Faye McCray's Blog

My Upcoming Book

Happy, Happy New Year! Welcome, 2025!

Can we just take a moment to process how that’s even possible? Five years since the pandemic. Five. Years. I mean—what the what?

Well, as we step into this new year, I’ve got some fun news to share! It might be brand new to some of you, and for others, not a surprise at all: I’m writing another book!

Yes, surprise, surprise, friends! This time, my book is about something close to my heart: developing a healthier relationship with ambition.

Let’s rewind to 2024 for a second because, wow, it was a year. I quit my job. I started my own business. I traveled to Greece. I spent so much more time with my family. And, in the midst of all of that, I started writing this book.

My book explores how so many of us lose the most beautiful parts of ourselves while chasing big, shiny goals we’ve been conditioned to place at the center of our lives. It delves into why we do this—and, more importantly, how we can begin to break free.

I shared my own big uh-oh moment in a Newsweek article (special thanks to Newsweek for giving me that platform!), and I’ve been chatting up the themes of this book on podcasts and other spaces.

In addition to my work with Culture and Quill around strategic storytelling, this book feels like my life’s work. Turning my hard-earned lessons into hope for those at the beginning, middle, or even the grand finale of their careers is something I can’t wait to bring to life.

Here’s to a year of hope, growth, and breaking free in 2025. Cheers, friends!

Exciting News: Faye McCray Consulting is Now Culture and Quill!

I’m thrilled to announce that Faye McCray Consulting has rebranded as Culture and Quill! This new agency is dedicated to nurturing and building impactful stories that resonate, connect, and inspire. With this launch, I’m expanding my mission to support individuals, brands, and organizations in telling stories that matter. Our focus is on crafting powerful narratives and developing story-driven strategies that are both authentic and engaging.

At Culture and Quill, we’re not only helping clients shape their brand stories but also hosting workshops and events designed to foster genuine human connection. Our goal is to create spaces where people can share, learn, and connect through the power of storytelling.

Visit our website to learn more, and don’t forget to follow us on LinkedIn for updates on upcoming projects, workshops, and insights on how storytelling can drive impact and change. I am so excited about this new chapter and the stories we’ll create together!

Fall 2024 workshops are live!

I am thrilled to announce that my fall workshop offerings are now live! As many of you know, I regularly offer intimate workshops for both teens and adults who are passionate about honing their writing skills. This fall, I’m excited to present two distinct six-week workshops designed to cater to different interests and age groups.

Crafting Worlds: A Six Week Fiction Writing Workshop
For our young writers aged 12-17, I’m offering an immersive six-week fiction writing workshop. This workshop is perfect for teens who are eager to explore the world of storytelling. Each week, we’ll dive into different aspects of fiction writing, from crafting compelling plots and developing rich characters to mastering dialogue and refining their unique voice. The workshop will include engaging lessons, lively discussions, and plenty of personalized feedback to help young writers transform their ideas into engaging, unforgettable narratives.

Own Your Story: A Six Week Nonfiction Workshop
For adults, I’m offering a six-week workshop focused on non-fiction writing and the intricacies of publishing. This workshop is ideal for those who are working on memoirs, essays, or articles and want to learn more about the publishing process. Each week, we’ll delve into aspects of non-fiction writing such as crafting compelling narratives, mastering the art of description, and refining your unique style. Additionally, we will cover important topics like publishing strategies, crafting effective book proposals, and building your author platform. The workshop will feature interactive sessions, insightful discussions, and comprehensive feedback to enhance your writing skills and prepare you for the publishing world.

Visit the links below to learn more about each workshop and to sign up. I can’t wait to embark on this creative journey with you this fall!

Crafting Worlds: A Six Week Fiction Writing Workshop

Own Your Story: A 6-Week Nonfiction Workshop

Happy writing!

What if it all works out?

A month into landing my first senior leadership role, I found myself at the end of a leadership retreat, sitting at a table surrounded by new colleagues I deeply admired. We were celebrating putting a big dent in strategic planning, and somehow, over perfect old fashioneds, we began discussing childhood summer vacations.

