Esther Fleece

“You design your life to look a certain way, and then your worst nightmare happens.”

From the outside, Esther Fleece’s life looks ideal. She has enjoyed a more than decade-long successful career writing and speaking about faith and family issues. Yet, in the midst of success, she hid the deep, dark pain of her past. She put on a plastic face.

As a young girl, Esther began noticing the bruises on her mother’s body and how she and her mom would often flee their home suddenly to go stay in hotels. Her dad, the man she thought of as a hero, quickly became the most dangerous person she knew.

Meanwhile, she became very involved at school to escape the pain happening at home. While her real life was spinning out of control, she created a facade that brought her success. She coped by living a life that was pretty from the outside.

Twenty years passed before Esther’s past caught up with her. In 2010, while speaking at a conference in California, she learned her biological father was at her home, actively stalking her. With fear taking over, all of her coping mechanisms came crashing down in an instant.

How could she continue living her successful life while she was consumed with fear and heartbreak? Would she ever be able to understand what real love looked like?

“I have this incredible hope that my story isn’t over yet, but that’s so not dependent on me.”

To learn more about Esther’s story, pick up her new book “No More Faking Fine.”