Today we’d like to introduce you to Estee Marie.
Estee, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Creative expression has been part of my survival for as long as I can remember.
I began writing poetry in the eighth grade, before I fully understood that the words on the page were helping me process what I could not yet say out loud. I survived childhood sexual abuse, but if you had looked at me back then, you probably would not have known it. I earned straight A’s, played varsity sports, smiled, achieved, and kept going. On the outside, I looked like I was doing well. Inside, I was trying to make sense of hurt I did not have the language or support to explain.
Art gave me language before I knew how to say everything I had survived.
Poetry became the place where I could tell the truth. Faith gave me something to hold on to while I was learning how to live beyond what happened to me. Over time, creativity expanded beyond writing. I began exploring visual art, performance, teaching, and community experiences. Each form gave me another way to take something painful and make something honest from it.
My career has not followed one straight line. I have worked as an educator for more than a decade, coached teachers in arts integration, co-hosted *SPEAK* on Time Warner Cable’s Faith on Demand, and produced a faith-based open mic in Los Angeles called M.O.U.F. Peace. Whether I was working with students, performing poetry, or creating visual art, I kept seeing the same thing: creative expression can help people reach places that ordinary conversation sometimes cannot.
My poetry collection, *These Dry Bones*, tells part of my journey of overcoming childhood sexual abuse through poetry and faith in Jesus. The title comes from Ezekiel 37, the biblical story of a valley filled with dry bones that are spoken back to life. That passage reflects so much of my own journey. What happened to me wounded me, but it did not get the final word over my voice, my worth, or my future.
Today, I am a multidisciplinary artist, poet, author, educator, and licensed chaplain. My work lives at the intersection of faith, creativity, emotional wellness, and community. Through speaking, workshops, arts experiences such as The Heart Pour, and the programs I am continuing to build, I help people use creative expression to slow down, tell themselves the truth, reconnect with their voices, and begin moving toward wholeness.
I do not share my story because I have arrived at some perfect, finished version of healing. I am still healing. I share it because someone else may be smiling, achieving, and showing up for everyone around them while quietly wondering if life can become more than what they survived.
I am living proof that it can.
The abuse is part of my story, but it is not the whole story. I lived through the hurt. I found my voice. Now I get to build a career that allows me to create beauty, make room for honest conversations, and remind other people that there is still life in places that may have felt dry for a very long time.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
No, it has not been a smooth road. One of the hardest parts has been admitting that I was not as healed as I thought I was.
There is a denial phase in healing that people do not always talk about. You can know what happened to you, speak about it, and even create meaningful work from it while still avoiding the deeper ways it affected you. For a long time, I knew how to keep moving. I could be productive, show up for other people, and turn pain into poetry. But surviving something and honestly facing what it did to you are not the same thing.
Losing my mother in 2021 from complications related to diabetes brought another layer of grief into my life. She had an artistic side she never really explored because of life and responsibilities, so her influence is woven into the work I am still building today. As the anniversary of her passing approaches on August 8, I am reminded that grief does not follow a convenient schedule. I can continue building, creating, and becoming while still feeling the weight of her absence.
Another major struggle has been analysis paralysis. I am a visionary, which means I can see many possibilities, but I can also see all the ways something might go wrong. I have overthought ideas until the excitement left them. I have talked myself out of pursuing things I felt called to do because I was trying to figure out every step before taking the first one.
I am learning that I do not have to feel completely fearless before I move. Sometimes faith looks like taking the next step while my questions are still sitting beside me. I am learning to stop waiting for perfect timing, perfect clarity, or permission to pursue what God has already placed in me.
The road has included trauma, grief, fear, and seasons when I stood in my own way. But it has also taught me how to keep choosing life. I am not where I am because fear and doubt never show up. I am here because I am learning not to let them make my decisions for me.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am a multidisciplinary artist, author, educator, licensed chaplain, and grief counselor. My work sits at the intersection of creative expression, faith, emotional wellness, and honest conversation.
I specialize in creating art experiences that invite people to slow down and pay attention to what is happening beneath the surface. Sometimes that looks like standing in front of a canvas and pouring paint. Sometimes it looks like writing the words you have been afraid to say. Sometimes it is a room full of women realizing they are not the only ones who have learned how to smile while hurting.
Through experiences like The Heart Pour, I combine fluid art with guided reflection, journaling, and faith-centered conversation. I also facilitate poetry and writing workshops, speak about creativity as a pathway toward healing, and work with schools, churches, women’s groups, and organizations that want to care for the whole person.
I am also the author of *These Dry Bones*, a poetry collection inspired by Ezekiel 37 that tells part of my journey of surviving childhood sexual abuse and finding my voice through poetry and faith in Jesus. I am not a therapist, and I am careful not to present my work as therapy. What I bring is more than a decade of experience as an educator, my training as a chaplain and grief counselor, my life as a working artist, and the honesty of someone who has had to practice what she teaches.
One of the projects I am most proud of is *The Color of Us*, an arts experience that explored the lives and stories of Black women through visual art, poetry, and community conversation. The project received funding from the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance. That support was a major turning point for me. After several years of feeling like my career was moving slowly, it reminded me that the ideas God gave me were worth pursuing and that my work could make room for conversations people were hungry to have.
What sets me apart is that I do not separate the artist from the educator, the survivor from the facilitator, or faith from the healing journey. All of those parts of me enter the room together. I understand how to build an experience with intention, but I also understand what it feels like to be the person in the room who is not ready to tell her whole story.
I am most proud that I did not allow what happened to me to silence what was placed inside me. The same creativity that helped me survive has become the work I now use to serve others. Every painting, poem, workshop, and conversation is part of that assignment: to speak life into places that have been dry and remind people that pain may shape part of their story, but it does not have to write the ending.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
I believe my willingness to try again has been the most important quality in my success.
I have had ideas I was excited about that completely flopped. I have created something I believed in, promoted it, prayed over it, and still watched the sales fall short of what I expected. Those experiences can make you question the idea, your ability, and sometimes even whether you heard God correctly.
The hardest part is not always the failure itself. Sometimes it is swallowing the disappointment, learning what the experience came to teach me, and finding the courage to put myself back out there. I have had to learn that one unsuccessful attempt does not mean I am unsuccessful. A quiet launch does not mean the work has no value. It may mean I need to change the strategy, sharpen the message, or give the idea more time to grow.
Trying again does not always mean repeating the exact same thing. Sometimes it means returning with more wisdom. Sometimes it means making an adjustment. Sometimes it means letting go of one version of the idea so I can make room for what it was trying to become.
I am still learning how to move through disappointment without allowing it to convince me to quit. My success has not come from getting everything right the first time. It has come from being willing to take the lesson, gather myself, and try one more time.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://EsteeMarie.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/iamesteemarie
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/esteemarie
- Youtube: https://Youtube.com/@iamesteemarie
