actually show up and do that, you know, you get to throw the confetti because you are becoming. That, to me, has made the biggest difference. Anytime I just try to go, all this is chapter one, all or nothing, thinking, I'm all in on this thing. I have the vision, I'm inspired, I'm excited. And then I have my first setback, or it's disappointing, or it gets hard, and then I just let it fall off. And then I start again because I catch the vision again. And the cycle repeats. And I say, but we lose an untold amount, a momentum in the nothing phase. And so we have to become people who just show up every day. We put our butt in the chair when I'm writing a book, but in the chairs, the number one rule, right? Put in the reps, put in the time. Every time I write a book, it's just like that puzzle. It gets easier and faster the more that I do it.
- [41:54]
Ginny Yorich
And you talk about leaping more than once. You know, you felt you were brave once, but now you got to be brave again so that consistency would help you to overcome that. He wrote this quote from Denzel Washington. There are people less qualified than you doing the things you want to do simply because they decided to believe in themselves, period. And then the law of harvest tells us that we will reap in a different season than we sow. We will reap in a different season than we sow. So we must be patient. I want you to count the cost of not showing up. So really good. This is an underestimated momentum and begets more momentum. And then you talk about just living a life based off of proving other people wrong can be a motivation and a big one. And so, you know, you want to just make sure that people feel like you matter. And you wrote. And I thought this was really deep and profound, and I never thought about it like this. In doing that, it's Almost proving your point, which is that what you were before wasn't good enough. It wasn't lovable enough. And so you have to prove your worth. Can you talk to someone who's struggling with that, that doubting yourself has carried through and now you want to prove people wrong who just thought you could never get there?
- [43:05]
Mary Morantz
Yeah. So the first part there in that question is, is actually it's in the per. That's in the perfectionism chapter and it's talking about when my mom leaves and how I started to use perfect as a weapon. You know, I'm going to go build a life so beautiful and extraordinary on the outside, it's going to make you sad you weren't there to see it. And it goes on in dirt. It goes on to talk about it. Like a daisy growing in the middle the of scorched earth wilting from its own ground. It's growing from. And it's like, yeah, you know, it's kind of like at first look, it's like this beauty from ashes, like look at me grow. But the wilting, withering question is, how long can we really survive that way? Here's the thing about proving people wrong, Jenny, is that man, does it work. Man, does it work. For a while. Wow. Is it effective jet fuel for a while. You know, I talk about, and even in chapter one, I say we take other people's doubts. They're the voices, they're blurred and bled in our heads. They're at once auto tuned and amplified and they become the singular voice of reason that tells us it would be safer not to show up. And for some of us, that's what we do. We listen to it and we stay right where we are. For others of us though, and this became kind of the inspiration for all the launch boxes I sent out. I say in a true Jeff Goldblum worthy adapter, find yourself extinct, life finds a way kind of moment of clarity. We take those petrified doubts, inject them with every ounce of survival mode wired right into our DNA and hatch an entirely different species of success altogether. Now we are the keepers of every perceived slight. These patron saints of the underdogs, you know, we are the sacred order of the underestimated. And we took those doubts and we turned them into jet fuel. And so that those two words right there, perceived slight, are actually a two word punch in my own face indictment of there have been plenty of times when people have actually doubted me and it has propelled me to prove them wrong. It's been very effective for a while. Then when that jet fuel runs out, I have to look around and find who's ignoring me, who's overlooking me, who's not inviting me in order to keep that fuel coming. Because it's not a renewable resource, it turns out. And so, you know, in Dirt and in my second book, Slow Growth Equals Strong Roots, I talk about this girl in the red cape running through the deep, dark woods, the big bad wolf ripping at her heels. She runs because she knows if she stops, it just might kill her. Until finally, breathless and at last, exhausted, I look back over my shoulder and I can finally see it. I am the girl in the red cape, but I'm also the wolf. And that voice in my head telling me to run and not stop running, that voice is my own. And then in Slow Growth, I revisit it from the perspective of the wolf, and it says, the big bad wolf becomes afraid of us because we twist the thorn in its paws to send it roaring back into fight or flight mode anytime we need it. Because we can't. If we can't stop running towards success, it can't stop chasing us. So in Underestimated, I talk about that being like, you know, we want these sugary, sweet highs of getting everything we ever wanted, but that sugar dust becomes a powder keg. I talk about a sugar factory that exploded. When you're letting it all pile up and you're not doing the housekeeping to say, what is this? What does all this achievement actually mean? What is all this proving people wrong actually mean? And we realize that all these little explosions, you know, I'm thinking like pistons and an engine. Like, you get a little bit of fuel and it explodes and it moves you forward, but, wow, does it leave you this burned out, hollow shell of yourself. Proving people wrong is not what got me up off the floor 12 hours a day for 12 months writing this book. It was the faces of the four women I chose as avatars for this book and who might be helped by it, how they might be helped, the family trees that would be changed. You know, I've said the goal for this book is nothing short of generational change. And so that got me up off the floor when I wanted to quit, not proving somebody from my hometown was wrong about me.
