After her son's death, she found a new purpose. 'He's whispering, 'Mom, this is your path'

It was aft the decease of her son, Laith, that Esme Saleh decided to go a people artist.

She had ever been creative, experimenting with watercolors and learning to sew and embroider astatine a young age.

“I had a originative inkling,” she said, “but I ne'er pursued it.”

Everything changed connected Aug. 17, 2013.

In this series, we item autarkic makers and artists, from glassblowers to fibre artists, who are creating archetypal products successful and astir Los Angeles.

When Saleh was 9 months pregnant, she woke up with tummy pains and presumed she was successful labor. She and her husband, Nasim, instantly went to the hospital, wherever doctors checked her and enactment the babe connected a bosom monitor. Saleh’s humor unit was high, however, and the baby’s bosom complaint kept dropping. After astir an hour, his heartbeat stopped. Doctors rushed her successful for an exigency C-section, but it was excessively late. Laith did not survive.

Saleh mislaid a tremendous magnitude of humor and developed postpartum HELLP syndrome, a unsafe signifier of preeclampsia, but doctors were capable to stabilize her.

When she woke up, the archetypal happening she asked was, “How’s my baby?”

After losing her lad successful 2013, Esme Saleh near her occupation arsenic a tv producer. Since then, she has sold her hand-painted candles to section designers successful Los Angeles and to LVMH successful Paris.

“Aug. 17, 2013, was the astir hard time of my life, and Aug. 22 was the 2nd astir difficult, the time we drove location with an bare car seat,” she said of her and her husband’s caller reality.

They named their lad Laith Finn Saleh.

“His archetypal sanction means ‘lion’ successful Arabic. His mediate sanction is an ode to Huckleberry Finn — crisp wit, benignant heart, beardown motivation compass — each the attributes he’s imparted connected america successful spirit,” said Saleh, 45.

After specified a devastating loss, she recovered it hard to spot the satellite again. “It was hard to spot anything,” she said. “The aesculapian system. Myself. It made maine recognize the fragility of bringing thing to life. We instrumentality truthful overmuch for granted.”

So aft years of moving arsenic a tv producer, Saleh near broadcast journalism and leaned into her originative spirit.

She grew up successful San Diego. Her parent was raised connected a workplace successful Mexico, and her begetter moved from Tijuana to Los Angeles to beryllium adjacent her mother, who started moving for a household successful Sherman Oaks astatine 16. They yet settled successful San Diego, wherever Saleh’s father, present a religion deacon, worked arsenic a car salesman.

“He ever wanted to beryllium a weatherman connected TV,” she said, explaining however helium hoped to get his large interruption connected tv by doing a upwind study from the car lot.

Saleh wanted to beryllium a broadcast writer arsenic her begetter had. After graduating from San Diego State, she interned successful the sports section astatine CBS affiliate KFMB-TV though she didn’t cognize overmuch astir sports. She enjoyed sharing accusation with people, learned however to constitute plays of the week and felt she had recovered the close career.

But during a summertime people astatine Mesa College, she started to deliberation journalism mightiness not beryllium for her.

Saleh’s location is filled with her artwork. “My location expresses a batch of the things that I do,” she says. “If it works here, past I consciousness similar I tin enactment it retired successful the world.”

“I’m an empath — a delicate psyche — truthful erstwhile I was speechmaking quality astir decease and destruction, my eyes could not lie,” she said. Her prof told her, “This whitethorn not beryllium your thing.” But erstwhile she arranged flowers connected camera, she truly came alive. She decided to enactment down the scenes arsenic a producer.

Her prof helped her get her archetypal web quality occupation successful 2003, and she moved to Los Angeles, moving connected hard quality and amusement coverage.

After losing Laith a decennary later, she couldn’t support doing red-carpet interviews and acting similar everything was fine. “It each felt truthful different, superficial and hard,” she said. “I felt similar determination was a bigger intent retired determination for me. It’s successful the tiny things that we find the large things.”

She started by coating people art-inspired invitations for a friend’s babe shower. She painted delicate flowers, oranges and leaves connected glass, leather and adjacent lampshades. She created a logo. “I was conscionable trying to accidental yes to things that were truly scary,” she said. “Laith gave maine the courageousness to bash that.”

“I was conscionable trying to get retired of hole,” Saleh says of taking up coating aft her lad died.

Her archetypal son, she said, became “a catalyst for painting.”

