From a single-wide trailer in rural West Virginia to Yale Law School, Mary Marantz’s story is certainly a fascinating one — one she shares in her bestselling debut memoir, “Dirt: Growing Strong Roots in What Makes the Broken Beautiful.” After graduating, she turned down six-figure law firm offers to build a business with her husband and has since written multiple books, including her latest, “Underestimated: The Surprisingly Simple Shift to Quit Playing Small, Name the Fear, and Move Forward Anyway.” She also hosts the popular podcast “The Mary Marantz Show,” where she shares her honest thoughts and best tips on business, relationships, faith and more.

Today, she’s taking readers on an adventure back to her childhood in West Virginia to eat wild onions with her grandma, then back to the present through the various quirks and struggles that make her life fascinating and beautiful. Read on to find out how she confronts fear when she’s working on things that matter, how the Holy Spirit inspires her creativity through movement and what she prays every day over her writing.

QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT

The meals we enjoy are about so much more than the food we eat. So how does a “go-to” meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind your web bio?

I was born and raised in a single-wide trailer in rural West Virginia, where the most “gourmet” meal I ever had was my Grandma Goldie’s signature ramp dinner. A ramp is a kind of wild onion that grows thick, deep in the woods where I come from. So much so that the town at the bottom of our mountain — Richwood, West Virginia — is known as the ramp capital of the world, and every year, it celebrates the Feast of the Ramson. But for Goldie and me, our feast always took place at home.

Every April, when the thick carpet of rotten leaves in the woods behind her little red house gave way to a flash of green, Goldie would send me packing with a spade and an empty bucket and tell me not to come back until it was full. “Don’t just cut the leaves, Mary Ellen. You got to dig down to get to the good part.”

I had the route memorized by heart. Quick over the hill and down three levels of logging roads, veer a hard left at the first waterfall (the one with the fallen tree), skitter down where the ground is nothing but rocks (it’s easier if you crawl), and then, just as the hill drops off in a steep, sheer cliff, you should be able to see it: a secret patch of ramps that was just mine and Goldie’s.

When I got back home, Goldie was already hard at work making brown beans and cornbread and frying up bacon in the pan. She’d take that bucket of greens from me, shake at least most of the dirt off, and then fry them up right there in the pan, right along with the bacon grease.

Here’s something you need to know if you’re going to eat ramps. You’ll smell like them for three solid days after. Not just on your breath, not just up close — it will ooze right out of your pores. You have to be committed to the ramp.

Years later, when I was in law school at Yale in New Haven, I went to a fancy restaurant with white linen tablecloths and real cloth napkins. And wouldn’t you know it, they had wild ramps right there on the menu. They called them French and gourmet. I ordered them, of course, but I can tell you right now: that fancy French place had nothing on West Virginia Goldie and her dirty bacon grease.

It just goes to show you can leave home, travel as far out into the world as your dreams will take you and have all sorts of fancy experiences. But the places that built you will always ooze right out of your pores. And sometimes with your muddy stories, you have to dig down to get to the good part.

QUESTION #2: REVEAL

We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activity do you love engaging in that also helps you find essential spiritual renewal?

Every single night when I go to bed, I take six clementines with me (two before I fall asleep, two in case I wake up in the middle of the night and two for the morning). I speak fluently in movie quotes. I do a mean Sean Connery impression. Every morning before I start writing, I listen to Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” (you get one shot — Mom, I love you, but this trailer’s got to go). In other words, I have no shortage of quirky proclivities, to say the least.

But one I want to tell you about in particular is my propensity for dancing around the house (as I tell all my friends, “The dance lives in me!”), especially when I’m writing a book! You know those 24-7 webcams they have zoomed in on those bald eagles out in Big Bear who just had eaglets, the ones that broadcast to millions of curious onlookers from around the world? I feel like there should be one of those broadcasting non-stop from my upstairs living room — because it is quite a sight to behold!

Every time I’m writing a book, I write a little, I dance a little, write a little more, dance a little more. This is how I get my best work to show up. And it turns out there is a science to it.

In my new book “Underestimated,” I actually talk all about this in chapter 7: “Overthinking is an Orange Safety Cone.” Have you ever had a really bad case of writer’s block? The kind that makes you feel like you’re trying to sneeze through your forehead while all the existential angst in the world builds up right there in your prefrontal cortex? That’s because you are trying to innovate in the part of your brain that thrives on just doing what has always worked before. The limbic brain, on the other hand, is where true “novelty seeking” and “conceptual blending” (i.e., the ability to connect two dots in a way they have never quite been connected before) happen. And it turns out dancing is one of the best ways to activate that part of your brain! Like my friend Ally Fallon said to me on her episode of my podcast “The Mary Marantz Show,” “When you think limbic, think limbs.”

So go on a walk. Stretch. Dance around your living room to Eminem. Don’t try to think through your overthinking by thinking even harder. It turns out rest is an active part of creation.

All this time, we’ve been thinking of God resting on the seventh day from what he had already created. But for all we know, he was just innovating and dreaming up his next big project.

QUESTION #3: CONFESS

Every superhero has a weakness; every human too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re all broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite, and how do you confront its power head-on?