- [46:32]
Ginny Yorich
Just like nobody wants to be proved wrong anyway. So it's really gonna work. People are gonna be like, I don't want to be proved wrong.
- [46:39]
Mary Morantz
Right.
- [46:39]
Ginny Yorich
Well, and you talk about that a lot in this book. Like the generosity. It's generosity that helps with feeling, that scarcity and the fear and you have a beautiful story about your dad, about how you didn't have much, but at Christmas talking. Go back to Christmas. He goes to all of these loggers that are in the company, and he takes things to them. And he wrote, I was watching the faces of their kids. Kids, how they stood a little taller, looked at their dads a little differently, how they felt that pride inside of them. That was the night dad taught me what. What it really means to build someone up, to be grateful and humble and say the things that need to be said, to make room at the table for everyone and to maybe work a little miracle somewhere in there, too. It's like that. That's the motivation. You want to come from that and not proving someone else wrong. I want to talk about a couple this random. First of all, you were almost named Renetta Ann.
- [47:29]
Mary Morantz
Yeah.
- [47:29]
Ginny Yorich
Which your dad was like, that sounds like Ramada in. So we're gonna name her Mary. I like that. It's a fun little random fact. Okay, here's another one. You both won amazing awards. So you get this award called the Augusta Order of the Augusta. It definitely sounds Harry Potter ish, but I had no idea that West Virginia was almost called Augusta.
- [47:52]
Mary Morantz
Yeah.
- [47:53]
Ginny Yorich
And then you were like, they just put a little west on the front. It definitely would change things, I think, if it were called Augusta. Let's talk about that in just one second. Because you got that award. You got a lot of awards, but that was one. And your dad was the Logger of the year in 1990, and you had a banner that said, daughter of the Logger of the Year, and you got to be in a parade.
- [48:14]
Mary Morantz
I sure did. I sure did. That was a huge deal. Gosh, that was a huge deal. I can still remember the banquet where we went to the. You know, the Forestry Association's banquet. It was at Canane Valley Resort, which was, like, so fancy at the time. The thing I remember about that afternoon, Jenny, was he was holding his hands like this, and his knuckles were so white. I don't know that I've ever actually seen somebody white knuckle something before. But he was just squeezing his hand so tight, and when they called his name, it was just like, you know, we may as well have just won the lottery is what it felt like. And then we walked around that conference or whatever it was for the next couple days, and it was like the star treatment anywhere we went, you know, oh, do you want a sample of this chainsaw blade? Like it's yours for the Logger of the Year. And I Gotta tell you, like, it's so funny how these moments really, they become part of that picture of what the good life is. And it, you know, my dad was. He wanted more for me. He wanted me to get out, but he was incredibly tough on me. There's a story in dirt about get up and tell this whole, you know, recite this whole thing from memory. Don't fidget and don't mess it up.
- [49:16]
Ginny Yorich
And you're like four.
- [49:17]
Mary Morantz
You're like, I'm four. Very high standards from a very young age. And it really became, I think that became kind of one of those, like, inside out where the core memories where it's like, oh, when you win things, when you're named to things, then you have arrived, then people will see you and, yeah, we got to come home. And he was the grand marshal of the Cherry River Festival parade. And that's a huge deal, you know, and it is kind of just like another one of those examples of, like. I'm not going to speak for all Appalachians, but I will say for my family and our town, there's. There's a lot of, like, pride. You know, there's pride in our. Our traditions, and then there's this pride that says, you know, we'll give you the shirt off our back, but don't you dare offer, you know, us yours. And so I think for him to have this moment of he had struggled and worked so hard since he was 12, and it felt like it had finally paid off. And, and he, you know, we don't want anybody in the town to know how hard the business had struggled, you know, so there were. There were people from my hometown who were like, what are you talking about? Like, he was like, he owned a business. We had no idea that it was hard. Um, and it's like, yeah, we're. We're not going to let you know that. So I don't know, that's just like. I think it became one of those things of, like, let everybody, like, it goes back to whole people at arm's length. I call it this bespoke stoic armor, this neon blinking camouflage where you paradoxically forever blend in by forever standing out. If no one can get close enough, if all they can see is your wins, they can't get close enough to see your many flaws. So I feel like that was like, this beautiful moment, but it also kind of taught me, like, the way that you matter is by winning.
