Three Faces of the Devil: A Conversation with Marley Bergerud

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Hey, it's Benji Cole, son of Al Cole from CBS Radio and host of the syndicated talk show People of Distinction.

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Now, sit back and strap in, because on the line with us today, we have the impressive Marley Bergerrude.

And we're going to be discussing her amazing book, Three Faces of the Devil, a memoir of courage and purpose.

It's Amazon, it's Barnes and Noble, it's a lot of other places.

Sit back, type it into a search bar, and you're going to be greeted with all of them.

And listen, it is an absolute pleasure to have Marley here on the line.

People, listen, everyone carries a story, but very few have the courage to rewrite theirs.

Now, I think that's a strong opening, and I love that statement because it's so true.

It's raw, and it really is transparent, and it coincides perfectly with this memoir.

Because our guest today, Marley Bergerrude, she has transformed a childhood of profound loneliness and fear

into a life of incredible leadership, success, and service.

And in her book, she maps that path from darkness to soaring resilience, and she's here today

with not just the story of survival, but truly a masterclass in how to truly flourish.

Sit back, strap in, have your notebooks ready, and trust and believe

by the time we've concluded our discussion, you're going to run and purchase your copies

because you're going to understand, yeah, this is a book that I need to add to my shelf.

Here we go. Marley first and foremost, welcome to the network,

and thank you very much for being a guest. How are you doing today?

Hi, Benji. I'm good. I'm good. I'm excited about the interview.

Likewise, listen, Marley, you know, we're excited to have you,

and I want to take an opportunity, I know you're not looking for praise,

but I'm going to make sure that I point this out right off the bat.

Thank you for having the bravery and the courage to be so transparent with your story.

I believe, and this is an assumption, and you know what happens when you assume,

but I think it's safe to assume you must have known how beneficial this book could be

at the precipice of this all, right? Like when you were writing it down,

maybe it was a therapeutic or even a cathartic process for yourself,

but at some point, I'm sure there was a switch in a recognition

to how beneficial it can be for your future readers.

So listen, we're going to jump right in, and I have a lot of questions to ask,

but again, thank you for being a guest with us, and let's start off with that title,

because my goodness is it provocative, right?

Three faces of the devil. Okay, well, I'm here with you.

I'll follow in you. Tell us, Matt, like, what were those three faces in your life?

Okay. Well, that's a great question, because they definitely were there.

And the first was when I heard the story about my father, when I was a child,

that when he was age 12, he had been badly burned in a ground fire that he was caught in,

which I refer to that as an initial face of the devil,

because that created tremendous issues for him and the rest of the family for my entire life.

And so growing up, I learned, in addition to that horrific problem he had as a child,

that he had to grow up with, I also learned that my parents,

after they had been out a night on the town drinking,

that there was an internal rage that would surface when they would return from home.

And that was from my father, I believe, from that embedded rage of his being burned.

And that rage would come out and act out on my mother and me by his screaming and hitting us until he was exhausted.

Wow.

So the devil was the fire and the devil became my father.

And then in 2014, I had developed breast cancer,

which my mother and her mother had previously had.

And immediately I had a double mastectomy to ensure that I had taken care of that problem.

But in 2024, what seemed to me was just a lower back strain was diagnosed as bone cancer.

And it had originated, which you believe, from my breast cancer of 10 years earlier.

Wow.

So those devils just hung around.

Okay. Marley, oh my good girl.

Here we go.

Okay, the absolute embodiment of a person of distinction people.

I'm telling you.

Oh, okay.

So I think I'm jumping ahead here, but I can't, I can't fathom going anywhere else.

Like, let's dive right into utilizing your experience and also as a way of paying it forward as advice for others listening.

And because listen, you categorize in your book, your life as a dance with the devil.

Okay.

So for following that analogy in any sort of dance, and my wife has told me,

and one or two occasions that maybe I have two left feet, that's neither here nor there.

But what I do know, Marley, is in a dance there is a lead.

There is a follow, right?

There's a push in a pull.

How did you over decades, and through just some of the experiences that you just told us amongst a plethora of others,

how did you learn to transition from being led by this darkness to leading that dance yourself?

