ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Esther Smith
Get to Know Way More About Me
My name is Esther. I didn’t used to like my name, because people would say, “Esther? That’s an old lady name!”, in a not-so-nice manner. Or they would say it is so weird or ugly or they have never heard of it before. For a while in college, I even tried going by my middle name, but it wasn’t me. I was Esther. I have learned to love my name and be thankful that my parents chose it as my name. So, I am Esther.
My natural birth gender is Female. My natural hair color is dark brown, almost black. However in the sunshine it has a very red/mahogany shine. My hair was straight as ever when I was growing up. I wanted more than anything for it to be curly. You know how many people want what they don’t have? Well, that was me too. When I was 19, I permed my hair one time. Later, I tried to let it grow out and kept waiting and waiting. I tried cutting it shorter, to cut off the permed part, when I discovered that my hair would not go back to straight. For a while I was frustrated and wanted it to go back, but eventually, like my name, I learned how to be grateful for what I have, instead of always wishing to be or have something different. Now I love my curly hair, even on days when it is too poofy.
My natural eye color is cream soda to almost root beer color. That too, I tried changing for a while with colored contacts. It looked odd to me and I got an eye infection, so I went back to my eye color of birth. It really isn’t so bad to have the color that I got. I guess I just thought somehow people would like me more or I would feel more confident… but I realized that confidence doesn’t come from looks, or the way that others value us or see us. It comes from within and with how we feel about ourselves and our relationship with others, whether we are kind and have compassion and a heart, whether we love and serve those around us, whether we accept ourselves for who we are and things like that.
I am 40 years old. I am not ashamed to admit my age. I have been through a ton in my life and still have a ton more to experience and hope that I get the time left in this world to experience it. Life is fragile, I know that, as I struggle with many health concerns… but life is a gift that I am incredibly thankful for, even through my pain and health concerns.
I have been married exactly half of my life. I was married at age 20. I am still married to the same man. I REALLY LOVE him! It is wonderful and horrible at the same time. There are days that it is fantastic and other days it is not… probably just as much as it might be wonderful and horrible for you having a sibling, relative, or friend. Some days you love them and they are so nice, fun, and awesome – and then other days they are a rude jerk, who is being selfish. Yep, that’s how marriage can be too and most things in life. You might not be able to pick how your sibling or spouse acts towards you, but you can always pick how you choose to treat them. I always try to make sure that I am not the one who is being the selfish jerk. I can also make boundaries and choose what I tolerate and don’t. I can say, “Hey, I don’t like that, it hurts my feelings” or “It really makes me feel sad, when you …” Sometimes as a kid you don’t always have the ability to choose all of that stuff, but you can always choose what you think, feel, and hope for, and never give up! Most of the time my marriage is very happy and I am VERY glad that I picked the man I did and that he and I both choose to stay together and take care of our 8 children together.
We have 6 birth children and 2 adopted children. We had had 3 children and then miscarried lots of times for almost 6 years, when we decided to adopt. We had already been foster parents since 2004, but had never adopted, just helped take care of children. This time we decided to seek foster children who would be more likely to become adopted someday. We fostered our two girls for 2 years, when they came up for adoption. They, just like most kids, husbands, wives, and people had their ups and downs and were not easy to raise, but we loved them and definitely decided to adopt them, after they came available for adoption. We had originally planned to adopt much younger little boys, but they came to us instead and we are still glad. Within the same week that we agreed to adopt, we found out that we were pregnant with a little boy. We had two more after him. I love children and am thankful for them, even the hard to deal with ones. *Due to privacy reasons, my children are not pictured here.*
I am from Alaska. My parents moved there when I was 10 days old. We lived in a rural village that you have to fly to get out to, called Tanana. We lived there for a while and then moved to another small village, but this one you could drive to. Tanana, you had to fly to in a “bush” plane. Both of my hometowns were less than 600 people.
I went to college at UAF, Brigham Young University – Hawaii, and American Intercontinental University and graduated with a degree in Visual Communications. That title is long, but it just means that I am an artist. I can do all kinds of art, traditional types like sculpting, painting, and drawing, and modern and digital types. One of my favorite types is photo restorations or editing. The characters here on my website I created. I often use a real person or two or 5 or 10 to help make them faster, but they are made up characters, not real photos. I really enjoy this type of art and next definitely sculpting.
I am an author and an illustrator and I have written other books, but they were geared towards very young children, where this book was written with a target audience of 13 years and up and those other books were geared toward kids about age 2 to 8 years. I love nature, camping in places with no snakes (like Alaska), playing board games, creating board games, writing, dressing up with my kids, singing, swimming, helping people, making things, cooking, creating my own recipes, and so much more.
What do you like to do? I can’t wait to get to meet you all and find out about you, each one of you. I am going to have an essay contest soon, to give you the chance to tell me about yourself. Stay tuned for more details about the biography contest and what prizes you could win.
All of these pictures are of Esther Smith.
Last Updated 11/25/2020.