Daily Inspiration: Meet Mary McDonough

Today we’d like to introduce you to Mary McDonough.

Mary, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Growing up in my family meant that you were surrounded by art and all of its forms, almost constantly. One one side, you had the technical creatives. People thrived working with their hands. Dad’s random sketches on legal pads or napkins would become a reality in one Saturday afternoon and an extra set of hands. At any given visit with Mom’s relatives, someone broke out in song, recited poems, or referenced great painters and composers. There was a kind, quiet and consistent expectation that us grandkids would find some sort of artistic outlet.

Whether it was through music, sketches or paints, we found our individual paths. Being the youngest, I was the quiet one that would watch all of the chaos for hours and escape into my imagination. Be it the latest Disney animated movie or an illustration from one of the Arthur books, somehow I’d make up my story and enter those worlds. But at that age, I didn’t understand that all of those characters started with words on a page.

Writing wasn’t a love that I found on my own. Sure I liked piecing words together, and maybe I liked those letter trace sheets more than most kids, but it didn’t capture my full attention yet. Thankfully, I had great teachers and mentors in those early years who spotted the potential. It was their steady encouragement that fueled my interest and showed me that there are professional writers in the world. I had no clue what that job would entail, but at nine years-old my mind was made up. From then on, if there was a free moment during the day, my head was in a notebook. I’ve come to believe that part of that potential was made up of all the things I was too shy to say out loud.

Cerebral Palsy (CP) had been a part of my life since birth, yet as a kid I had very little understanding of it. Essentially, it’s a brain injury that causes miscommunications with muscles in the body. There are all different types that affect different muscles with ranging severities. In my case, both legs are spastic and the muscles couldn’t naturally stretch as I grew All I knew was that I fell down a lot, my knees knocked, and while kids my age were at soccer I was at physical therapy. None of it seemed abnormal because it was entirely routine for me. But as I got older and my movements were gradually more restricted from the spasticity,I had questions without the language to form them.

By the time I turned 10, a second growth spurt was on the horizon and it was likely to cause muscle damage. There had to be some pretty fierce treatment plans in place soon or my chance at fully independent living was gone. For most of that year, I was in-and-out of appointments for specialists, x-rays, tests and consultations. But no matter what waiting room we were in, there was always a book or magazine that I could hide in for a few minutes.

Fate put me in the hands of an incredible pediatric orthopedic surgeon who knew exactly what I needed. There was an intense one-time surgery that was being performed in similar cases. Only a few other kids nationwide had been through the ordeal, but the results were promising.
To save you the messy details, there were three different broken bones in each leg, two muscle releases, countless screws and growth plates not to mention a relocation of both knee caps to the right spot, all within a single eight hour surgery.

There is not a lot that you can do to entertain yourself when you can’t stand up for six straight weeks. So, between the doses of pain meds and doing homework, I read or wrote. Journals and books once again came to my rescue at the moment there was quite literally nowhere to go. Even when it came time for me to stay at the rehab hospital, I’d unwind in the evenings and pour my thoughts onto paper.

Medical needs had settled down to a dull whisper by the time I got to high school. There was finally time to dig into academic challenges that I could sink my teeth into. Along with that also came the inevitable question of what was going to come after graduation. I still knew that I wanted to be a writer, but it was time to figure out the deeper focus and find the form that spoke to me. All of those questions were answered the first time that I encountered the work of playwright Arthur Miller. While reading The Crucible in Honors English 10, it felt as if lightning had run through my core and everything aligned. My answer was plays, I wanted to write plays.

As graduation closed in, there were many conversations with my parents about the financial realities of a playwright. With that in mind, I looked for a writing program that would help me build a professional career while allowing space and growth in creative projects. That is exactly what I found at Northern Michigan University (NMU). Out there in the peace of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, I discovered my path as a journalist and had the chance to interact with other writers who challenged me creatively. Every piece of the journey had a hand in my life now. However, the importance of those four years in the embrace of Lake Superior can never be understated.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Everybody loses portions of their taste for imagination at some time in childhood. That reach for maturity can hit all of us at different points. When you’re having to deal with very real expectations about your own health, the rose-tinted lenses of innocence fall away faster than most. I was always aware that it would happen, but the actual timing which reality hit led to more obstacles than I was prepared to handle.

While rehabilitation was the hardest physical work I had done in my life, it was worth it for the community. Every single day for two months, I was with people who understood the vulnerability of relearning life skills. My therapists validated many awkward pre-teen feelings that come up when my body just didn’t feel like what I knew. For the first time, I had positive interactions and lessons about disability in a truly safe space. It was adjusting to life outside of those walls that I had to swallow several hard realities and it all coincided with starting middle school.