- [50:47]
Ginny Yorich
And so then it was interesting because he had his awards and you have your. You have your awards, like you both have awards, and it kind of just showed that both were exciting. You know, the award for winning Lager of the Year and getting to throw Tootsie Rolls in the parade is also, you know, it's also elating to get this other award, the Order of Augusta. And then you've gotten this scholarship that you got to go to England. You talked about you're going to this college. You start off at West Virginia university and there's 22,000 students. You're like, I'm going to be, you know, 19, 21,999. Like, I'm going to be right at the end. But then you're like, you know, in the top eight. I can't remember the details. You get all these awards, and so it kind of just showed. An award is an award, and if you're logger of the year and if you win the Order of Augusta, which is a huge deal, these are both worthy things and exciting things. It was like a big full circle book.
- [51:40]
Mary Morantz
Yeah, I actually. Here's another full circle moment. I actually got to go back three years ago now. It'll be. It was the 20 year anniversary of me graduating and getting the Order of Augusta. I got to go back and be the grand marshal of the homecoming parade. So parade again, another parade at WVU and. And go down on the field at halftime to get the award. So. And my dad was right there in the audience. So, yeah, there are these moments. There are these moments. He did come to that one because it was in West Virginia.
- [52:08]
Ginny Yorich
You know, there are these moments. You also talk about your faith in this one. You talk about, just as a young girl, you found God outside. This is a young girl. You know, you went to church with your grandma, go to the Baptist church. Do you say God started meeting me outside in the yard during the daylight hours when he wasn't in the stars. He was everywhere. He was in the green of the grass, down to the very pigment. It just goes to show that people talk about this, that kids actually have deep faith. He was in the birds stepping into flight, wings spread wide in defiance of gravity, far from the tether of their branches. He was in the sun shining down on my face, the kind of gold from the fire that you know is still there even when you close your eyes. He was in the thin layers of the mud, dug from the cold, hard ground that would dry your hands and stay with you the rest of the day. So you talk about that. And then your dad, your dad's faith, you talk about that. He prayed for you is so beautiful. I guess the first time I really talked to God and expected an answer was one night when you were about two. I opened the door to your bedroom in the trailer and just a crack of light fell on your face. And I never knew I could love something so much. I prayed right there, God, I don't care what you do with my life, just do something with hers. Book. Look at my crying.
- [53:23]
Mary Morantz
I'm like, I'm just, I'm just gonna like instead of say a word right now because I'm holding it together here. Jenny, what are you doing to me on a. Morning. What morning is it? Thursday. That's it, Thursday morning.
- [53:32]
Ginny Yorich
I don't know. Yeah. These are powerful books. I guess I just. We're wrapping up. We're. We're close to being out of time. But I think I just, like I said, I had just read Underestimated and then I was able to also have the time to read Dirt and I just felt like the way that they woke together is so beautiful. And, and they were very, very thought provoking books and very touching books. Like sometimes I'm like, oh, I'm. I'm really glad I read that. Yeah, that's how I feel.
- [53:56]
Mary Morantz
I love that.
- [53:56]
Ginny Yorich
You know, those stories are gonna stick with me. The one about the necklace. And I'm telling you, there's one on page 243 in dirt that I was like, this is one of the best stories in any book I've ever read.
- [54:05]
Mary Morantz
Give me a hint. Give me a hint. What is, what is 243?
- [54:08]
Ginny Yorich
Well, it's about a Christmas present.
- [54:11]
Mary Morantz
Oh yeah, Your dad.