That's a little interesting question.

Let me try to pose my answer this way, and that I started studying actually dance when I was five.

And I give that until I was 20.

And all I wanted to be in life was a tap dancer on stage and television Broadway, you name it.

I was all ready to go.

And I was pretty darn good.

And so I transitioned my rage, my fear, my darkness, and poured it all into becoming the best I could possibly be as a dancer.

And so when I was fortunate at age 15 that my dance coach of 10 years got an addition for me for the Ted Mac TV amateur hour,

because she knew that my parents went to New York twice a year to buy clothing for our women's clothing store in our little Midwestern town.

So she set up an audition for me at CBS in New York City on one of my parents buying trips.

And I had a routine prepared that was designed with large movements and which you really needed a stage or a very large room.

So the audition was scheduled.

We went to New York, my mother accompanied me to CBS, and I described this event in my book.

I ended up with the audition being, well, first of all, the administrative person sent me to a little room to change into my costume, which I thought, okay, fine.

The admin sent me to the first room on the right down the hallway.

So I went down there, I opened the door, and I closed it, and I came out again, and I thought, this can't be right.

She sent me to a janitor's closet to change into my costume.

And I thought, this is also a deal with it.

So I was being so careful so that my costume wouldn't fall into a pale of water.

And you know, with bare balls swinging in from the ceiling.

So I'm trying not to get into big trouble in this tiny space.

And then I went back sat in the office, and then finally she called me and she says, okay, it's your turn, go down to room, whatever.

And then I went in there, and I was flabbergasted because this wasn't the stage that I was anticipating.

It was a little 12 by 14 foot room with a cigar smoke and guy at the piano.

And he just looked at me, I handed him my sheet music, he said, what's your tempo?

And I said, one, two, three, four, and I did my dance.

And they just say, I did my best, but it was not good for the space that I had to reengineer my wonderful dance into.

So made us to say two weeks later, I received a letter from CBS saying that thank you for your audition, but we do not need any more tapers.

And that was probably one of the most devastating things in my life.

So what I should have done was just get on a train and go to California, stay with the relatives there and figure out how to get into doing what it was that I felt I was destined to be.

But I didn't.

You know, Marley, thank you for sharing that.

And listen, I think that there is a lot of wisdom to be gained.

And obviously an unfortunate situation here for you in that particular experience.

And was it, I mean, everybody can relate to it, but especially artists, right?

My background is in filmmaking and acting and oh my goodness.

I always hated going out on the auditions and feeling like you're needing to prove yourself and prove your validity every single time.

That's for another discussion, but it's something that we can all relate to, right?

In persevering through that and people listen, that is just one gem.

All right, the book is filled with so many.

That's why you have to head on over to Amazon Barnes and Noble.

Purchase your copies today of three faces of the devil, a memoir of courage and purpose by Marley Bergerude.

I promise you, this is one you're going to want to add to your shelf because it's going to do so much for you once you start to read in between the lines.

And my follow up now that I want to go into Marley is really branching off of the previous answer that you've just given, right?

Still utilizing your experience as a way of paying it forward.

You have a distinguished career in educational leadership, right?

And I want to know from the standpoint of a leader, from a standpoint of someone who's guiding students or even colleagues at times,

I remember vividly being in my early 20s and going through a dark moment, a dark chapter that I had experienced.

And at some point, something clicked, at least for me, where even in the dark moments, I was recognizing, hey, if I shift my perception, there's a silver lining here.

There's something that can be learned. There's something that can be gained.

And then if I focus on that rather than what else is happening, it was a way for me to kind of save face.

It was a way for me to build up the strength to continue to push forward, right?

So rather than wins and losses in life, there were wins and then there were lessons.

So it's a shift, right?

How has integrating and understanding your own past darkness maybe helped inform your leadership style?

Well, the first chapter of the book opens with one of the most difficult things that happened to me in life, which caused me to realize that I had a drinking problem.

And that I had to fix that. And I did. And I was a big speaker on the circuit for educators.

And I spoke to thousands and thousands of speakers, I mean, of people, teachers, educators across North America selling my first book that was co-authored with Jean Gonzalez.

