Excerpt from Underestimated by Mary Marantz

We are honored to feature an excerpt from Underestimated: The Surprisingly Simple Shift to Quit Playing Small, Name the Fear, and Move Forward Anyway by Mary Marantz (published April 29, 2025). “Having grown up in a single-wide trailer in West Virginia and being the first in her family to graduate college before attending Yale Law School, Mary Marantz knows what it’s like to be underestimated. She understands the drive to prove others wrong and show everyone just how far you’ve come, while also doubting yourself at every turn.” (Booked PR Press Release).

This special book was of specific interest to me as a fellow attorney, and also, as someone who has been underestimated by many before. This one goes out to all of you who are ready to defy fear and go after your dreams. Make sure to pick up a copy! A special ‘thank you’ to Booked PR for making this feature possible.

Underestimated

By: Mary Marantz

I suppose now is as good a time as any for us to talk about that word underestimated, fraught though it is.

I say “fraught” because for a word that is supposed to describe something or someone as being deemed less important than they actually are . . . ironically, for some of us this word has become the single most important thing about us.

I grew up in a single- wide trailer in rural West Virginia before eventually going on to Yale for law school.

So, it would be safe to say . . . I speak fluent Underdog Story.

Give me your Rudys, your Goonies, your Molly Ringwalds in a homemade pink polka- dot prom dress still not good enough for the “snooties.” While we’re at it, I’ll take a ring full of Rockys, every Daniel LaRusso and Mr. Miyagi, and the entire roster of a 1980s miracle team that loved to play hockey. These are my people.

I know what it is to be both simultaneously driven by this unshakable sense you’re being called up to something greater, to know in your bones you were somehow meant for more . . . and, at the very same time, still doubt that a person like you will ever get there.

And then, as if we don’t spend enough time counting ourselves out, there is a whole world out there always more than willing to underestimate us on our behalf.

For most of our lives, we have been the ones left out on purpose when the invitations were made. We don’t seem, at first glance, to be one of the shiny, shiny perfect people, so we get passed over again and again. There has always been someone louder, someone more outgoing, someone more popular with the crowds. We are the last ones anyone would ever think would go on and do big things.

We are the kind ones, the quiet ones, the ones so often overlooked.

We are the tender hearts, the gentle spirits, the old souls so often missed despite all these see- through layers of thin skin. The ones who never take up too much oxygen in the room.

They mistake our kindness for weakness. They mistake our humility for not really mattering. They mistake our silence as us not having anything particularly interesting or important to say.

It’s so easy for other people to look right through us and miss the pure magic we hold inside.

And years of accumulation of other people’s doubts have now blurred and bled into one another, at once auto- tuned and amplified, until they’ve become the singular voice of reason in our own heads.

Every day it tells us, It would be safer not to show up.

For some of us, the weight of those doubts crushes us right where we are. Keeps us standing in one place. We are forever ready to give up before we even begin. Day by day, faced with the choice between creating nothing and creating failure . . . we choose nothing. We hide in plain sight. We wait on perfect. We contort because it is easier than to be criticized. And yet another year goes by. The clock goes on ticking. And the world is worse for our absence.

For others of us though, in a true Jeff Goldblum–worthy “Life, uh . . . finds a way” adaptor- find- yourself- extinct moment of clarity, we take those petrified doubts, inject them with every ounce of survival wired right into our DNA, and hatch an entirely new species of success altogether.

We take their underestimation, and we wear it like an eternal badge of honor.

Or, as the sweatshirt I once found on Etsy so succinctly put it, “Underestimate me, that’ll be fun.”

And at first glance it is fun, isn’t it?

This dedicating our entire lives to proving other people wrong.

Spoiler alert: The hero gets everything they ever wanted. Oh, you thought you should bet against me? You thought I couldn’t do it?

Big mistake. Huge. Cue the Rodeo Drive shopping- spree montage.

So why then does it feel like we are the ones always left holding the boulder when it all comes crashing down?

That’s because in our most honest moments, when it’s just us and the darkness settled in, we know we have made an external enemy of anyone who would ever doubt us because it’s easier than having to deal with what’s on the inside. If you think we’re mad at other people for underestimating us . . . you should see how much we hate ourselves.

Anyone who has spent a lifetime playing small knows what it’s like to be suspended in a perpetual state of longing. We know what it’s like to act as if it’s all on us. We know the curse we walk around with— carrying both the heavy weight of our wildest expectations and the even heavier regret of all our many deep disappointments— knowing full well that we only wound up back here, back down at the bottom, because we are the ones who once again dropped the ball.

For a lifetime, being underestimated and trying to prove other people wrong has been one of the most important things about you.

But now, the blast of a new refrain fills the air.

The sharp, brass notes flood your veins like a fight song and tell you it’s time to RISE, this time not to prove something but because you have something to say.

It is a reveille of a wake- up call that will no longer be silenced. A screaming alarm going off in every waking cell of your body. It repeats over and over until you finally refuse to ignore it. With an ever- rising, urgent crescendo, it at last opens your eyes. The person underestimating you the most . . . just might be YOU.

[Taken from Underestimated: The Surprisingly Simple Shift to Quit Playing Small, Name the Fear, and Move Forward Anyway by Mary Marantz. Copyright Mary Marantz© (April 2025) by Revell. Used by permission of Revell.]

Buy your copy of Underestimated: The Surprisingly Simple Shift to Quit Playing Small, Name the Fear, and Move Forward Anyway.

Mary Marantz is the bestselling author of Dirt and Underestimated, as well as the host of the popular podcast The Mary Marantz Show. She grew up in a trailer in rural West Virginia and was the first in her family to go to college before going on to Yale for law school. Her work has been featured on CNN, MSN, Business Insider, Bustle, Thrive Global, Southern Living, Hallmark Home & Family and more. She and her husband Justin live in an 1880s fixer-upper by the sea in New Haven, Connecticut, with their two very fluffy golden retrievers, Goodspeed and Atticus. Learn more at MaryMarantz.com.

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