As they shared stories of trips overseas and skiing in Aspen, I could feel my discomfort rise. As a proud daughter of civil service employees in NYC, our vacations were far more humble. They included Rye Playland, Mystic, CT, and Wildwood, NJ. Those places were magic as a kid, but suddenly, my precious memories felt like a whole other universe.

When all heads turned to me, I smiled and shared. I spoke fondly of the long car rides and packed food from home. Not only was I aware of the vast distance between us, I was also aware of how improbable it was that my journey took me to that table. I had navigated so many firsts in my family: the first of my siblings to graduate college, the first in my family to practice law, and the first to navigate corporate America. By the time I reached that table, I was sure of who I was and what I offered, but on my journey there, I spent far too much time feeling alone and anxious.

I hadn’t realized what I now know to be fact: Being a first transforms you into a visionary… and visionaries have no place playing small.

Over the past few months, I’ve celebrated women I have known, admired, and worked with—purpose-driven leaders—through my LinkedIn series, “Speaking Her Name.” Showcasing these incredible women has been a career highlight.

I have learned how empowering it is to build community and how profoundly seeing something makes becoming it so much more possible.

So, I’ve decided to build an even bigger community.

Beginning June 17, I am launching a newsletter, “What if it all works out?” It will feature exclusive content for firsts and aspiring firsts—combining inspiration and practical tips to ensure you never forget the visionary you are.

My inaugural newsletter will feature an interview with a trailblazer I admire tremendously. I will announce who she is in the coming weeks! In the meantime – subscribe here: https://lnkd.in/euUWcFHw

Listen to Your Mother HoCo

This Mother’s Day weekend, I had the honor of co-hosting Listen to Your Mother, an event showcasing 10 incredible women storytellers as they shared honest, heartfelt, and powerful stories of motherhood. Topics ranges from infertility, to getting dating advice from your college aged kid, to parenting with mental illness, to generational sweet potato pie mishaps.

It was a sold out event!

Proceeds from our event benefitted JustLiving Advocacy Inc. an organization supporting women who lead single parent households.

Here is a link to view the full show. You can watch my story below.

Listen to Your Mother HoCo: Unfinished

This Mother’s Day weekend, I had the honor of co-hosting Listen to Your Mother, an event showcasing 10 incredible women storytellers as they shared honest, heartfelt, and powerful stories of motherhood. Topics ranges from infertility, to getting dating advice from your college aged kid, to parenting with mental illness, to generational sweet potato pie mishaps.

It was a sold out event!

Proceeds from our event benefitted JustLiving Advocacy Inc. an organization supporting women who lead single parent households.

Below is the piece I read for the event.

Unfinished

Last year, for Thanksgiving, we all got sick. 

It started with my middle son, made its way to my youngest, launched a sneak attack on my husband and oldest, and then finally – it got me. 

Not one to be defeated, I still committed to cooking a big dinner. A little secret about me: I am prone to mom-guilt so the thought of my sick family sitting around a pizza box made me feel all kinds of bad.

Our family menu is a combination of tricks I learned, adapted, and made up: 

Mac and cheese from Patti Labelle’s cookbook with a dash of Grey Poupon courtesy of my fancy Aunt Irene, A couscous and raisin salad recipe I created based on a tasty dish I had when traveling to Senegal in college; The most tender Butterball Turkey ever, made slathered in Country Crock and stuffed with cornbread stuffing with hearty bits of green peppers and onions that make my mouth water just thinking about it. 

And then the pies. 

Store-bought apple pie, always with homemade whipped cream, and my grandmother’s famous sweet potato pies, which conjure up as much flavor as they do emotions. 

You see, my grandmother died when my mother was 19 years old (and her sisters were only 16 and 21), over a decade before my mother she had me. The recipe started with my grandmother, but it’s held together in the unreliable memory of the teenage girls she left behind. It’s always a variation of very right, but also very wrong. 

