Mary Lawless Lee dedicates her life to living creatively. Recognizing her penchant for originality and ingenuity, a career as an ICU nurse eventually gave way to a career as a creator. "I was never in this pursuit of 'I need to change careers' or 'I'm looking for a different path.' My love for writing is what really started my journey and creating my own blog as a creative outlet. Because I only worked three days a week as a nurse, I started writing on my off days. And I paid my friend $50 to create a website. I named it Happily Grey. This was {11 years ago} before blogging was a thing, Instagram and Pinterest had just launched, and it was this new idea. But really that was not where my motivation was at all. It was just my love for writing. And I also loved fashion. So I was writing about fashion as a creative outlet, something that kind of took the edge off of having a job in critical care and the intensity around it."
Lee continues, "What started as an organic creative outlook, evolved into a full-time strategic lifestyle brand. And as my life unfolded new chapters, I entered new genres of content and started writing about those different types of content - travel, interiors, skincare, beauty, and now most recently, mom and baby. And the transition from really finally quitting nursing and doing this full-time was hard and slow for me. My manager at Vanderbilt called me and was basically the one that was like, 'Hey, I think you need to quit and go do what you're doing.'"
It wasn't an easy decision for Lee, but she says, "That was the push that I needed because I always loved patient care and I still have a deep love for it and respect for it. So it was not an overnight process. There was an evolution to it for sure. And the social blogger influencer space was very unknown. My parents were like, 'What are you doing? We paid for a degree.'"
Money well spent. While Lee's career may not be in the degree her parents paid for, there is no doubt that she's thriving. In addition to her success as an influencer and fashion mogul, she launched her own skincare line, Nemah, with her husband, Madison, and released her first book last November, Happily Grey: Stories, Souvenirs, and Everyday Wonders from the Life in Between.
Lee says, "Happily Grey is half memoir, half coffee table book. There are a lot of design aspects in it because I feel like my brand is so rooted in design, but it also is very intimate. Actually, the storyline of it was more intimate than what I even set out to do. It encompasses 12 short stories, and they're all about the lessons that I've learned as a little girl, as a business owner, as a mother, and as a wife. Some are funny, some are really hard to read through, but it's really my heart and soul all in one."
The same can be said of the Lees' skincare line, Nemah. "When I became a mother, the light bulb went off. It was really clear to me, especially coming from a background of nursing and taking care of people, and patient care being such a passion of mine, when I became a mother, I was looking for these high-quality, beautifully-designed integrity products, and I couldn't get my hands on them. And then I started having the same conversation with my online community, asking other mothers, 'What are you using that's clean, that's safe, that's effective?" And I could not believe the disparity in the category. And so that was really where the idea was born because I wanted to be able to apply my science background and my patient care background to this digital world. We set out two years ago, working with a manufacturer in Europe, in Spain, and we started developing the formulas and the products that I knew didn't exist. And that started with the stretch cream." Lee's 16-month-old daughter at the time, Navy, couldn't say 'mama,' so she called Lee 'nemah.' She googled it and learned nemah means God's gift in Arabic. "I was like 'There we go. It was a chills moment for sure."
Which begs the question, where did the Happily Grey name come from? Lee says, "A lot of people think that it means that I love muted colors only, or it's a nod to aging." But Lee explains, "I grew up in a very small town, very conservative, and very appreciative for the morals and values that I grew up with. As a little girl, I felt a lot, I took on a lot, and I kind of created this life for me that was black or white. Life had to be this way or that way. And there wasn't any operating outside these lines or these boxes. But as I got older, I realized that life doesn't always make sense, and things don't always end the way we think they should. I realized during that time that life is actually really gray. And I found relief in that. I found this comfort and safety knowing that it didn't have to always be this or that. And I don't always have to make sense of it, or I don't always have to figure it out. And so this gray area can be a period of learning and a period of creativity. That's where I found my happy space and where I felt the most creative. So that's why I decided to name my blog and my book, Happily Grey."
How does this busy mother of three balance it all? "It's really the women that I work with. I have a team of eight other people, and there's just no way I could do anything of what I do if it wasn't for them. And not just the physical aspect, but the emotional support and the mental support. I'm very lucky, because we have a great group of women that love each other, are motivated and inspired, and we all listen to each other. That's a huge part of it. It sounds simple and easy, but it's not." ShopHappilyGrey.com
"I hope that when people are reading, or when people are in our store physically experiencing the brand, that there is this sense of discovery and creativity that they have not seen elsewhere."