Before You Were Everything Book Feature

Title: Before You Were Everything: Reflections on Finding Love, Legacy, and Becoming in a Life Rewritten 

Before You Were Everything by Mya Fort-Marshall

Reflections on Finding Love, Legacy, and Becoming in a Life Rewritten

Not a manual. Not a self-help book. A mirror. A story of becoming… with recipes, playlists, and breadcrumbs for the in between.

Blurb: Before You Were Everything isn’t a manual. It isn’t a memoir. It’s a mirror.

Through raw, hilarious, and soul-stretching stories, Mya Fort–Marshall invites you into the in-between—the messy, sacred, stretch-marked places where real transformation lives.

From childhood nicknames and her grandmother’s butter rolls to breast cancer, motherhood, heartbreak, and rebirth, this book reads like a late-night phone call with the friend who always keeps it real. The one who’ll let you cry, laugh, spiral a little—and then remind you who the hell you are.

Blending personal narrative with recipes, playlists, and breadcrumbs of wisdom, Before You Were Everything is both deeply personal and widely relatable. It is a love letter to resilience, a protest against perfection, and an invitation to come home to yourself.

 

Author Interview

At what point did you decide to be an author, and what was your path to publication?

I’m not sure I ever decided to be an author.

The universe has been whispering to me for years.

Or maybe that’s not quite right.

I’ve wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. Not because it seemed glamorous. Not because I dreamed of seeing my name on the cover of a book.

Because writing has always felt necessary.

It’s how I’ve always made sense of the world. My feelings have always chosen a pen over a voice. And when something feels as natural as breathing, it’s difficult to recognize it as purpose. You assume everyone experiences it that way.

Still, there were moments.

Moments when I recognized myself as a writer.

Moments when I admitted out loud that I wanted to write a book.

Moments when friends and family reflected that identity back to me before I was willing to claim it for myself.

And there were just as many moments when I started writing… only to abandon the work. Imposter syndrome. Self-doubt. Fear of rejection before I’d written a single page worth sharing.

But that voice never stopped.

You know the one.

The thing you can’t quite let go of. The dream that keeps resurfacing no matter how many times you convince yourself it’s impractical, impossible, or too late.

Eventually, I stopped waiting to feel confident.

I restarted the project.

I did it uncomfortable.

I did it scared.

I did it while doubting myself.

I did it while imagining every possible way it could fail.

And somewhere along the way, I realized that courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s choosing the work anyway.

When I finished, I felt proud.

Really proud.

The path to publication wasn’t a straight line. It was years of starting, stopping, learning, doubting, growing, and finally deciding that my fear no longer deserved the final edit.

Now that work exists in the world.

Before You Were Everything is the result of that decision. Not the decision to become an author, but the decision to stop abandoning the writer I’d always been.

 

What do you do when a new idea jumps out at you while you’re still working on a book? Do you chase the squirrel (aka “UP syndrome”) or do you finish your current project first?

I’m an inspiration-based writer.

I write when there’s a story inside me demanding to be set free.

That’s the luxury of writing for the love of it rather than writing to meet a deadline. I don’t create because I have to. I create because something inside me won’t leave me alone until it’s on the page.

Writing is my release.

My therapy.

My way of making sense of the world.

So I write when I’m moved to write. If, in the middle of one project, another idea arrives with enough force to interrupt my thoughts, I don’t see it as a distraction. I see it as an invitation.

I’ll usually stop and capture it while it’s alive. Sometimes that’s a page. Sometimes it’s a chapter. Sometimes it’s just a sentence I know I’ll need later.

I’ve learned not to argue with inspiration.

It has terrible timing… but it’s rarely wrong.

So yes…

I’m absolutely chasing the squirrel.

 

Describe your writing process. Do you outline, plot, and plan, or is your writing more organic?

One of my favorite movies is The Five Heartbeats.

There’s a scene where one of the characters is trying to write a song. He starts, gets frustrated, crumples up the paper, and throws it over his shoulder. He starts again. Same thing. Another balled-up page joins the pile.

His sister, tired of cleaning up after him, begins unfolding each discarded piece of paper. As she smooths them out and lays them side by side, you realize they aren’t failures at all. They’re fragments. Verses. Pieces of a song waiting to find each other.

By the end, she’s stitched together something beautiful.

That’s how I write.

Rarely from beginning to end.

More often in moments.

A sentence on a plane. A paragraph after a difficult conversation. A passage that arrives in the middle of the night. A metaphor scribbled in the notes app while standing in line for coffee.

I don’t force the story into an outline. I collect pieces until they begin talking to one another.

Eventually, what looked like scattered thoughts reveals itself as a complete narrative.

I’ve learned not to judge the crumpled pages.

They’re usually where the best parts are hiding.

 

Describe the book or series in 10 words or less for people just learning about it.

 A journey back to the person you were before becoming everything.

 

Is there anything you would like people to take away from your book?

So many things.

First, I hope people recognize that this book is, at its core, a love letter. It was written for the people I love most in the world, but with the hope that it serves anyone who has ever forgotten themselves while loving someone else.

I hope it becomes a mirror.

An invitation to recognize that we’re far more alike than we are different. That our fears, our grief, our joy, our longing, and our capacity to heal are universal.

I hope it becomes a permission slip.

Permission to feel deeply. To choose yourself without apology. To become curious about who you are beneath the roles you play. To do something simply because your soul asked you to.

Mostly, I hope this book reminds people that the goodness they spend so much time searching for already exists within them.

If a reader closes the final page with a little more compassion for themselves, a little more courage to become who they were always meant to be, and a renewed belief that they are worthy of the same love they so freely give everyone else, then this book has done exactly what I hoped it would.

 

What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

At my core, I believe I’m an artist.

Writing just happens to be one of the ways that creativity finds its way out of me.

When I’m not writing, I’m usually creating in some other form. I love cooking a beautiful meal, sketching an idea, wandering through a bookstore, traveling somewhere that shifts my perspective, or simply daydreaming long enough for a new idea to find me.

I think creativity is less about the medium and more about the practice of noticing beauty and bringing a little more of it into the world.

Whether I’m writing, cooking, drawing, or rearranging flowers on a table, I’m doing the same thing.

I’m making something that didn’t exist before.

That’s what fills me up.

This feels like a perfect opportunity to tie together so many of the themes from Before You Were Everything: self-trust, courage, imperfection, and becoming. I also think the second question naturally answers the first.

 

Share some advice for aspiring authors. What advice would you give to your younger self?

I think I’d give aspiring authors the same advice I’d give my younger self.

Stop waiting to feel ready.

You don’t become a writer when someone publishes your book. You become a writer the moment you decide to keep writing.

The fear doesn’t disappear. The imposter syndrome doesn’t magically evaporate. Even after publishing my first book, there are still days I wonder whether I have anything worth saying.

Write anyway.

Protect your curiosity. Read everything. Notice people. Fall in love with language. Collect stories. Trust that your unique perspective is the one thing no one else can replicate.

And perhaps most importantly, keep the small promises you make to yourself.

Every page you write is a vote for the person you’re becoming.

My younger self spent far too much time believing confidence came before action.

I know now that confidence is what grows after you’ve been brave enough to act.

The world doesn’t need another perfect writer.

It needs your voice.

No one else can tell your story the way you can.

 

 

 

About the Author