Daune Marie knows heartbreak. After her daughter suffered a devastating illness, Marie left a lucrative corporate job to open Blooming Peace LLC in October 2024. Operating from St. Thomas Whitemarsh Episcopal Church in Fort Washington, the nonprofit offers therapeutic opportunities to create artwork in a variety of mediums.

Marie’s daughter, Chloe, the younger of two, was adopted from Guatemala at four months old in 1994. Marie recalled, “Chloe's birth mother, who turned 18 four days after Chloe was born, was unmarried and could not afford to take care of her. Chloe had ear, nose, and throat, and pulmonary-related health issues when I got her.”

 In 2010, at age 16 while attending a Montana boarding school for students with learning differences, Chloe was diagnosed with Myelodysplastic Syndromes, a rare form of blood cancer. While at the school, Chloe developed a profound love for animals, befriending a horse named Iris, who would let only Chloe ride her. A very special bond formed that helped them both heal.

Because of the ongoing cancer treatment and recovery from a bone marrow transplant, Chloe was homeschooled throughout her junior year of high school. To make matters even more stressful, Marie divorced the girls’ father in 2010.

Chloe spent her senior year at New Hope Academy. There, she was able to make new friends, attend her prom, and graduated as Salutatorian in 2012.

However, the cancer returned that August. Marie told Chloe to "go live your life." She did, and in the fall entered Camden County Community College in hopes of becoming a veterinarian assistant. 

Chloe had to drop out six weeks after starting college, however, because her cancer was not responding to treatment. Sadly, she died at age 18 on Dec. 29, 2012, at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. “She was an old soul,” said Marie, whose older daughter, Madison, took many of Chloe's belongings to Guatemala and gave them to residents of the town where Chloe was born. 

A winding path

A native of Western Pennsylvania, Marie attended the University of West Virginia as a journalism/public relations major. She came to Philadelphia in 1981 to work at Brickman Industries, a commercial landscaping firm, living in Roxborough for 14 years and Ambler for three. 

With the help of a fellow employee from Brickman, Marie started a landscaping business, Detailed Environments, in 1991 and kept it going for 18 years. She then worked at Sosmetal Products in Port Richmond but left during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The genesis for Blooming Peace happened in 2009, when Marie was in the midst of her divorce proceedings, walking her dog in Center City. She said she was “looking up at the sky when a stranger came up to me and said, 'Did you make it home okay during the storm?' I had no idea what she meant, but then she said there was a job at the Broad Street Ministry. [Now called Broad Street Love, the nonprofit offers meals and social services to those living in deep poverty.] So, I went there and got a job. I started an art-as-therapy program and did that for two years. Then Chloe was diagnosed with cancer. 

“I started making art again as an adult,” she said. “I realized the mystical powers of healing it had. In 2014, I got a booklet with the name ‘Blooming Peace.’ I knew then what I was meant to do, to help people make peace with grief.”

Last fall Marie left a corporate job at Lansdale’s Beon Retirement to open Blooming Peace, a studio in a large room in one of the buildings on the 42-acre premises owned by St. Thomas Whitemarsh Church. She also volunteers to do art-as-therapy for unhoused people at Sunshine House, a Kensington nonprofit providing “trauma-informed care.”

Marie said, “I've always been sensitive to people suffering. It is my calling to try to alleviate that. Many addicts have unresolved grief issues. I teach people how to heal themselves using creativity. I know how making art helped me to heal. I have PTSD. I just pick up stuff off the ground and make art out of it.”

Marie attended workshops about grief and read “The Art of Loss, Love and Peace,” by the late Melody Beattie. “Even joy has grief,” she said. “For example, you graduate from school, which is joyful, but many friends go their own way, which is sad. Grief and love are two sides of the same coin. I consider myself a grief companion, a creative 'grief-ologist.' People want to talk and share. When you see art, you can see things in a way that maybe words cannot. You get people in touch with nature. You find out who you have not yet become.”

For more information, visit bloomingpeace.com. Len Lear can be reached at LenLear@chestnuthilllocal.com.