My kryptonite is my underdog complex.

Growing up without a lot just does something to your brain. I can’t explain it. Maybe it has something to do with the prefrontal cortex still developing. Or maybe it’s negative neural pathways that grow closer over time at the repetition and replaying of bad thoughts turned bad generational patterns. I don’t know, maybe it’s just inhaling all the mildew.

Whatever it is, it makes you expect to fail before you’ve even tried.

There are a lot of different ways to describe this feeling. You can call it fear of failure, being your own worst critic, being too hard on yourself, self-doubt, lack of confidence, low self-esteem, insecurity, a poverty mentality or just a plain old pervasive sense that no matter what you do, you will never be enough.

Pretty fun, right?

What this means is that I walk into most rooms and expect to be overlooked, to not be enough of something to matter to most people. And in turn, I can often hold other people at arm’s length. I try to reject them before they have a chance to reject me. When you talk about something I wish I could be rid of forever, this would be it. I would give anything to walk into a room and expect that people are going to welcome me in. But feeling like the outsider is a hard muscle memory to shake.

Like I say in “Underestimated,” “The Underdog is a role of a lifetime. If you’re not careful, you could spend your whole life playing that part.”

The real challenge here is that I have used that underdog complex to push myself to great success. I have harnessed every underestimation and perceived sleight and figured out a way to turn it into jet fuel.

So the real fear becomes: what if my underdog complex was both my kryptonite and my superpower all along? And to get healed from one would mean that I would inevitably have to lose the other? What if I do all this work to find healing and true belonging, and I lose all my drive in the process? What if I have to become content being average? Ordinary?

What if I just disappear altogether?

QUESTION #4: FIRE UP

Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?

There is a reason the word “passion” also means suffering.

I spent 12 hours a day for the past twelve months — much of it face down on the floor or curled up in the fetal position — getting these 74,000 words out of my head and down on the page.

And let me tell you something. Don’t write a book about fear unless you want it to show up.

I’ve been calling “Underestimated” “the systematic takedown of fear we’ve all been waiting for.” And in every chapter, I go toe to toe with a different “face” of fear. There’s a chapter on procrastination, people-pleasing, perfectionism, impostor syndrome, overthinking, a fear of failure and even a fear of success (14 in total).

And it is all premised on one really important working theory: that fear is a really boring liar. The same broken scripts it uses on you, it also uses on me. And vice versa.

I had an epiphany while I was writing this book — the kind of high every writer is chasing, where you connect two dots in a way you’ve never quite seen them connected before. And the epiphany was this: “What if fear attacks creatives in particular because it is jealous that it itself is not creative at all?” (Insert head-exploding emoji!)

Fear is not tethered to muse or melody or the original force of all creation. In fact, short of being able to throw its voice to sound like you in your own head and to shapeshift every time you almost get a handle on it, fear was not imbued with any other inherent gifts at all. So it must attack those of us who were.

Here’s the other thing you need to know. Fear is not a very creative guy, but he is a busy guy. And like any good, productive overachiever, he has learned how to prioritize.

So if you are already playing small or hiding in plain sight, fear will mostly leave you alone. A little “perfectionism” or “self-sabotage” maintenance mode sprinkled in, and you are all set. But show up and start to do work that matters? You better expect fear to arrive, teeth bared and snarling.

I felt the icy grip of fear on me every single day I was writing this book. In fact, all three times I have written and released a book, fear has shown up in the exact same way. Two times, we had a car die right before launch day. Two times, my Facebook was hacked, and we’ve never been able to get the accounts back. All three times, we had a major appliance die. There have been food poisoning, sick dogs, book supply chain issues — the list goes on.

Do you want to know what I do now? I take it as a sign that I’m on the right track.

Fear wouldn’t be bothered with us if the work we were about to do didn’t really matter (he simply doesn’t have the time). So we can actually use how boring, uncreative and predictable fear is to predict when we’re doing the work we were created to do.

And then we flip it for this script: “Good, I must actually really care about this work I’m putting out into the world.”

Fear just showed up in full force? Good. You’re about to do work that matters.

QUESTION #5: BOOST

Cashiers, CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?

The first time I ever truly experienced co-creating with God and the Holy Spirit was on the second draft of my first book, “Dirt” (which is about growing up in the trailer before going to Yale).

I had written a very different first draft of that book. One that was full of bitterness, poison and a “look what I did” mentality. I turned it in, and it only took me 24 hours to realize that it was not what I wanted that book to stand for. I jokingly refer to it as my Ebenezer (Scrooge) moment. I had seen a future I did not like, and I wanted to know if there was still time to change it.

I told my editor, Kelsey, that I wanted to gut 50,000 words and start over. And she told me that I could — but I only had two months to do it before we had to hand off to copyediting. I already felt like I had run a marathon just getting the first draft down. I was exhausted. I was empty. I felt like I had no more words left in me. But every single day, like clockwork, 750 words would show up in the morning and 750 more would arrive by evening. Words and stories I hadn’t even been thinking about. Like manna in manuscript form, I was given just enough each day to sustain me.

It was the most tangible experience of God I’ve ever had.

