Esme Hartley
A pen name, for a parent who has lived these struggles, found her way through with help, and now writes the books she once needed and couldn't find.
Why I write under a pen name
I write under a pen name for one simple reason: to protect my children. They didn't choose to have their early years turned into examples in a book, and one day they'll be old enough to read these pages. The details throughout the books are changed for the same reason, what stays true is the feeling, not the address.
I am not a doctor, a psychologist, or a therapist. I'm a parent. Everything I know, I learned the hard way, on the bathroom floor and the supermarket car park, in therapy rooms, and in the slow, daily work of raising children I love beyond reason while carrying things that make it harder.
Why these books exist
Every book in The Steady Series began the same way: late at night, frightened of myself, going looking for help, and finding either cold clinical textbooks, or frightening horror stories, or advice that assumed a mind and a life I didn't have. What I could never find was a book written to a parent like me, byone: honest about how hard it is, and certain that it's survivable, and full of things that actually help.
So I started keeping notes. Those notes became these books. They are the books I needed and couldn't find, offered, now, to you.
What I believe
That the parents who struggle most are very often the ones who love most fiercely. That you can heal and parent at the same time, there is no waiting room. That you don't have to be fixed, calm, or perfect to raise a happy, secure child. And that the single most powerful thing any parent can do is, simply, to keep coming back, after the storm, the mistake, the hard day, again and again, with their whole heart.
“Wounded people can be wonderful parents, not despite the work, but because of it.”