About us

Artist. Bon vivant. Tough yet ultra-refined broad from deep DELCO (Delaware County, Pennsylvania). Esme came up hard on the mean streets of one of the Philadelphia area’s most idiosyncratic neighborhoods. Folks there pronounce “water” as “wooder” and say “crown” instead of “crayon.” But not Esme. A classically trained singer, she has the enviable non-regional accent of an evening news anchor and the comportment to boot. Don’t let that fool you, though. You mess with anyone she loves and she will come for you DELCO style (i.e., throwing batteries and toppling lamp posts). Go Birds!

A painter, interior decorator, gardener, amateur chef, party planner, and graphic designer extraordinaire—if the senses are engaged, so is Esme, and she will happily hyper-fixate, quickly mastering her current interest to a ridiculous degree. Esme is rumored to be able to see the spectrum of light and colors that only mantis shrimp could see, if their brains weren’t so small (look it up!). Light and shade, texture and hue, line and shape—these are her tools; and she’s been using them for most of her adult life making her clients’ brands absolutely sing.

Utterly human, Esme is no stranger to pain. And like most humans, she has an innate desire to be loved. If our desires are fulfilled from an early age we grow up confident, strong, and self-possessed. If they are not, we can grow up to be self-critical to the point of self-loathing. Esme has struggled with self-esteem issues, anxiety, and depression most of her life, a contest made more challenging by the fact that she (like many women) wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until she was well into adulthood (age 36). Recently dipping into the seldom discussed quagmire that is perimenopause, Esme is learning that this inevitable state exacerbates any preexisting mental health challenges and neurodivergent traits and intensifies the already challenging symptoms felt by her neurotypical peers. But her own challenges have made her keenly attuned to the pain of others, and she has always been willing to reach out with love, understanding, and caring to those who need it.

Esme is on a quest to better understand how mental health and neurodivergence affect women and girls—not only to elevate the conversation around their symptoms and needs, but so she can better advocate and model strategies for her daughter. Standard parenting goals: to make her path a bit easier, give her a better foundation for self-love and self-acceptance, and work to ensure a lifelong healthy mother-daughter relationship. 🥰

Educator. Music lover. Digger and explorer of rabbit holes. Marcus was born into an unreasonably large family in the suburbs of Philadelphia. As the youngest member of the family, he grew up surrounded by adults and near adults and his sensibilities grew to reflect this. In short, he grew up weird. He might have grown up a regular, book-reading weirdo if not for the fact he was uncommonly large. The kind of large you just have to stuff into football pads and throw on the gridiron. Marcus liked it well enough, but he quickly realized that books and the music of Tom Waits were not welcome topics there. So he learned an important lesson: wherever you go, whoever you might meet, be prepared to be someone other than yourself.

Marcus parlayed his love of books into a BA in English, a fulfilling if career-choking pursuit. Nevertheless, he found his corporate niche in training and development. A lifetime spent quietly observing the social dynamics of groups made him particularly well suited to prepare others to compete in corporate America, where success is often a factor of more than just performance. He built programs that helped people learn the soft skills, the nuance . . . all the things his social anxiety made it difficult to apply for himself. 

Marcus was diagnosed with ADHD in his late 20. Sometime in his early 30s he was also diagnosed with Anxiety and Depression. On some level he found it amusing to realize the feelings he’d been experiencing his whole life had names. He’d come to believe the frequent bouts of spaciness and forgetfulness, periods of hyper awareness, and feelings of embarrassment and shame were moral failings. He wondered why it had taken him so long to figure out these were symptoms of relatively common mental health challenges.  A therapist explained he was able to internalize his experiences because he has “an incredible tolerance for emotional pain.” Marcus knew this was not a compliment, but it still made him feel weirdly proud.  

Historical footnote: Marcus is the grandson of Irish immigrants, and Esme can trace much of her ancestral line to Ireland as well. They are proud to bear one Ireland’s most storied yet entirely made-up family names. The O’Kayviuses are rumored to have stood with Brian Boru at Clontarf, Hugh O’Neil at Yellow Ford, and Thin Lizzy at Slane Castle.

When Marcus met Esme

When Marcus met Esme, he realized he finally met someone with whom he could be himself. She didn’t judge him or laugh at his opinions. He didn’t have to act at all with her. Until, that is, he fell into a deep depression. In his mind, he believed he didn’t deserve to be loved. He tried desperately to keep her away from his failings (more imagined than real). He tried to put on the act again, but found he was too exhausted. Fortunately, Esme would have none of it. She stepped in and forced him to get the help he needed. And saved his life in the process.