By the time I was writing “Underestimated,” every single day before sitting down at the computer, I prayed a few things over this book and watched God show up:

1. “Pry the icy grip of fear off my shoulders so that I can show up as more me than I’ve ever been.”

2. “Let these words access the overlapping shore, God, of your infinite wells of wisdom and creativity, the place where IQ meets EQ, the source of all creation that creates an alchemy and explosion of new ideas. Give me just a Mary-sized portion, a drop in the ocean, where those two shores intersect.”

3. “Let me get this idea (I can’t believe it picked me to partner with it) across the finish line as the fullest iteration of what it most wanted to be, lacking for nothing. Let me run my race well with endurance and not grow weary of doing good to get it there.”

4. “Let these words break strongholds and set off the kind of ripple effects that will rattle the rafters and change family trees.”

QUESTION #6: inspire

Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you in this season?

The spiritual practice that is saving my life right now is walking it out with God.

Every morning I’ve been listening to worship music and then talking it all out with God as I circle my kitchen island what feels like a thousand times. There is something about the left/right pacing (taking us right back to our limbic brain, think limbs!) that calms my nervous system and helps me lock in on God.

Plus, I like to imagine that as I’m “circling” my house, I am praying protection over my home and the people and dogs (we have two goldens named Goodspeed and Atticus!) I love most in it. I imagine fear and all of its minions running for the hills as I soak our home in prayer.

It also reminds me of the story of Jericho, and how tempted I am to give up on the sixth time around — when just one more would have caused all the walls of resistance to crumble.

I keep the walking going the rest of the day by taking this practice outside to walk on the seawall in front of our house, where we are so lucky to live right on the Long Island Sound. I heard someone say once that “God’s past faithfulness demands our present trust.” And walking laps around a home and a neighborhood we never could have dreamed for ourselves reminds me that God’s plans for my life never needed fear to co-sign them.

QUESTION #7: FOCUS

Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top three resources stand out to you? What changed reality and your heart?

Three game-changers in my journey — just three? OK, here we go!

1. The book “Purple Cow” by Seth Godin. In short, in a sea of 10,000 brown cows, you remember the purple one. It reminds me that all those things we think disqualify us, all of those edges, quirks and extremes that we so often carve off, whittle away and shrink ourselves to nothing as we race to the middle carrying our own buckets to water ourselves down — all of those things God created us to be are actually what make us remarkable (literally worth remarking on!). As the poet laureate Niles Crane from “Frasier” once said, “Mediocrity is the hallmark of popularity.” But showing up truly as ourselves is the only way we can do the excellent, remarkable work we were created to do.

2. “Present Over Perfect” by Shauna Niequist. She is one of my all-time favorite authors. This book was the first major step in helping me break up with all my performing and perfectionism.

3. The song “The Story I’ll Tell” by Maverick City Music. Just chills every time I hear it. Here are just some of the lyrics: “The hour is dark / and it’s hard to see / what you are doin’ here in the ruins / and where this will lead. / Oh, but I know / that down through the years, / I’ll look on this moment / and see your hand on it / and know you were here.” And that’s how I feel when I look back on my own story. “My God did not fail.”

We all have things we cling to to survive or even thrive in our fast-paced, techno-driven world. How have you been successful in harnessing technology to aid in your spiritual growth?

Britt Frank’s new book “Align Your Mind” (out in May — I was lucky enough to read an advanced copy!) is seriously rocking my world with her deep dive into Internal Family Systems and all the parts we contain. God made us to contain multitudes, and her work is actually helping me to be curious and befriend my inner critic as the protector it intended to be.

QUESTION #8: dream

God’s continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?

Oh boy, book four is already taking shape in my head — and it’s a doozy!

If every book I’ve written has made me live out the message while I was writing it (make peace with your past, give up achieving for your worth, quit playing small, name the fear and move forward anyway!), then I think the next 24 months are going to get really interesting as I live out this new message.

It’s essentially about how to keep going when everything in us wants to quit.

And if the way fear showed up while I was writing a book on fear is any indication of how this next one will go, I’m just saying, maybe say some prayers for your girl while she’s writing this next one!

We couldn’t help but smile as Mary described her daily dance routine when writing a book. Turns out, she’s right — there’s something powerful about moving our bodies when we’re trying to think creatively. One Stanford study showed that a person’s creative output can increase by as much as 60% when walking compared to sitting.

But this doesn’t just apply to our professional creativity — it can feed our spiritual creativity as well. There’s a reason countless church fathers and mothers have sought the heart of God while walking. There’s also a reason the Bible encourages us in numerous places to engage our bodies in worship, prayer and reflection.

“Clap your hands, all peoples! Shout to God with loud songs of joy!” (Ps. 47:1, ESV, emphasis added).

“Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!” (Ps. 95:6, ESV, emphasis added).

“And David danced before the Lord with all his might. And David was wearing a linen ephod” (2 Sam. 6:14, ESV, emphasis added).

“I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling” (1 Tim. 2:8, ESV, emphasis added).

Question for reflection: How can you bring bodily movement into your relationship with God this week? What about your relationships with others?

Mary Marantz