About Me :)
Who am I?
I’m Essence, a Mexican American creative and community advocate born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. I use storytelling to give language to experiences people often feel but struggle to explain. Whether I am creating independently or working alongside a community, I want people to feel recognized without being confined to someone else’s idea of who they should be.
The Story Behind My Work
My work begins with knowing what it feels like to be isolated and misunderstood. I grew up feeling as though belonging required me to prove my identity to people who had already decided what it should look like.
As a Mexican American woman, I have felt the pressure of being interpreted through assumptions about my race and ethnicity. Being queer, neurodivergent, and someone living with mental-health conditions added other layers that people often separated, even though I experienced them all at once. I learned how lonely it can be when others recognize only one part of you and overlook the person those parts belong to.
That isolation made me curious about what people carry beneath the identities others assign to them. It taught me to listen for what has been dismissed or left unsaid. Now I create the kind of work I once needed: work that does not ask people to simplify themselves before they are allowed to belong.
What Connects My Work?
I want to make room for complexity without demanding that someone simplify themselves to be heard.
I believe stories can interrupt assumptions and allow people to see themselves with greater compassion.
I am drawn to experiences that are complicated or difficult to explain.
"You aren't paying me to care; I cared long before there was a client, a brief, a project, or a budget".
I care about...
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The well-being of people who have been taught to make themselves smaller to gain acceptance.
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The experiences of LGBTQIA+ and immigrant communities being acknowledged and respected in media, especially when those identities overlap. People do not experience their sexuality, gender, culture, race, class, or immigration experience separately from one another.
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Making room in media for complex people instead of reducing people to a single identity or expecting them to fit into a story that was never written with their full experience in mind.
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I want to challenge the systems and stories that reduce people to stereotypes while creating room for them to define themselves.
Beyond the Resume
Writing is where I make sense of who I have been and who I am still becoming. Through poetry and memoir, I return to the experiences that shaped me, not to remain inside the pain, but to understand what it changed. My work allows me to speak with earlier versions of myself while making room for the person I have not met yet.
Mentoring is how I turn that reflection outward. By teaching young people how to remain present when something feels difficult, I help them develop resilience and discipline without using shame as motivation. It is one of the ways I give back what I once needed: someone who could recognize the struggle without mistaking it for an inability to grow.
Who am I Becoming?
I am expanding my creative practice while developing a body of work rooted in original ideas and lived experience. I want to create projects that invite honest conversation without manufacturing vulnerability. As I grow, I am becoming more willing to claim my perspective instead of waiting for permission to use it. My goal is to build spaces where lived experience is treated as knowledge and community members are invited to contribute rather than simply observe.