Last Friday afternoon, I made the unstable trek up the ladder to my attic (aka my pretend-treehouse-library) and hosted the most energizing conversation with friend, icon, and epically funny storyteller Mary McGreevy, creator behind the viral obituary readings account Tips from Dead People. Mary and I first met at the 2025 Altitude Summit, an annual gathering for creative entrepreneurs and women creators, where she delivered a moving keynote that left me and many others in awe. Since then, we have been in each other’s worlds, face-timing every month, and currently planning an in-person obituary slam event (which will be hosted at the Local Economy in Oakland, CA come late-August).
In this conversation, Mary shares stories from her youth and young adulthood, moments of finding creative expression in unexpected places, how she pivoted between many careers including social work and film production (all of which involved being close to the stories of ordinary people), the journey to reversing traditional metrics of success, the serendipitous gift of curating a community that celebrates the multitudes of grief (often in a humorous way), and exciting new projects (spoiler alert: Mary’s writing a book!).
In fact, the second I logged off the event, messages immediately poured in about how inspiring it was to hear Mary’s life story and the beginnings of Tips from Dead People.
Quick reminder to join us for…
Substackers Meetup on Saturday 6/20 from 2-4pm PST at Local Economy in Oakland, CA (Open to all - RSVP here)
June Possibilities Club on Wednesday 6/24 from 5:30-6:30pm PST on Zoom (Open to paid subscribers - Register here)!
5 Takeaways from Our Conversation
If you’re a paid subscriber, feel free to go straight to our full conversation by clicking the video above. Or, you can browse below for the topics that stayed with me the most.
1. Ordinary lives are worth documenting.
Many of us fall into the trap of thinking that someone’s life (or our own) needs to be impressive, visibly eventful, grand, or otherwise traditionally accomplished to matter (or to be recognized).
