Maria Ernst Weber

I spent my first 18 years living in a deep green Tennessee forest, where believing fairies s were real was easy. My mother encouraged this belief, because she “saw things.” After her best friend died in a car wreck, the woman came to my mom in a vision telling her she was okay. I totally believed her, and this, plus three years’ worth of letters from the Fairy Queen Thimble Bee formed who I am today. By the time I was forty, I had a burning question – who wrote the letters? Was it my mother or a real fairy. My mom died at age 85 and we moved to our current home in Colorado near the Arkansas River. Using my mom’s poetry as a base I spent the next seven years dialoging with her through poetry, art, and inner listening. I also felt the need to heal some of the mother-daughter issues from childhood. The path took me into the realms of shamanic journeying and working with other women who could “see” and “hear” my mom. In the end, I found my answer to the burning question about the fairy, healed my heart toward my mom and opened new doors. As I went down this road, I wrote a second book – a workbook for my readers who might want to explore their own mother-daughter relationships the way I did. This is included in the memoir.

Today, for the love of creating things, I’m a writer, poet, potter, artist, photographer, and jewelry maker. For love, I’m a tree hugger, wife of a potter, and herder of cats . Besides the book, I’ve had a poetry chapbook published, had poems printed in regional publications and I’ve written award-winning stories. I spend my spare time shepherding three writing organizations in our valley—a small group that writes every Monday; a county-wide group that writes together every six weeks and a chapter of the state poetry society that meets monthly. I am excited about my friends who write for fun as well as those who write to publish.