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Description:

In today’s episode we are talking with Mary Marantz, author of Slow Growth Equals Strong Roots.  Join Kelli as they dive into a discussion about her book, the idea of patience in the process and how you don’t have to achieve your way to worth. 

Let’s dive in!

IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN:

• 01:31 Who is Mary Marantz
• 04:15 Making Peace with our Story
• 11:38 Healing and Keeping Ourselves Safe
• 16:10 Operating Out Of Scarcity and Fear of Failure
• 23:48 Not Feeling Seen
• 30:26 Weeds, Flowers and Trees

WHO IS MARY MARANTZ

Last year in our book club we read Mary’s first book, Dirt. So when she came out with a second book we just knew we had to include it in our book club! Mary says the elevator pitch or short version of her story is grow up in a single wide trailer in West Virginia and ended up at Yale. A total redemption story if you will.

MAKING PEACE WITH OUR STORY

Making peace with our story. We can’t turn back, but we have to then press into all. If we’ve made peace with our past, how do we make sure it is not still dominating our present? How is our present not held captive from the story we’re trying to outrun? Mary says that her book Dirt is this love letter to the girl in the trailer, then this book, Slow Growth Equals Strong Roots is the love letter to the woman after

HEALING AND KEEPING OURSELVES SAFE

For someone who has been the overachiever or who finds their worth in their accomplishments, there’s kind of this part of us where maybe we don’t wanna get fully healed. We believe that we have to achieve to matter. So if we go and give up on achieving for our identity and worth we wonder if then we lose all our drive in the process. We wonder what if we stop doing anything? What if we cease to matter? What if we just like, disappear like a vapor? What if we, what if we have to be ordinary? What if it’s just boring? What if life is just nothing, nothing without achievement. And so there’s this very real part of our brains that goes, Hm. Maybe, maybe we won’t get healed. Maybe it’s safer to stay how I am and continue achieving my way to worth.

OPERATING OUT OF SCARCITY AND FEAR OF FAILURE

Most of us are so afraid of feeling that we never even start and it suddenly feels safer to create nothing than to create failure.

Mary shares this sentiment about when you feel frozen in fear: You’re about to tell the words, you’re about to use the gifts, that will help so many people that enemy’s gonna get in your ear and try to undermine you in the place where you could most serve that story.

NOT FEELING SEEN

Mary shares about a dream that she had where she was desperately trying to be seen and valued by another author. It becomes a powerful story of knowing that our worth and our value doesn’t come from our accomplishments. Mary also shares about a goal she made that anytime she is feeling not seen by someone, she will take that desire and turn it around. She will look for someone that she can see and that she can pour into.

WEEDS, FLOWERS, AND TREES

Mary shares a beautiful analogy of weeds, flowers and trees. With weeds she says that in just one day you could walk outside and find like a five or six foot tall weed. That feels like fast growth or fleeting currency of more, how fast, how much, how many, it’s sort of like having a lot of Instagram followers is like being rich and monopoly money, like that sort of sort of vibe. When people are growing with dizzying speed, dizzying multiplication, dizzying heights seemingly overnight it’s very tempting to say “I wanna grow just like a weed. I wanna have that kind of timeline.” But anybody who’s ever walked through a field of overgrown weeds knows that you can pull a five foot weed out with a half an inch of roots.

Because that’s all that it was standing for. It grew for what’s on the surface. What other people were looking at. It never took the time to actually stand for something that it’s anchored to.

We can choose to be flowers, which are things of beauty, which the world certainly needs more beauty.

We can be something better. Something that’s gonna last longer. A tree can grow to dizzying heights. A tree can in and of itself be a thing of beauty, but it’s never satisfied with merely doing that because it also wants to be shade in shelter for others. It wants to bear fruit that can be given away.

Mary’s hope is that all of us can be trees in a world full of weeds. We can have the patience to zoom out on the timetable and say, “maybe I’m growing for something that’s gonna last for generations.” And there’s maybe there’s a reason Redwood giants are on a different timetable than milkweed.

Jaime says instead of going back and forth between too much support and too much challenge (like a teeter totter) instead to try to find the point of balance. Jaime thinks of it like on the job training, something that’s very similar to like the apprenticeship.

First you’re gonna watch me do it. Then you’re gonna watch me do it, but you’re gonna help me. And then you’re gonna do it and I’m gonna help you. And then I’m gonna watch you do it by yourself. So I’ve given them basically the combo of support and challenge and it’s incremental.

Our goal here is to support them, but build up their confidence in themselves to do and try new things.

RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:

• Follow Kelli on Instagram
• Find Mary on Instagram
• Find out more about Kelli Here
• Join the Finally Fearless Book Club Here



Thank you so much for listening to this episode! I’m honored and excited to be on this journey toward personal growth and greater confidence with you. If you enjoyed the podcast, I’d love to ask you to take 2 minutes to leave me a 5-star review on your podcast app, that way we can help even more women to join us as we #dropkickyourinnermenagirl together.

P.S. If you’re looking for ways to increase your confidence and silence your inner mean-girl, download my free workbook, 6 Ways to Dropkick Your Inner Mean Girl.