We're processing a concept in careers to educators across North America.

And so I was out in that speaking circuit as well as working full time. And I had a child at home.

And like every two weeks, I'd leave town on a Friday, teach all day Saturday and come home on a Sunday.

And that I think my dance and ability to be in front of people allowed for me to be an incredible presenter of very difficult information like technology.

But that evolved into ultimately another co-authored Don Boucher. And I am a total of like 25 textbooks.

It's sort of a last thing I really wanted to do in my life, but it's just fill in my lap. And so my dance life turned into a entertaining educators out on the speaking circuit for about six years.

And that was one way of turning a dark situation into something that was positive.

But on one of those speaking engagements, I have an interesting time sitting with Buzz Aldrin because he was one of the keynotes as well.

One evening and we chatted all night at dinner and then off he went and off I went that night was a night of total health for me because I was raped.

And that's what caused me to quit drinking and knew that I had to change my life.

So it was pretty significant. And what I also learned was that my family has a genetic predisposition to alcoholism, my grandfather, my father, my mother, my older sister, me, my younger sister.

And that's just the way it is, but I stopped and I spent years going to AA and to date.

I guess I am about 35 years sober never even occurs to me that I need to have a drink or want one.

That was just a decision that I made and have to make.

Marley, thank you very listen first and foremost, congratulations, you know, it's a journey, right?

And you are still on that path, but that is a beautiful accomplishment.

Keep up the fantastic work and also more importantly than anything else.

Like I just want to take an opportunity again to thank you for your transparency.

I can't stress enough the importance of the raw honesty in which you're speaking with right now.

Because I promise you, like there's a lot of people that are out there that are listening in that are finding themselves either in the exact same situation or something similar where they're battling against some things that may seem like insurmountable odds.

And you're living testament to being able to to become your living testament to being able to overcome that now again, it's a journey.

There's a path, there's hills and there's valleys to it, but this is just one profound example that you are providing right now.

And listen, I want to close out here with my final question, like your book covers a multitude of categories.

It's a memoir, of course, we're learning about your background, self-help, inspirational.

I'm curious to know if you had an opportunity to choose a particular community.

What do you most want your book to reach?

Well, it's a book about surviving, so that could be alcohol, that alcoholism, or cancer, or abuse, you know, anyone of those.

But you can, I mean, people can create an internal strength to get through anything, but many don't believe that's possible.

And I think I'm living testament that it is.

Absolutely. Marley, what I love so much, like there's been a lot of things that we've covered here today and a lot of great pieces of wisdom.

And people, let me just plug it one last time to make sure you got it.

All right, Amazon Barnes and Noble, the book is entitled Three Faces of the Devil.

Head on over there and purchase your copies today, but there's so much that's going to stick with me from this discussion.

But like the biggest thing, like, and I get it, your background in dance has a lot to do with it, but we're talking about we have been focusing on this metaphor of the dance,

analogy of the dance, and aside from your personal background, like it's such a wonderful, it's such a wonderful play on words and a great analogy to utilize when we're talking about our own individual journeys and paths that we all take.

Like life in and of itself is a dance, isn't it?

Like again, there's at moments we're leading at moments we're following, there's this give in a take and that I think is some of the things that stay with me from this discussion is like,

we can learn the steps, we can change the rhythm and we can also eventually lead.

And like that analogy, I think is so perfectly fitting because your book is teaching us that it's teaching us that we don't have to be partnered forever with our past.

Like we can change that and man, oh my goodness, what a beautiful, what a beautiful analogy to utilize in such a profound notion.

People, the book is the beginning, but there is a path to be followed from it, but it starts here.

Head on over, purchase your copies, get lost in this journey, but do yourself a favor, read in between the lines,

and manipulate her words to fit your circumstance because that's where a lot of the wisdom is gained.

Seeing yourself in that journey and how you can get through the darkness that you're facing today.

Marley, this has been an absolute honor. I really do mean that.

Keep up the fantastic work and once again, thank you for being a guest on People of Distinction.

Thanks Benji, I appreciate the opportunity.

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