Then, astatine the archetypal Thanksgiving during the COVID-19 pandemic erstwhile radical could stitchery again, she had a light-bulb moment. “I was mounting the array and didn’t person flowers oregon thing to adhd to decorate, truthful I thought, ‘I person these candles. I’m going to overgarment them and marque them fancy,’ ” she said.

Her guests were impressed.

As clip went on, coating taper candles helped her find joyousness again, and others noticed too.

“The 1 happening I perceive erstwhile radical prime up a brace of my candles is, ‘This makes maine truthful happy. It makes maine consciousness similar there’s beingness here,’ ” she said.

One of the hardest parts of losing a kid “is that you’re not conscionable grieving the person, you’re grieving the aboriginal you imagined with them,” said Los Angeles-based grief specializer Carla Harvey. “A beingness of emotion abruptly has obscurity to go. Creating creation doesn’t erase grief, but it tin go a mode to transportation it.”

Saleh created her marque Mystic by Esme successful 2021, but it took her immoderate clip earlier she could stitchery the courageousness to effort to merchantability them.

When she brought a shoebox afloat of samples to Nickey Kehoe, the L.A. store agreed to transportation her candles. “I was beside myself,” Saleh said.

“Her candles were perfectly beautiful, and she had a fantastic tone that made selling them a no-brainer,” said interior decorator Todd Nickey, co-founder of Nickey Kehoe.

Saleh gets a astonishment buss from her canine Olive portion coating candles astatine her eating country table.

Saleh viewed her caller broadside task arsenic a mode to gain other wealth for soft lessons for her 11-year-old lad Linus, who is an entrepreneur similar his mother. “I felt arrogant coating the candles portion helium was successful lessons successful the adjacent room,” she said. “It became this circular economy, and it led to bigger opportunities for me.”

Last year, luxury conglomerate LVMH commissioned Saleh to overgarment 465 pairs of candles, oregon 930 candles successful total, for its Chaumet jewelry brand. The postulation was unveiled astatine an elaborate lawsuit astatine the Abbaye des Vaux de Cernay, conscionable extracurricular Paris.

“It was fun,” Saleh said astir the process, which took six months from conception to delivery. “I felt similar I was dressing my candles up for a party.”

Always a hard worker, which she attributes to being a first-generation kid of migrant parents, Saleh has present created a candle postulation for Pierce and Ward successful Los Feliz, leather napkin holders for interior decorator Nathan Turner and pomegranate wrapping insubstantial for Olive Ateliers. The candles retail betwixt $42 to $50 for a pair, and recently, she developed a handsome pewter candle shaver that volition beryllium released successful the winter.

Her eating country tin sometimes consciousness similar “an assembly line,” Saleh says.

Saleh holds a brace of candles she has embellished with florals.

Occasionally, she leads coating workshops, and she loves helping others pat into their creativity. The astir meaningful 1 for her was an ornament store attended by respective victims of the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires. “Without saying anything, we understood each other,” she said. “I understood that they were trying to make memories.”

Saleh knows what it means for things not to past — “impermanence,” she calls it — whether it is homes, candles oregon beingness itself.

She paints each time successful the art-filled eating country of her location (unless it’s Little League season), surrounded by her family, candles and her 2 dogs, Lennon and Olive. ”Painting is similar meditation,” she said. “You tin beryllium successful your eating country and tune everything retired and conscionable beryllium successful the moment.”

Even the family’s summertime bucket database receives an creator flourish.

An arch wrong Saleh’s location receives a personalized touch.

She knows coating candles isn’t new, but she believes her information and the attraction she puts into each candle makes them peculiar beyond their looks.

She has learned to look astatine the satellite that way, that coating successful her eating country has offered her healing and joy, that she tin spot herself and her body, that continuing to beryllium inspired by her 2 boys — “one successful tone and the different present connected Earth” — means that Laith volition ever beryllium with her.

Many radical deliberation healing means moving on, said grief specializer Harvey, but “it’s truly astir uncovering ways to determination guardant portion keeping the radical we emotion woven into our lives. That’s what I spot successful her candles, not an ending, but an ongoing narration with her son.”

“I consciousness similar my lad is channeling done this medium,” Saleh said, her dependable breaking arsenic she painted a taper. “He’s whispering to me, ‘Mom, this is your path.’ That has been my driving force. We’re going to turn this together.”