Here is what was handed to me: 

Boil three sweet potatoes until they are tender, about two hours (very wrong)Beat the potatoes smooth with one stick of butter and two eggs until you get all the strings out, usually 30 minutes (sort of wrong)Season with 1 cup of sugar and ½ teaspoon of vanilla, and add cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg to taste (soooo right)Enlist one lucky child to lick the spoon for a final taste (questionable, but will not dispute)And then pour the pies into two defrosted deep dish shells and bake until the ancestors whisper “It’s time” (right-ish with a ton of room for error). 

Inevitably, the process would be long, no blood, but definitely sweat – and one year… tears. 

When the pies were cooled, usually under a paper towel on the kitchen table (probably wrong), we’d dig in. A fresh-cut piece would inevitably spill out of the crust onto the plate – not undercooked, just… soft. The aunts would frown, but us kids never cared. The taste reigned supreme.

Years ago, I came across a New York Times sweet potato pie recipe that blew away what I knew. 

Turns out, sweet potatoes didn’t need nearly as long to get tender, and if you remove the parts of the potato near the skin, no strings! 

This seemingly benign knowledge hit me deep. It wasn’t that I doubted my grandmother’s cooking legend, I just suddenly realized how unfinished her mothering had been in the three young girls she left behind. 

That realization was a slow burn at first. The victory of taking that first perfectly firm and sweet pie out of the oven should be bottled up and sold. And if there’s a heaven, I’d like to think my grandmother yelled out: FINALLY!

Because it was funny too, right? The years of sweet potato pie mishaps, the misshapen pies, and the self-imposed arduous pie-making labor. 

But it was also frustrating. 

If only someone had written it down. If only they had asked more questions. If only someone had looked it up sooner. We would have saved all the wasted time. We could have made more pies. We could have done her proud.

Now, nearing 43, the same age my grandmother was when she died, and with three children of my own – two of whom are nearing adulthood –  it fills me with profound sadness. If I died tomorrow, how much would I leave unfinished? What would be the fragments of me they’d struggle to remember? What parts would they hold? What parts would they forget?

I see in the faces of my boys, her girls and I know she must have gone kicking and screaming. 

Sometimes the unfairness of this loss hits me like a jab to the jaw.

 Is this deferred grief? 

Mourning the “it” that remains unfinished? Unfinished pie recipes? Unfinished mothering? Unfinished love? Unfinished me.

Not too long ago, I saw and shared a photo on social media. 

It was a nested image that depicted a fetus inside a womb, and in that fetus, you could see another fetus, and in that fetus, another. The caption read that as women, we’ve been carried by generations before us. So, because my grandmother carried my mother, and at some point in the womb, my mother developed all the eggs she’d ever produce, my grandmother had once carried a part of me.

Wild.

I found so much comfort at the thought of being part of her  – that our connection went beyond what remains unfinished. 

We are in and of one another in a way that goes beyond explanation. Beyond what is complete.

My mother says I have my grandmother’s long, smooth legs. My cousin, Shavonne has her whole face. We all carry her pride, moxie, and strength.

It’s hard to say all we missed from losing her. Nothing will ever make that okay. 

However, to honor her, we embrace the bitter and the incredibly sweet. We find grace in imperfection. And where we can, as with a well-made pie, we finish the unfinished.

Fight or Fly

When my brother Tommy became a police officer, he was only nineteen.

My father, born in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, is an Air Force veteran who rose through the ranks in the NYPD. He is a tough dude.

With a strong family history of military and law enforcement, the decision for my brother to join the NYPD was almost made for him.

Tommy was still living at home when he graduated from the police academy, and it took me a while to understand just how much had changed.

He was ten years older than me, but even in his uniform, he always looked like my awkward big brother—the one who practiced MJ moves in front of the mirror and drowned his french fries in ketchup.

One day, after a long shift, I remember him coming home and telling my family and me about his day. He had been working a parade, and just a few moments in, gunshots rang out in the crowd. Everyone began to run in the opposite direction of the sound.

Including him.

Just a few moments into running away, he realized that even in their panic, everyone in the crowd had their eyes on him. For a split second, he had forgotten that, in full uniform, he was no longer a civilian. His job was to act entirely against his instinct and run toward the danger.

To this day, I remember how my mom sat utterly still, worry all over her face. My other brother and I never laughed so hard.

