A Little About Me
I have always been drawn to what lies beneath the obvious: the stories we carry, the things we survive, the questions we are afraid to ask, and what becomes possible when we find the courage to face them.
Life gave me my own share of questions. Some came through things I chose. Others through things I never would have chosen. Somewhere along the way, those questions became stories, books, businesses, conversations and work that reaches far beyond me.
Long before I knew what to call any of it, I was listening, writing, questioning and building around the complicated business of being human. I was fascinated by people: what breaks us, what heals us, what we hide, what we long for, and how we begin again.
I don't have all the answers. I'm not sure I want to. I'm far more interested in the conversations we might have when we're brave enough to ask the questions.
I’m Maris Samuel. Writer. Speaker. Listener. And perhaps, more than anything, a woman still curious about what becomes possible when we stop accepting the end of a story simply because someone told us it was over.
✍️ The Stories I Tell
I write about people and the beautiful, complicated, sometimes bewildering things we do to ourselves and to one another. Love and betrayal. Faith and fear. Sickness, survival, power, justice, relationships, healing, and the uncomfortable spaces in between.
Sometimes the stories are mine. Sometimes they belong to characters who won't leave me alone. And sometimes they begin with a question I cannot stop asking.
My books cross genres because life does too. From The White Tribunal and White Inferno to Heal Like A Rebel: Damn Cancer, Screw Chemo, Stray Bullet, To Catch a Rich Man, and others, the worlds may be different, but I'm usually looking for the same thing:
the human being at the centre of the story.
💼 Why I'm Here
I want to make room for the stories we don't always know how to tell, the questions we're sometimes afraid to ask, and the possibility that what happened to us does not have to become the final word on who we are.
Through listening, writing, speaking and building, I want my work to do more than inspire. I want it to make you think, feel, question, heal, laugh, challenge what needs challenging and, where necessary, begin again.
Because perhaps there is still a version of you your life has not met yet. Someone capable of surprising you, and maybe even the world around you. I'd like my work to help you meet them.
💗 Some Stories Need More Than Words
I've been building things for almost as long as I've been telling stories. I started my first little business at six, before I knew there was a grown-up word for what I was doing.
That instinct never really left. Today, I build businesses, serve as a director and consultant, and lead Omoge by Maris. But I've come to believe that what we build matters most when some of it reaches beyond us.
That's where Project S.H.E. comes in.
Strength. Healing. Empowerment.
S.H.E. takes the work beyond words and into people's lives. From hospital wards to prisons, from young people finding their footing to women building strength through feminity, the people may change, the setting may change and the need may look different. The heart remains the same: showing up where life has left someone needing strength, room to heal, or a real chance to move forward.
A percentage of every purchase made here helps take that work further.
🌍 Stay Awhile.
Maybe you came here for a book. Maybe something you read sounded a little too familiar. Maybe you're looking for answers, or perhaps just better questions.
Whatever brought you here, stay awhile.
Read something. Question something. Find a story that keeps you up later than you planned. Join me by the hearth when you want the quieter conversations. Support a piece of work that matters to you. And if something here helps you see yourself, your life, or another human being differently, then perhaps something worthwhile has happened between us.
Come for whatever brought you. Stay for what you find.