Meet Mary Uncustomary England

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Mary Uncustomary England. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Mary Uncustomary, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

I remember when I first decided that I wasn’t going to let the trio of my mental illnesses currently calling all the shots in my life on the field (out of the other dozen in the dugout) rule my life anymore.

It was an overwhelming and humbling decision that took even more courage, commitment to uphold as I continued to go to school and work full-time in my early twenties while commuting sixty miles a day.

I started cognitive behavioral therapy that exposed me to my deepest fears and gave me the silliest homework every night that caused intentional panic attacks. Sitting with a drawer open or walking around a table without “unwinding” myself made me sweat, cry, and scream.

Over time, what happened was what was supposed to happen: I became less scared. I didn’t just stare at the drawer, waiting for the timer to go off so I could close it. I could work while it was open, and sometimes I even forgot it was open.

I remember my doctor, who hasn’t been the only one since, telling me he had never seen someone who WANTED to get better so much.

After that period, I felt what I can only describe as space opening up in my brain and body. Instead of my symptoms controlling every waking aspect of my day, it was like someone who had just retired and suddenly had all this free time on their hands; but instead of time, it was mental energy.

As a result, I started doing things I liked to do as a child – things I’d stopped doing because my symptoms had started so young (around seven or eight years old) that I hadn’t really gotten to be a kid as much as I’d wanted to.

I began chronicling my creative endeavors on a basic blog, and along with them, my feelings about what I was calling self-love and embracing your weirdness.

This was before there was a self-love section in the book store. Looking back, there was personal development, sure, but the only people I even knew who talked about this were SARK and Louise Hay. It certainly wasn’t pop psychology or cluttering social-media feeds with hashtags; it was a relatively novel concept.

I have definitely always been a little ahead of my time. But I’m not just saying this to claim I was somehow a hipster of self-love. I bring it up because of what I’m noticing in our world today.

Self-love AND improvement started as something we could embrace with excitement. started as something we could embrace with excitement. People loved it because it felt incredulous – rebellious, even – to look at the systems in our society shoving hustle, productivity, and beauty standards down our throats, and to push back against those norms to challenge the status quo.

But after over a decade of saturation, we’ve grown tired of the regurgitated advice, even if we don’t realize it. I believe this is because the standard messaging has shifted toward self-care instead of improvement. Coddling instead of challenging. And validation over resilience.

In my life, I’ve experienced so many consistent moments of adversity that when I share them, people are genuinely shocked. Not just at the intensity or the number, but at how I’m still here with my generally optimistic attitude and desire to keep going. Not just for myself, but to help others, too.

And yet I know my experiences are still minuscule compared to what others have faced. When I read biographies and memoirs of people who have endured immense suffering yet developed a mindset to not just declare but demand their own freedom in spite of it, I’m reminded that this is available to all of us.

Something that has always been helpful for me is holding a vast perspective: knowing that things can always be worse… and they don’t have to be. Remembering that I don’t need to wait for a crisis to take action. Holding two truths at once. Learning from others’ stories instead of waiting for myself to hit bottom. Staying aware of my mortality and not taking tomorrow for granted. Remembering that what has happened has already happened and can’t be changed. That I don’t necessarily have to be grateful for my pain, but I can be grateful for who I became because of it. That I’ve already experienced the pain—so now I get to ask, do I also want the growth?

Looking back at self-love and improvement, I think it’s important to remember that they’re two different camps, both essential. Self-love is a space of comfort; self-improvement is a space of challenge. Accepting ourselves can land in either (or both). But what seems to be happening now is that we’re focusing far more on self-love (comfort) than on self-improvement (challenge).

That doesn’t mean we always need to be in discomfort. In fact, as a Professional Merriment Maker, I believe we can (and should!) make this fun. But what’s important is that we stop living in theory and start getting tangible.

The way I work, teach, and practice is by making sure there are always “challenges” — ideas, activities, things to do. Out in the world. By yourself. With others.

So much of life has become a passive experience. We have more options and opportunities than ever before, and also more overwhelm. But ultimately, we’re making a decision not to participate in our own existence.

The only way to build resilience is to build confidence. The only way to build confidence is through experience. And the only way to gain experience is to try.

We can try messily. We can win ugly. We can make mundane tasks silly and weird. There is no wrong way to live life. You can sit in a room and eat saltines until you die, but if you want something more from your life, it won’t come from a dream, wish, or desire alone. We need reps. Reps create resilience.

Mindset is a huge part of anything, but alone, it won’t get you anywhere.

Having fun in the wild, despite my pain, is what has given me resilience. I allow pain to be felt, but I will not let it be the title of my story. It will not win overall. I will dance on its grave.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I’m a professional Merriment Maker.

