In February, I was asked to write “my story” in article form – and I had no idea where to start.
As someone who works in content marketing, I am all about angles, and so writing a Wikipedia entry about myself isn’t my style. But how do you organise your life into 900 words, even if you are only 32 like me?
That’s when it occurred to me that a heap of my story is bound up in what I write about.
As a writer, I have chosen to orient my blog around three key topics: faith, mental health and creativity. The reasons for those specific topics? That’s all anchored in my story.
So, while sharing an article like this is a departure from my usual work, and it does feel like navel gazing, I’ll share what I came up with. It’s not a biography, but a picture of me and my story, using the lens of three really important areas in my life.
Why I write about faith
I grew up in a home where Christian community was part of my every day. I went to Christian school, had great Christian friends and our family was heavily involved in church activities.
But, as is often the way, I began to question as I grew older. By the time I entered my early adult years, I was primed for finding my own way.
A catalyst for that was the jarring transition from Christian school into the open sea of university life. I studied Arts, which meant that I was steeped in relativistic thought and deconstruction. On top of that, I was meeting people from a wide swathe of backgrounds who had their own ideas about the world.
All this changed me. For one, it crystallised my thinking about my own faith. For another, it gave me an outsider mentality that I’ve never quite lost – feeling at odds with the casual atheism around me, but feeling equally out of place in Christian circles, where I felt “not good enough”.
In hindsight, it’s this outsider mentality that has become the core of how I relate to God and how I write about faith.
Though uni life wasn’t always easy for me (and I did live up to the cliché of wearing black and reading Nietzsche), what I appreciated was the open exchange of ideas that I experienced. I also appreciated the chance to step outside my “tribe” and see from an outsider’s eyes.
So many negative things in the world today are down to a lack of those two factors – inquiry and empathy. It’s a lesson I’ve never lost and informs what I write about to this day.
Why I write about mental health
Like many (most?) people, I have dealt with mental health issues and have been close to others who have, too. Not surprisingly, I was deeply affected by my family’s move from the United States to Australia. While I have no regrets about where I am now, I did struggle in my tender tween years, where it’s never good to be different.
I have also had times where I’ve battled a dark outlook. My late teens and young adulthood are muted in my memory because of an all-pervading eating disorder. And it took me years to realise I am of the temperament where I am prone to depressed thoughts, although I am working and improving.
All of these are areas where I’ve experienced varying levels of understanding. Not everyone gets what each of these is like to experience. There is plenty of misinformation out there (“eating disorders are diets gone wrong”, or “Christians should distrust psychologists”).
That’s lit a fire in me to use my own experience to share with others, and it’s why I have written extensively about my own struggles, particularly with eating disorders and with the public mental health system.
We should move past calling it “brave” when we share this kind of thing. We all experience issues, and talking about them is how we learn and grow empathy.
Why I write about creativity
I write about creativity because I find it very difficult.
As a kid, I had modest ambitions of being a “bestselling author and illustrator” (my exact words). Many’s the day I would lovingly staple together pages of a new, illustrated story to give my dad when he came home from work.
However, as I grew older, my confidence in my creativity waned, and I knew that writers live on peanuts. And so, I pivoted, and decided to study my Masters in editing and publishing.
It wasn’t until much later that I fell back into writing. A job redundancy in 2015 had derailed my editing career, and it was then that I was offered work as the communications coordinator at CMS Victoria, a Christian mission agency.
This was a turning point. I was given a chance to grow valuable skills (such as writing and content marketing) – areas that are now my career. But I also had the chance to dip my toe in the water of writing for faith audiences, and I began to ask myself if that might be my own work. Not exactly evangelising, but to question, really.
People often say things like, “I find creativity difficult.” To me, that’s like saying water is wet. While I may be what’s classified a “creative person”, it’s not without practice or pain. In fact, writing is a love-hate hobby for me – something I both enjoy and find exhausting.
So, partly, I seek out philosophies behind creativity to keep myself motivated and to understand what I am doing. Why is it so hard, and how do I get better at it?
Along with that, I am convicted that everyone has something they can create and derive value from. This is my “something”, and even if it’s only for me, I see it as a way of expressing a gift I’ve been given.
My story is far from over. But I already have lots to be grateful for.
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This article was originally published as The Cheryl McGrath Story in Christian Today.
