Dirt: Growing Strong Roots in What Makes the Broken Beautiful

by Mary Marantz

Overview

Dirt is a story about the places where we start. From a single-wide trailer in the mountains of rural West Virginia to the halls of Yale Law School, Mary Marantz's story is one of remembering our roots while turning our faces to the sky. From growing up in that trailer, where it rained just as hard inside as out and the smell of mildew hung thick in the air, Mary has known what it is to feel broken and disqualified because of the muddy scars leaving smudged fingerprints across our lives. Generations of her family lived and logged in those hauntingly treacherous woods, risking life and limb just to barely scrape by. And yet that very struggle became the redemption song God used to write a life she never dreamed of.

Mixed with warmth, wit, and the bittersweet, sometimes achingly heartbreaking places we go when we dig in instead of give up, Dirt is a story of healing. With gut-wrenching honesty and hard-won wisdom, Mary shares her story for anyone who has ever walked into the world and felt like their scars were still on display, showing that you are braver, better, and more empathetic for what you have survived. Because God does his best work in the muddy, messy, and broken—if we'll only learn to dig in.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780800738457
Publisher:	Baker Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/15/2020
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	198,761
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Mary Marantz grew up in a trailer in rural West Virginia. The first of her immediate family to go to college, she went on to earn a master's degree in moral philosophy and a law degree from Yale. After ditching six-figure-salary law firm offers in London and New York and starting a business with her husband, Justin, together they have built a successful online education platform for creative entrepreneurs. Mary is a popular writer and speaker whose work has recently been featured by Business Insider, MSN, Bustle, and Brit+Co. She is also the host of the highly ranked podcast The Mary Marantz Show, and more than 50,000 people tune in daily for her uplifting posts, emails, and videos. She lives in an 1880s fixer-upper by the sea in New Haven, Connecticut, with her husband, Justin and their two very fluffy golden retrievers, Goodspeed and Atticus.

Table of Contents

Prologue ii

Part I The girl in the trailer

1 It Always Started with Dirt 19

2 You Have to Dig Down to Get to the Good Part 29

3 A Tiny Shift in Words That Changes Everything 39

4 Marked for Hard Things 51

5 It Was Always in Our Blood 61

6 Something Not Always Seen but Felt 73

7 These Scars We Bear 85

8 Leaving Is a Suitcase 97

9 None of It Ever Made Her Feel More Real 109

10 The Scars That Stitch Us Back Together Again 119

Interlude 133

Part II The girl after the trailer

11 A Ship Sailing toward a Distant Shore 137

12 Stories Change Stories 151

13 Belonging Is a Gray J. Crew Sweater 163

14 A Constellation of Complicated 177

15 Substance over Surface 191

16 The Heavy Chains We Never Asked to Bear 201

17 Not Even Real Dirt 209

18 Its Safe Now for You to Rest 219

19 Grace Is a Root Word 229

20 The Broken Was Part of the Plan All Along 239

21 At Last Freedom Takes Root and Comes Home 251

Epilogue 259

Author Note 261

Acknowledgments 263