Mary Gregory is an American author, poet, and an advocate for mental health. She has authored Travels Through Aqua, Green, and Blue and The Great LeadHERship Awakening. Gregory also maintains a poetry blog, Urban Honesty, where she has coined the term “poetelling” in which she interweaves poetry with storytelling.
When she’s not writing, her daytime hours are spent as a senior leader in IT for a Fortune 500 company in the entertainment industry. She calls California home.
When did you first find your love for reading and writing? Do you recall your first book that captured that love?
There was an old man who would always chat with me at the local grocery store, he was tall and had a deep voice and had a nice face, he reminded me of John Wayne. We’d chit-chat about life and he’d tell me what he was going to put in the crock pot for dinner that night for him and his wife. One day he asked me if I read. I told him all I read were college textbooks. He said that he was never a reader his entire life but that he found an author and series he really loved and insisted I check it out. I figured that if he was inspired at his age, then I could be at mine. I discovered James Patterson and the Cross series.
The first book I read was Mary Mary, which I didn’t realize was the 11th book in the series, but I liked the title, and once I finished the book, I started from the beginning of the series with Along Came a Spider, and soon became thrilled and excited about reading.
Though I haven’t published fiction yet, I loved how short and sweet his chapters were and that his stories were non-linear and the scenes he created were vivid, so much so that you could almost taste them. When I wrote my memoir, I allowed myself to have chapters that were short, even just a page, and I let my story move from present day reflections to the past and back and forth in a non-linear fashion and this is my nod to James Patterson for showing me that you can write this way and it’s okay.
Your debut book, Travels Through Aqua, Green, and Blue: A Memoir, tackles childhood trauma and coming of age stories. Was it ever difficult to put the pen to the paper capturing the stories or did you find it therapeutic?
It was difficult to know how to begin, because I wasn’t sure if the memories, which were just vignettes at the time, could equal up to a book. So, I decided to give myself license to capture my thoughts and stories by using voice-to-text in my Trello app. I’d be on the 101 N. on my way to my Hollywood office and sharing my memories about my past capture anything that came up for the day. I did this for 120 days.
It was during this process that I realized the depths of my childhood trauma, but also the amazing life I’d had, the root of my quirky and imaginative personality, and where I got my adventurous spirit. I also realized that if I were going to embark on turning these memories into a book, I’d need support. The present day me and the child in me had to have a talk.
I began talk therapy and learned I had childhood PTSD and decided to have an EMDR session to help me process this trauma. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing is a form of psychotherapy, and it was through this therapy, along with my own personal development pursuits, that I was able to understand my childhood and to let go of the shame I was carrying around from being poor, having unconventional parents, and the pain of having been bullied for my facial deformity.
The relief I felt when I was able to love and forgive the child, young adult, and adult me, is nearly indescribable, though I do my best by sharing my EMDR session in my memoir and my childhood experience throughout the book.
Can you talk to us about The Great LeadHERship Awakening? What makes this such a powerful and needed book? What do you hope readers take away after finishing it?
I want women and men who read the book to see that their “failures” are just stepping stones to finding their resiliency superpowers. The 24 women who contributed to this book share their journeys through all kinds of beginning’s; with different challenges, upbringings, skills and outlooks on life, and their soulful and authentic stories bring home the power we all have in our experiences.
Being comfortable with vulnerability is where I spend a lot of my time these days. I’ve learned to not be afraid to take a deep look at myself and to see where I can improve, forgive, and grow. I haven’t always been that way, and I spent a lot of time avoiding this introspection. Mainly because I was so hard on myself and carried so much disappointment and regret from my past, that it was almost intolerable to be within. Yet when I found the way to forgive myself and others, this opened up an entirely new world for me, and I was able to tap into my unique superpowers, and I quickly became a better leader.
I think if we can start by accepting even the simplest of micro truths in our stories, we can begin to own our hardships and turn them into great strengths.
Can you describe your writing process when you’re starting a new project? Do you start with research or get ideas down on paper first?
For a new project, I like to write out my ideas first. They often come from personal experiences, so there’s a cathartic component to my writing. If it’s a collaborative project, I want to know all there is to know about the other person’s reason for wanting to write their project. I love to ideate, and I’m comfortable with teasing out ideas to better understand what the real feelings are behind a project.
I want the messages in my books to be about vulnerability, triumph, growth, and transformation. Somehow these all come together for me when I’m writing, and I make sure to share all these aspects as that’s how you get true transformation. I want transformation to be available for the reader if that’s what they’re looking for. I feel that if I’m not able to get real about my life, then my work has less of an impact.
You have accomplished so many successes in life. If you could tell your younger self anything, what would that be?
I struggled with self-doubt for a very long time, in part because of the way I had been raised, the bullying I endured and the difficult living conditions I grew up in. I tended to believe that my ideas were not as valuable as others because I felt less than for so long. I’d tell my younger self not to let her opinions and ideas be invalidated by the rest of the world. Just because she is different, she’s just as smart and capable as anyone else, and to give herself grace for meeting the challenges in life with the resources that she has. Your experiences will be the roots of an amazing story one day, Mary.
For more information on Mary Gregory, visit her on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Mary-E.-Gregory/author/B08G225548
For press inquiries, contact Michael Beas of Atlas Elite Publishing at info@atlaselitepublishing.com