This basically means I’m a joy trickster with a business card.

I turn color, kindness, and creativity into tools for nervous-system care and community connection. I treat feeling good as serious work, because it is. I design experiences, rituals, and experiments that remind people they’re still alive, still connected, and still capable of delight, even when life is messy. I don’t make problems disappear, I make happiness possible alongside them.

My philosophy is we have to feel good to do good. Most ethos in the personal development space have plenty of resources around how to feel good, however it seems to kind of stop there. I believe that ONCE we feel good, it’s our ethical obligation to go back out and contribute to the community through whatever lens lights us up. Otherwise it’s kind of a waste of our potential.

We need Merriment Makers in all walks of life. Healthcare workers, athletes, politicians, scientists. Imagine if this was everyone’s philosophy? Prioritizing their own happiness first and foremost with the end goal to then give back to the community through acts of kindness, art, silliness, and fun?

In a practical sense, I’m a published author. I have a podcast. Host events every month. Create guerrilla art installations on the street. Teach classes online and in person. Create physical products like stickers, workbooks, and decks of cards. Coach. And provide hundreds of free resources to hundreds of people all while dressing like a 6 year old crashed into a rainbow.

Right now, I’m working on a I’m running a global joy experiment called 11K Acts of Merriment where I’m doing 11 thousand acts of kindness, merriment, and good news in less than a year.

We’ve been conditioned to pull out our phones for fights, disasters, and negativity. What if we reconditioned ourselves to document and share joy instead? This project proves that little, weird, delightful acts ARE worth noticing, worth recording, and worth spreading, with an ongoing spreadsheet of 11,000 data points done in less than 1 year to back it up.

Every time someone follows, shares, or submits a story, it sparks a real-world act of good news. Not just kindness, but art, silliness, happiness, absurdity, and fun. Like bubble parades, bathroom-stall compliments, guerrilla glitter installations, and postcards to strangers.

Learn more about it, see the ongoing spreadsheet, get weekly mission ideas, and submit YOUR act at Uncustomary.org/11K

You can also get 250 resources on feeling good, happiness habits, and mental health for just 89 cents at Uncustomary.org/PP

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Something I’m naturally good at that doesn’t come easy to others, but I find joy in teaching, is how to not care what other people think about you.

This funnels down to a fear of rejection and lack of self-worth. I have personally struggled with my own self-worth issues and feeling misunderstood from a very young age, but I was able to flip it around internally pretty quickly and turn it into a super power.

I’ve realized that ultimately, everyone is not going to understand everyone. Everyone is always going to be misunderstood, misquoted, misinterpreted. And for someone like me, who is apparently objectively odd by comparison to the masses, it’s going to happen a lot more.

So with anything, you have three options. You can hide and live in fear, come out of hiding and stand where people can see you to stand your ground, or you can stand in the center of the room, jump up and down, and amplify the thing that you were scared of.

My whole life boils down to exposure. So if the first quality that has been impactful in my life so far has been not caring what other people think, the next is exposure. And the next is amplification.

Acknowledge your fears. Expose yourself to them. And then shine a light on what makes you weird. Because that’s what makes you special.

Fair warning: when you jump up and down in the middle of the room, most of the people are going to leave. But the couple (or even the one) who stays? That’s real. That’s just as special. And it’s worth it.

Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?

I want more Merriment Makers in my life!

I want people to make their own good news and contribute their acts to the 11K Acts Of Merriment project.

I want you to tell me about the Merriment Makers you know about in your town! I want you to tell me about the good news that’s going on! Tell me all about it here – Uncustomary.org/11K

I want to make art and abandon it on the streets in random acts of kindness with you in the Baltimore area. If you want to do that with me, come to Operation Merriment at Uncustomary.org/OPM

I want to have interesting conversations with you! I want to be on your podcast!

I want to be your good news correspondent!

I want to do a segment on your show where it’s nothing but absurdity.

I want to do a strange photoshoot with you!

I want to be in your magazine!

I want to give your audience tips for how to practice self-help with REAL practical ways in the WORLD that are FUN.

I want to do a morale boost training at your work site!

If you’re doing good news, I want to interview you on MY podcast!

I want to meet Richard Kind! Are you Richard Kind? Do you know Richard Kind?

I want to blow bubbles with you!

E-mail me! [email protected]

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Uncustomary.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/merrimentmaker/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/merrimentmaker
• Youtube: http://youtube.com/maryengland

Image Credits

Main image – Laura Ferrara

Bubble Parade (with brass band) – Ben Claassen

“Take a photo with me” – Desmond Johnson