The entire period is socially awkward enough for any kid, but here I was coming in with life experience that only a few of them witnessed and even fewer understood. When you have a medically-complex childhood, there is a sense that you are always behind your peers. There are moments of common ground but when treatments have to come before all else, it can create a social crater in daily life. At 12 years-old, I didn’t care about the newest Twilight movie because I knew about a place where people were rebuilding their lives. For that first year, everything felt misaligned and I spent all my energy trying to adjust to them. I was the one that had been gone all that time, so it must be on me to fix it.

In reality, while it felt like I was falling behind I actually had gained so much life experience so quickly, these kids had to catch up to me. Of course, none of that was going to happen as soon as I wanted. Yet with that weight of reality on my shoulders at such a young age, I disconnected from the kind of art which had given me shelter. Imagination was labeled immature, there was no time for fantasies, I had exercises to do and goals to exceed in my recovery. When average kids are meant to have fun and discover small ways to be independent, I was trying to be a small adult. By attempting to make sense of such a social divide in my life, I had put a wall around anything imaginative and put it away. Sure I still created things, I still wrote but everything through my eyes was overly literal. There wasn’t a lot of curiosity in those words anymore, I didn’t want to push boundaries or explore anything because there was so much I needed to sort out for myself.

A crack did finally form in those walls when I got into high school theater. Not only was it a cathartic release I desperately needed, but it brought out so much I had misunderstood about the power of play. Admittedly, even in my late 20s I still struggle with allowing myself to lean into those playful moments. After decades of hearing I’m mature for my age, it’s a gradual process to embrace where I am and the freedom of my choices.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m in my second year as a freelance copy editor through my business, McDonough Editorial. In other words, I’m a full-time human spell check, but it’s a chance to do really satisfying work.

If you would have told me back in 2019 that this was my path, I probably would have chuckled politely and promptly provided three other options. All of this came together purely because of timing. While the world was frozen in fear, trying to quarantine from COVID-19 in March of 2020, I was graduating from college with a Bachelor’s in Writing. In those few months before everything stopped, my focus was how I was going to launch into the professional world. Each critical detail was aimed at my ambitions with calculated precision. Having worked as a student journalist, I could get in on a writing staff somewhere, secure a steady paycheck and have time to write my own creative projects on the side. By May, I was in my parent’s basement in rural West Michigan trying to reconfigure the start of my career through sticky notes lined up on a wall. Cue the Insomnia. Actually starting a freelance business was something I had shoved in a mental compartment labeled, great in theory but no. Yet, the more running I did from the idea, the more that it became my only option. Businesses were just trying to survive and that meant no one was looking for interns or brand new grad hires. If I wanted any kind of foot in the door, I had to figure out how to build the door first. After countless months of research and studying, McDonough Editorial officially launched in April of 2022.

Now, the things I edit don’t fit neatly into a speciality category. The range covers everything from fiction works to corporate announcements and newsletter articles, with important everyday things inbetween, like resumes and cover letters. It’s easy to assume that some of these documents may not require an editor. However, wherever you are trying to write and represent your best work there should always be an extra set of eyes for quality assurance. We all know the specific shade of embarrassment that can come from recognizing a typo when it’s too late to fix it.

This continuous journey of building McDonough Editorial has plenty of proud moments, but thinking about the range of work, I always have to take a moment and appreciate the growth it represents. Those early days were occasional late nights over Google Docs, editing resumes or trying to give extra kick to friends’ cover letters. Now two years later, I understand the editing needs for multiple different industries and see the impacts of language from numerous different angles. While each person gains a better understanding of their writing, my skills evolve because of working with them.

Plenty of people have wondered how I can sit and comb through sentences for hours at a time. I’ll admit that the work can appear pretty monotonous to most, but it’s easy to miss just how much heart is involved. Writing, no matter the purpose, breathes life into something. Copy editing becomes an effort between the writer and myself to solve small puzzles and unlock the full potential of their words. Sure, there are technical pieces that have to be handled for clarity, but there is such a sense of pride when things start to take shape right in front of you. It takes time to find the magic, but those moments with writers make everything worth it.

Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
All of us found our ways to cope with the constant and overwhelming changes that unfolded in the last four years. My mechanism of choice, aside from stress baking, was to dive back into my craft. Anything I could find that discussed editing along with biographies or writers or journalists, became refresher courses in concepts that initially stick. Just because I am a professional and I have certain levels of experience in no way means that I know the whole field. Even now there are three of my newest book finds stacked up out of the corner of my eye. At a point where everyone is trying to consume everything all at once, it was only when I really slowed down my thought process that what I needed started revealing itself to me. It’s no secret that lifelong learning will get you far, but the key to it is not running at a breakneck pace.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://mcdonougheditorial.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mmcdough/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-mcdonough-20ba151a3/

 

Image Credits
Black and white Headshot Photo credit: Gruner Graphics LLC