As I’ve gotten older and reflected on that story, I still find the humor, but I am also in awe of my big brother. And while I never quite got the law enforcement gene, I lived vicariously through a heart-stopping example of acting despite your fear—doing it afraid… and surviving.

Here’s the thing. Most careers don’t involve running toward that level of danger, but for those contemplating something new and fighting with (a probably completely) rational fear-based instinct to run, what if you don’t? What if you run toward that thing instead? What if you survive?

Just thoughts. I used to tell him that would have been the day I quit. He always looked at me like he knew otherwise.

What if it all works out?

When my brother Tommy became a police officer, he was only nineteen.

My father, born in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, is an Air Force veteran who rose through the ranks in the NYPD. He is a tough dude.

With a strong family history of military and law enforcement, the decision for my brother to join the NYPD was almost made for him.

Tommy was still living at home when he graduated from the police academy, and it took me a while to understand just how much had changed.

He was ten years older than me, but even in his uniform, he always looked like my awkward big brother—the one who practiced MJ moves in front of the mirror and drowned his french fries in ketchup.

One day, after a long shift, I remember him coming home and telling my family and me about his day. He had been working a parade, and just a few moments in, gunshots rang out in the crowd. Everyone began to run in the opposite direction of the sound.

Including him.

Just a few moments into running away, he realized that even in their panic, everyone in the crowd had their eyes on him. For a split second, he had forgotten that, in full uniform, he was no longer a civilian. His job was to act entirely against his instinct and run toward the danger.

To this day, I remember how my mom sat utterly still, worry all over her face. My other brother and I never laughed so hard.

As I’ve gotten older and reflected on that story, I still find the humor, but I am also in awe of my big brother. And while I never quite got the law enforcement gene, I lived vicariously through a heart-stopping example of acting despite your fear—doing it afraid… and surviving.

Here’s the thing. Most careers don’t involve running toward that level of danger, but for those contemplating something new and fighting with (a probably completely) rational fear-based instinct to run, what if you don’t? What if you run toward that thing instead? What if you survive?

Just thoughts. I used to tell him that would have been the day I quit. He always looked at me like he knew otherwise.

Rest & Reclaim

A few months ago, a friend and I decided to plan a retreat – specially designed for busy women of color as a reminder to rest and reclaim themselves from the relentlessness of the daily grind. We named it Rest & Reclaim and opened it up to 15 women. It sold out within 2 days of going live.

Friday October 6 was our day and it was more beautiful and fulfilling than I could have imagined. I am so proud of these beautiful women for receiving what we humbly extended to the universe and giving back even more than I could imagine. We meditated, laughed, cried, did yoga, got in the water, hydrated, and ate really, really well! Special thanks to The Pearl Spa for being so welcoming to our crew! Big gratitude to our instructors Rashida George and Corinne Heiliger and huge thanks to my partner in crime, Amy Brooks and whose fierce energy is just the right compliment for my quiet.

We are SO doing it again. If you’re interested, feel free to send me a note, and I will add you to our growing waitlist! Visit restandreclaim.com and stay tuned for the winter retreat date.

Legacy

Last week, my family and I said goodbye to my grandfather just a week shy of his 100th birthday. I didn’t know him well – he lived hundreds of miles away when I was growing up, and my dad is one of ten so I am one of many, many (many) grandkids. But every action he took had a ripple effect on my family – from his move to NY when he was just 12 years old to joining the Navy at 20 to marrying my grandmother the same year to his unshakeable work ethic. He was my last living grandparent and with no remaining siblings, his death marks then end of a whole generation of my family.

Which is wild.

At his funeral, I learned his favorite place to spend a day after retirement was Barnes and Noble. At home, he would settle into his favorite chair by the window and read – often slamming his book down in disbelief when he was challenged or learned something new. My family and I ate up this new information finding glimmers of ourselves in how he lived. Even in his passing and with time and distance between us who he was somehow breathed within us.

There is no way to mark when generations turn to ancestors. But this week we held space for the impact of his life and the fact that we exist by a collection of chances and circumstances that necessarily included his life.