- [54:12]
Ginny Yorich
Yeah. It's one of the best stories I've ever read in a book. And I'm gonna, I'm leaving it there as a hanging out there for people. So, you know, I just think this, these books are gonna help you. They're gonna help you a lot if you, you know, if you're spending your life chasing other people. If you wanna read a really good memoir, Growing Strong Roots and what Makes the Broken Beautiful. And then there's a book in between. Strong Growth equals Strong Roots. You can take a quiz online. There's a free chapter. You have your own podcast, the Mary Morant Show. So I'll make sure that we put all of those things in the show notes. We always end our show with the same question. And the question is, what's a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside.
- [54:47]
Mary Morantz
Okay. So one of the things that would happen in our neighborhood is, and, and I, I grieve this. I grieve that. I don't feel like this exists anymore. At least it doesn't in our neighborhood, really. We're. I think we're working on it, but I'll just set it up and we'll see. We would do this thing where, you know, if we cut back brush, we would pile pilot on the big like burn pit essentially, or if there was garbage sometimes, I'm just gonna be honest, sometimes the garbage would go there. Or like when we would chop wood, you know, my dad would bring home these big like sections of the tree trunk and we would actually like chainsaw them into firewood or what have you, any scraps that were left over. It would just pile up and pile up and pile up until we had a massive, just pile of junk on the burn pit. And my dad would go over and he'd throw a little. This is. This is so not green or, or environmental. But you throw a little penzoil on the, on the thing and then light it up, you know. And when that flame went up, it was so big and so tall. I say in dirt, you know, became kind of like a moth to the flame. Like this tinder box that turned like moth to the flame. All of the neighbors in, in our entire mountain sort of knew what was up. And you would just see people wandering into the yard. They would bring watermelon, the would bring hot dogs. You know, we always had like a whole cooler of those icy popsicles, you know, the rainbow popsicles and little sugar.
- [56:08]
Ginny Yorich
A little water, little sugar, little water.
- [56:10]
Mary Morantz
What could go wrong? And they're so freeze pop, giant open flame and liquid sugar. What could go wrong? And fireworks.
- [56:20]
Ginny Yorich
Throw some fireworks in there.
- [56:22]
Mary Morantz
And I just. I feel like we have lost that, that ability to just be like, I'm sending up the bat signal and everybody get together. You know, our neighborhood's working on it. We in here in Connecticut, we live near a park called the Seawall. You know, you start to see like, people kind of gathering for sort of like sunset happy hours. So maybe we're bringing it back. But it felt, it feels like we became so lonely and cut off from each other for so long, we kind of lost the art of like the uninvited invitation. You know, we just know what it means. Scenes. We're all getting together. So Justin and I, we. Our part for this is we actually host a giant backyard inflatable movie nights. As soon as, like in September, as soon as it gets dark enough, early enough that the movie doesn't go to like midnight. But yeah, it's just I miss those days of I think you don't know you're in the good old days when you're in them.
- [57:10]
Ginny Yorich
Maybe you should attempt the bonfire idea.
- [57:13]
Mary Morantz
Just light something on fire and see what happens.
- [57:16]
Ginny Yorich
Bring your trash.
- [57:17]
Mary Morantz
Does anybody have any fireworks bottle?
- [57:22]
Ginny Yorich
All right, the last random fact is that Justin likes chocolate cake with orange juice.
- [57:27]
Mary Morantz
Yes. Yes, he does. Something about the citrus cutting the chocolate. So. So at our wedding, we had a chocolate cake and we had a special glass of orange juice just for him.
- [57:38]
Ginny Yorich
Mary, this has been such an honor. I really truly love, loved these books so much.
- [57:42]
Mary Morantz
Thank you.
- [57:43]
Ginny Yorich
Thank you so much for being here.
- [57:44]
Mary Morantz
Thank you so much. And head to namethefear.com we've got some fun things up there for you. Free chapter and a quiz.
- [57:55]
Ginny Yorich
Hi, I'm Tara Schmidt, a registered dietitian and host of On Nutrition, a podcast.
- [58:00]
Mary Morantz
For Mayo Clinic where we dig into.
- [58:02]
Ginny Yorich
The latest nutrition trends and research to help you understand what's health and what's up. There's a lot of wild stuff out there, so we'll be keeping it science based research, informed and practical. Mayo Clinics On Nutrition. New episodes every other week. Wherever you get your podcasts. When your company earns unlimited 2% cash back on all purchases with Capital One, that's serious business. So Stephen at Sandcloud got a serious business card, the Spark Cash plus card from Capital One.
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Mary Morantz
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Ginny Yorich
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Mary Morantz
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Ginny Yorich
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Mary Morantz
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